Hey folks, if you're deep into the world of blockchain and DeFi, you've probably heard the buzz around Starknet lately. This Ethereum Layer 2 network is making waves with its scalability and integrity focus. Recently, the Starknet team dropped a tweet highlighting a major development: ex-Revolut executives have launched Extended, a cutting-edge perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) right on Starknet's mainnet.

For those new to the term, a perpetual DEX, or "perp DEX," is a platform where you can trade perpetual futures contracts—basically, agreements to buy or sell assets at a future date without an expiration. These are super popular in crypto because they let you leverage your positions, meaning you can amplify your gains (or losses) with borrowed funds. Extended takes this to the next level by offering up to 100x leverage on over 50 trading pairs, including crypto majors, TradFi assets, and yes, those volatile meme tokens that keep the community buzzing.

The tweet threads into a deeper discussion on The Rollup podcast, where Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, Extended's founder and a former Revolut crypto lead, spills the beans. Ruslan and his team—eight out of ten members are ex-Revolut colleagues—left one of the biggest fintechs to build this. Their motivation? The FTX collapse in late 2022 exposed the risks of centralized exchanges, pushing them to create a trustless, on-chain alternative where users retain custody of their funds.

What makes Extended stand out? It's all about efficiency and features. Built on Starknet for its high throughput and low latency, the platform handles massive trade volumes without breaking a sweat—think 200 trades per second during migration tests. Users can connect EVM wallets seamlessly, deposit from any chain, and trade without ever touching Starknet directly if they don't want to. This "EVM in front, Starknet in the back" approach keeps things user-friendly.

Looking ahead, Extended's roadmap is packed. They're rolling out cross-asset collateral, allowing non-stablecoin assets like WBTC or ETH as margin for USDC-settled perps. This opens doors to spot markets and integrated lending, creating a unified margin system. Imagine tokenizing your vault shares to use locked assets as collateral while earning yields—that's coming soon.

For meme token enthusiasts, this is huge. Meme coins thrive on hype and volatility, and a perp DEX like Extended lets you go long or short with leverage, potentially turning small bets into big wins. Starknet's growing BTCfi ecosystem—Bitcoin DeFi strategies—gets a boost too, as Extended fills in the missing pieces for efficient Bitcoin-related trades.

Ruslan emphasizes organic growth: no paid affiliates or market makers, just solid product development and community engagement. They're competing in a cutthroat space dominated by players like Hyperliquid, but with a long-term vision of market share diffusion similar to centralized exchanges like Binance.

If you're ready to dive in, check out Extended at extended.exchange or follow them on X at @extendedapp. Starknet's tweet is a call to "lock in" and explore this new frontier. Whether you're a seasoned trader or just dipping your toes into DeFi, Extended could be the tool that levels up your game in the meme token arena and beyond. Stay tuned for more updates as Starknet continues to scale!