LIVELive Market
7.3
Solid
Best Perpetual DEXs · Review

Aevo

The most credible on-chain options venue, running an off-chain book that it is refreshingly upfront about.

Best For
Options and perps in one margin account
Headline Cost
~0.03%/0.05% maker/taker
Founded
2023
Rank in category
6 of 15
Last Checked
August 2026
The short answer

Aevo is the only venue in this category where options are a first-class product rather than an afterthought, and portfolio margin across options and perpetuals makes structured positions practical on-chain. Its order book runs off-chain on a dedicated rollup, which the team states openly, and depth thins quickly outside front-month BTC and ETH.

Score breakdown

Category rubric →
Risk engine & liquidations · 25%
7.5
Depth & slippage · 20%
6.5
Funding & fees · 20%
7.5
Security record · 20%
8.0
Transparency · 15%
6.5

Works well for a specific use case, weaker outside it. The headline 7.3 is the weighted mean of these marks — see our methodology. Not financial advice.

What we liked

  • Genuine options market alongside perps under portfolio margin
  • Team's Ribbon lineage brings real derivatives experience
  • Clean security record on the current stack

Where it falls short

  • Order book and matching are off-chain on a dedicated rollup
  • Options liquidity is thin outside near-dated majors

On-chain options have repeatedly failed because pricing and margining them is hard and liquidity fragments across strikes and expiries. Aevo, built by the team behind Ribbon Finance, is the closest thing to a working answer: a real options order book with portfolio margin, settled on its own rollup.

Architecture and honesty about it

Orders are matched off-chain by Aevo's engine and settled on-chain on an Optimism-stack rollup. That is a centralised component in the middle of a decentralised product, and the team documents it rather than obscuring it — a distinction we weight explicitly in the transparency criterion. Custody of collateral remains on-chain and withdrawals do not require the operator's cooperation in the normal case.

Products and margin

Perpetuals across a reasonable market list, plus options with standard strikes and expiries on BTC and ETH. Portfolio margin nets risk across positions, so a covered position requires far less collateral than it would under isolated margin. For traders running spreads or hedged structures, that efficiency is the entire reason to be here rather than on a perps-only venue.

Liquidity is the constraint

Front-month at-the-money BTC and ETH options have workable spreads. Move to longer expiries or further strikes and quotes widen sharply, sometimes to the point where the theoretical advantage of the structure is consumed by execution cost. Perpetual depth is mid-tier. Anyone accustomed to Deribit's options book will find this thin.

Who should use Aevo

Traders who want options exposure without a centralised custodian, and who trade near-dated majors where liquidity exists. For pure perpetual trading there are deeper venues. For serious options size, the centralised alternatives still win on liquidity, which is an honest statement about where this category currently stands.

FAQ

Are Aevo's options fully on-chain?
Settlement and custody are on-chain; order matching happens off-chain on Aevo's own rollup. The team discloses this rather than describing the venue as fully decentralised.
What is portfolio margin?
A margin system that nets risk across your positions rather than requiring collateral for each separately, so hedged structures need far less capital.
How liquid are Aevo's options?
Reasonable on front-month at-the-money BTC and ETH strikes, and thin elsewhere. Longer-dated and far out-of-the-money strikes can be expensive to trade.
Who built Aevo?
The team behind Ribbon Finance, which ran structured options vaults before pivoting to build an exchange — genuine derivatives experience by the standards of this sector.

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