Challenge
A decentralized perpetual exchange aiming to serve institutional counterparties such as asset managers, banks, and professional trading firms faces a structural constraint. These participants require high-throughput execution, predictable fees, and settlement within a regulated financial infrastructure. Public blockchains provide expressive programmability and mature developer tooling, but fall short on performance, privacy, and institutional settlement. Traditional Layer 2 solutions improve scalability but remain crypto-native environments disconnected from where regulated capital flows. Building proprietary infrastructure in-house would require managing network operations, compliance controls, and uptime-critical systems, introducing operational complexity, costs, and long time-to-market.
Solution
The exchange launches its own fully customizable, Ethereum-compatible blockchain using Zenith Stack, a purpose-built EVM execution environment for Canton. This gives the exchange full control over execution logic, fee models, and native assets, while settling transactions into Canton. Developers can express complex financial logic, reuse existing Ethereum tooling, and iterate quickly, while operating within Canton’s privacy, governance, and compliance constraints. Zenith operates the chain end-to-end, including sequencing, validators, verification, and Canton participation, allowing the exchange to focus on market structure and product design rather than infrastructure.
Business outcome
Launching with Zenith Stack allows the exchange to retain ownership of transaction fees and execution economics. Settlement on Canton provides access to institutional financial flows measured in the trillions, including tokenized assets and regulated market activity already operating there. This significantly expands the exchange’s addressable market beyond crypto-native participants. As activity scales, the exchange becomes eligible for $CC App Rewards, earning usage-based incentives directly tied to the value it contributes to the Canton ecosystem.
Strategic impact
By choosing Zenith Stack, PerpDEX launches a trading venue designed for institutional scale, combining high-performance execution with full control over fees and market structure, and direct connectivity to Canton’s regulated financial workflows. Zenith Stack enables a sovereign, Ethereum-compatible execution environment that settles into institutional infrastructure by design, delivering faster time to market, credible access to regulated capital at scale, and a clear focus on liquidity and product innovation rather than infrastructure complexity.
About Zenith
Zenith is the EVM and SVM execution layer for Canton Network, advancing real-world capital markets initiatives on-chain.
“Zenith’s addition of atomically composable EVM, and planned SVM, execution expands Canton’s capabilities in a way that can increase network utility,” said Eric Saraniecki, Head of Network Strategy at Digital Asset. “It enables developers to deploy Solidity applications that can interact atomically with Canton-based infrastructure, bringing established financial building blocks to institutional-grade rails already operating at significant real-world volumes.”
Learn more about Zenith: Website | Docs | GitHub | Blog | X (Twitter) | Telegram | Discord
