01.xyz Review 2026: Points, Airdrop, Fees & Funding

01.xyz (often written "Zero One") is a non-custodial perpetual-futures exchange that runs an on-chain central limit order book on N1, a Layer 1 built specifically for trading. It pairs the feel of a centralized exchange — a real bid/ask book, fast fills, hourly-style position management — with self-custody, and it is currently running a live points program ahead of any token, which is the single biggest reason traders are paying attention to it right now. If you are hunting for a venue where today's activity might convert into a future airdrop while you also run delta-neutral funding trades, 01.xyz belongs on your shortlist.

What is 01.xyz?

The project has an unusual lineage. An earlier "01 Exchange" launched on Solana back in 2022, composing on top of the Serum order book and backed by names like Alameda Research and Multicoin Capital. After that era ended, the same founders took what they had learned and pivoted to building their own purpose-built chain — N1 (previously known as Layer N) — under the studio Null Studios. 01.xyz is the flagship perpetuals app on that chain, and the relaunch leans on years of order-book engineering rather than starting from a blank page. So while the brand is new to many traders in 2026, the team behind it is not.

Architecturally, the appeal is that the order book is native to the chain rather than bolted on. N1 builds financial primitives — a fully on-chain central limit order book, a unified cross-position margining engine, atomic all-or-nothing bundles, and a built-in RFQ system that connects traders to market makers — directly at the protocol level. That means matching happens with CEX-grade speed while settlement stays transparent and on-chain, and the same collateral can back positions across the venue. Most on-chain perp protocols are either an order book bolted onto a general chain or an AMM with wide spreads; 01.xyz sits on a chain whose entire reason to exist is running an order book.

For a trader, the practical picture is this: a non-custodial perp DEX with a real order book, USDC margin you bridge in (including from Solana and Arbitrum via Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol), majors plus a growing bench of altcoin markets, and — critically for the 2026 window — an active points campaign with no token yet live. This review covers everything you should know before connecting a wallet: what 01.xyz is, its key metrics, the trader-facing features, the points and airdrop situation, the fee schedule, how funding works and why its rates diverge from other venues, security and the real risks, a step-by-step on getting started, and how it compares to a peer like Pacifica.

01.xyz key metrics (2026)

01.xyz launched its mainnet in early February 2026, so it is a young venue — its open interest and volume are a fraction of an incumbent like Hyperliquid, and you should treat any thin market accordingly. What matters for a points-era venue is that the numbers are real and growing, not that they top a leaderboard. The figures below are pulled live from ORBIT's own data so they never go stale: total open interest across all 01.xyz markets, 24-hour volume, the number of perpetual markets we track, the average funding across them, and the base fee. The second table lists the deepest individual markets by open interest — those are the ones you can realistically size into without heavy slippage, which matters far more for arbitrage than a headline funding number on a market that cannot absorb your exit.

01.xyz key features for traders

01.xyz is built for traders who want centralized-exchange execution without surrendering custody, and most of its feature set follows from the chain it runs on. Because N1 exposes an order book, a margining engine and atomic execution as native protocol modules, the exchange does not have to fake those with a smart contract on a general-purpose chain — they are first-class citizens of the network.

Everything below settles transparently on-chain. What you see in the book is what is actually resting there, and your collateral stays in your own wallet rather than on an exchange balance sheet.

• Native on-chain order book (CLOB): real limit and market orders matched at the protocol level with CEX-grade speed — not an AMM, so you get a genuine bid/ask, price-time priority and predictable fills on liquid markets.
• Unified cross-margining: a single collateral pool backs all your positions across the venue, which is more capital-efficient than isolating margin per market — useful when you hold one leg of a delta-neutral pair here.
• USDC deposits via Circle CCTP: bridge native USDC in from chains like Solana and Arbitrum without wrapping or trusting a third-party bridge, lowering one of the usual friction points of moving onto a new chain.
• Atomic execution and RFQ: N1's atomic bundles let multi-step actions execute all-or-nothing, and a built-in RFQ system can route larger orders to market makers — both reduce the partial-fill and front-running risk that plague naive on-chain trading.
• Majors plus a growing altcoin bench: the headline BTC and ETH markets are live alongside SOL and a widening set of alts, with new listings added as the venue matures.
• No KYC to trade: connect a Web3 wallet and trade; there is no email signup or identity verification, though an invite code may gate early access.
• Transparent settlement: orders, fills and funding are recorded on-chain, so you can verify the venue's behaviour rather than trust an internal ledger.

