In December 2024, TON Foundation, in collaboration with GMX—a leading permissionless perp decentralized exchange (DEX) enabling frictionless trading across public blockchains—launched a competition to boost the development of perpetual DEXs on TON. The goal was to support projects building high-performance trading platforms that push the boundaries of what’s possible on-chain, taking into account TON’s unique architecture and constraints.

The competition has successfully concluded, and we're excited to announce the winners.

Judging criteria

The challenge was to create a cutting-edge DEX and innovate the perp DEX trading experience. Submissions were evaluated across several key dimensions:

• Codebase quality, architecture, and security
• Relevance to TON’s user base and the Telegram ecosystem
• Community traction and business development capabilities
• Scalability and high-performance trading
• Go-to-market readiness

To ensure a fair and thorough review, TonBit—a leading audit firm in the TON ecosystem—was brought in to provide technical input and assess code safety and design integrity.

🥇 First place: Storm Trade

Storm Trade stood out for its sophisticated architecture, native integration with TON, and clear understanding of the challenges behind building a decentralized perpetual exchange from scratch. Judges saw strong potential for the product to become a foundational piece of the TON DeFi stack.

🥈 Second place: Tradoor and TON Hedge

Both Tradoor and TON Hedge showcased creative and technically promising approaches to building perps protocols. While still early in development, their vision and ideas demonstrate strong potential, and TON Foundation is committed to supporting their continued growth.

What’s next

To help these teams take their products to the next level, TON Foundation and GMX will offer:

• Advisory support from GMX
  Strategic guidance from some of the most successful perp DEX builders in DeFi.

• Marketing and visibility
  Ecosystem-wide support and spotlight through TON Foundation’s official channels.

• Investor connections
  Introductions to early-stage DeFi investors and ecosystem-aligned funds.

• Audit cost coverage
  Funding to help ensure code quality and user safety.

Why this matters

Perpetual exchange protocols are a core pillar of any mature DeFi ecosystem. With Telegram’s massive reach and TON’s performance, there’s a unique opportunity to bring seamless trading to hundreds of millions of users. These early teams are building toward that future, and TON Foundation is here to help them get there.

We thank all participants for contributing to this important initiative and encourage builders to continue shipping, apply for grants, and take part in upcoming TON ecosystem support programs.

What is GMX?

GMX is a non-custodial exchange that enables trading of perpetual and spot assets across multiple public blockchains, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Solana.

The permissionless multichain DEX offers deep liquidity, low swap fees, and up to 100x leverage. It features one-click trading, supports various collateral types, and employs sub-second oracle pricing through Chainlink Data Streams.

Trading on GMX is made possible by isolated GM pools and capital-efficient GLV vaults, allowing users to provide liquidity and earn fees. With over 80 ecosystem integrations and composable liquidity infrastructure, GMX functions as a base layer for multichain DeFi.