DeepSigma, a new decentralized perpetual futures exchange for real-world assets, has unveiled a live paper-trading demo covering 77 markets across U.S. equities, indexes, sector ETFs, commodities and Treasury yields. The platform, announced on Oct. 13, runs on the Cypherium Layer 1 blockchain and is being developed by a team with experience at Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities, Google and Uber.
Rather than tokenizing or taking custody of underlying assets, DeepSigma’s perpetual contracts track real-world markets through external price data. This allows traders to gain long or short exposure without owning or taking delivery of stocks, commodities or other instruments. Supported demo markets include major U.S. equities; index contracts for the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq Composite, Russell 2000 and VIX; S&P sector ETFs; commodities such as WTI and Brent crude oil, gold, silver, natural gas and copper; and U.S. Treasury yields.
CEO Sky Guo, who is also the founder of Cypherium, said real-world markets require a separate approach to derivatives trading because they have different trading hours, liquidity conditions, pricing sources and regulatory considerations. He added that the hardest part is making markets behave sensibly when the underlying asset is closed, liquidity disappears or an external price moves sharply.
The platform uses a central limit order book with a separate clearing layer for positions, collateral, margin and settlement. Its proposed risk controls include multi-source external pricing, mark-price calculations designed to limit short-term manipulation, position limits, exposure controls, circuit breakers, partial liquidations and an insurance mechanism for stressed market conditions.
The announcement follows broader growth in real-world asset derivatives. According to crypto.news, RWA perpetual DEX trading volume reached $365 billion in the third quarter of 2026, with public equities accounting for roughly $175 billion. Other platforms have entered the space, including Ondo Finance with Ondo Perps and Polymarket with perpetual futures across initial markets.
As part of U.S. regulatory preparations, DeepSigma is developing decentralized identity infrastructure based on zero-knowledge proofs under the principle of “prove eligibility, not identity.” The company has not disclosed a full trading launch date or specified which U.S. regulatory approvals it will seek, describing the current product as a paper-trading demonstration rather than a live exchange offering real-money trading.
Cypherium, the underlying Layer 1 blockchain, combines Proof-of-Work with a HotStuff-derived Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism and holds four granted U.S. patents covering blockchain consensus and related technology. The network is designed to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second to support high-frequency financial activity, though the company did not provide independently verified throughput results for DeepSigma.
