EVM in front, Starknet in the back

For most Starknet dapps, attracting EVM users requires getting over a UX speed bump: set up a Starknet wallet, bridge assets over, and learn a new account system.

Extended, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange formerly called X10 and built by a team of ex-Revolut developers, decided to skip that playbook. The exchange today announced it has migrated from StarkEx to Starknet as planned, and now offers more than 50 markets and leverage up to 100x.

But that’s table stakes these days; its real hook is that traders coming from EVM DEXs don’t have to bridge to Starknet at all.

“With Extended EVM users don’t need to touch [or] interact with Starknet,” CEO Ruslan Fakhrutdinov told Blockworks. “If you deposit from Arbitrum, you can withdraw to any other EVM chain, but if the wallet under which the account was created is an EVM wallet, you will not be able to withdraw to Starknet.”

Starknet wallet users — such as Ready (formerly Argent) and Braavos — are also welcome but will deposit and withdraw only to or from Starknet.

Newsletter

Subscribe to The Breakdown

It’s a hard split no other Starknet dapp is running today, and it works because of Starknet’s native account abstraction, according to StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson.

“You can support any kind of signatures. So you’re still using Metamask and these things to sign on your transactions,” Ben-Sasson told Blockworks. Hardware wallets, EVM wallets, even Bitcoin wallets can connect if dapps want to manage such an integration.

Under the hood, Extended is temporarily running two versions — the original StarkEx, StarkWare’s earlier scaling engine, and the new Starknet one — but will nudge users over in a three-phase process: two weeks of dual operation, two weeks of reduce-only on StarkEx, and then a final freeze with forced position closures.

Points and trading history carry over, and new accounts now spin up directly on Starknet.

Extended is arriving with some early momentum — average daily volumes of $319 million, open interest above $55 million, and a 55% repeat depositor rate in its Community Vault program, the team reports.

For EVM traders, it’s an unusual offer: a Starknet-settled perp venue you can reach from six major EVM chains.

Source: extended.exchange

The offering includes TradFi pairs like EUR/USD, gold, oil, and an SPX index. Arbitrum rival Ostium has been touting the same. On Starknet, Extended competes with Paradex, with both angling for a CEX-like user experience.

The Extended team says the migration sets up a bigger product roadmap, including unified margin, integrated lending, and eventually spot.

By walling off the Starknet side from the EVM side, Extended is betting it can capture both audiences without forcing either to change habits. For Starknet, that means more on-chain volume. For EVM traders, it means tapping into a new set of markets with the same wallet, networks, and flows they already use.

If the model sticks, it could be a template for how non-Ethereum chains court EVM liquidity with less friction.

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters: