Perpetuals trading platform Synthetix is returning to Ethereum mainnet. Its founder argues that the network is now greater than able to supporting high-frequency financial applications after years of network congestion fueled derivatives activity elsewhere.
“When criminal DEXs became a thing, the mainnet was too congested, but now we will scale it back,” Synthetix founder Kain Warwick said in an interview with Cointelegraph on Wednesday.
“It’s form of crazy that there really wasn’t a Perp DEX on mainnet,” he added, explaining that lower demand following the Perp DEX exodus combined with ongoing scaling improvements have made Ethereum Layer 1 more viable again.
“It’s definitely one of the best place to run a Perp DEX,” he said.
Source: Synthetix
Warwick said high gas fees and network congestion previously made it not possible to operate complex trading infrastructure on the network.
For several years, many perpetual platforms migrated to Layer 2 networks or alternative blockchains, and Synthetix followed an identical path, he said, moving to the Ethereum Layer 2 network Optimism in 2022 and later expanding to Arbitrum and Base.
Around the identical time, the decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX switched from mainnet to the StarkWare Layer 2 solution StarkEx.
Warwick says the fees are “just too high” to make this feasible
Warwick said operating critical infrastructure was not feasible since the costs were “just too high.”
“The cost per transaction and subsequently the efficiency of on-chain markets have deteriorated significantly,” said Warwick. According to Etherscan, Ethereum's average gas fee was around 0.71 Gwei on Wednesday, almost 26 times lower than on the identical day 12 months ago, when it averaged 18.85 Gwei.
Ethereum gas fees are significantly lower than they were twelve months ago. Source: Ether Scan
Warwick said the mix of Layer 2 and Layer 1 scaling means “you possibly can actually run critical infrastructure on the mainnet again.”
Some Ethereum proponents have predicted further improvements in network capability in 2026. Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano recently said the goal of significantly increasing Ethereum's gas cap to 180 million next yr is more of a baseline somewhat than a best-case scenario.
Warwick expects further ongoing exchanges to follow Synthetix
Warwick expects other perpetual DEXs to follow Synthetix back to the mainnet, arguing that Ethereum is now able to supporting multiple perpetual DEXs concurrently.
“It wouldn’t be a Synthetix launch if someone didn’t attempt to follow us inside 20 minutes,” Warwick said.
“The principal advantage is that almost all of the liquidity within the crypto world is on the Ethereum mainnet; a lot of the assets, a lot of the margin, a lot of the liquidity, almost all the pieces is there. It is probably the most efficient on-chain market,” he said.
Warwick added that Ethereum's performance has improved significantly in 2025 and it would be the best yr for the network for the reason that merger in September 2022.
“There has been a renewed concentrate on the needs of builders in a way that I feel previously was perhaps far more focused on the network itself,” he said.
