A fresh bout of soul-searching has gripped the crypto derivatives industry as leading market participants argue that the market’s structure is fundamentally flawed – not just unlucky.

Wintermute founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy set the tone on X, arguing that the core problem is not perpetual futures themselves but the way key venues are architected. Posting under his handle @EvgenyGaevoy (wishful_cynic), he wrote that “the real issue is not the perp design but the centralized (and quadi [sic] decentralized) exchanges that are prime broker, CLOB and custodian all in one,” adding that traditional finance “solved all this stuff long time ago.”

His critique targets the vertically integrated model that dominates both centralized exchanges and some so-called “decentralized” platforms, where cu

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