01.xyz points & airdrop

01.xyz has no token yet, and that is precisely the opportunity. Since the mainnet launch in February 2026 the protocol has run an active points-farming campaign that measures how much you trade and provide liquidity, with points distributed on a roughly weekly cadence. The team has not committed to a token or a specific airdrop, but a pre-token points program of this kind is the standard pattern that has preceded large retroactive drops at peers — so traders are farming on the reasonable, unguaranteed expectation that points may one day convert into an allocation. Reported early figures put the first phase in the order of tens of millions of points to be distributed; treat any single number as approximate and verify the current campaign terms on the site, because points programs evolve.

Points are earned through the activity you would do anyway as a funding trader. Building trading volume is the core driver, and the program also credits delta-neutral and hedged positioning, longer-term holds and range-trading — which aligns neatly with running an arbitrage book here rather than purely directional gambling. In practice that means a disciplined delta-neutral leg on 01.xyz can earn funding and points at the same time, which is the whole reason a pre-TGE venue is attractive to this audience.

The honest framing: points are non-transferable, non-monetary and carry no promise of value. You should size your participation as a farm with optionality — real funding edge first, points as a free call option on a possible future drop — not as a bet that an airdrop is coming. Value the upside conservatively, and never park more collateral than the funding spread itself justifies just to chase a leaderboard.

01.xyz trading fees

01.xyz charges 5 bps taker and 1 bps maker on perpetuals. On a round-trip — entry and exit, and across two venues if you trade delta-neutral — those fees are the first thing any spread has to overcome. ORBIT's backtester subtracts both legs' taker fees plus live order-book slippage, so the PnL it shows is net, not headline.

In context, a 5 bps taker / 1 bps maker schedule is competitive for an on-chain order-book venue and sits in the same range as other perp DEXs — cheaper than many AMM-style protocols once you account for spread. Always confirm the live schedule in the interface before you size up, since a young venue can adjust fees as it grows and may run maker incentives. The number that actually decides whether a trade works is the round trip across two venues: you pay taker on entry and exit on each leg, and a funding spread has to clear that total — plus slippage — before a cent of it is yours.

Funding rates on 01.xyz

01.xyz settles funding every 8h. Funding is the payment between longs and shorts that anchors the perpetual to spot — and because every venue computes its own rate, the same asset can pay very differently on 01.xyz than on another exchange at the same moment. That gap is a tradeable, delta-neutral edge.

Is 01.xyz safe?

01.xyz is non-custodial: you trade from your own wallet and the protocol never takes custody of your funds, which removes the exchange-insolvency failure mode that has wiped out users on centralized venues. There is no withdrawal queue and no "we have paused withdrawals" risk in the CEX sense — your collateral lives on-chain, under your keys. Combined with an experienced team that has been building order-book infrastructure since the original 01 Exchange, that is a meaningful starting point for a young venue.

That said, "non-custodial" is not the same as "risk-free." 01.xyz is a new exchange on a new Layer 1, so it has a short track record and thinner liquidity than an established venue. Depth is the real safety feature for any spread strategy: on a market you cannot exit cleanly, the slippage on a forced unwind can erase a week of funding in a single fill. For now, stick to the deepest 01.xyz markets, confirm exit slippage in the ORBIT backtester at your intended size, and do not assume an altcoin's headline funding is tradeable just because the rate looks attractive.

The honest caveats are the ones common to any early on-chain perp: smart-contract and protocol risk (the chain and the exchange are code, and code can have bugs), a young and comparatively concentrated validator/operator set on N1, and ordinary per-leg liquidation risk on every position. None of these are reasons to avoid the venue — they are reasons to keep leverage conservative on each side of a pair, to size into liquidity you can actually exit, and to treat the points upside as a bonus rather than a thesis.

01.xyz risks and considerations

1. Young venue, thin liquidity. 01.xyz launched its mainnet in February 2026 and is still building depth. On all but the deepest markets, slippage on entry and exit can dominate the funding you collect — size accordingly and verify exit cost in the backtester before committing.
2. Smart-contract and L1 risk. Everything settles on-chain via 01.xyz's code and the N1 chain. A bug or exploit at the protocol or chain level is a real, if low-probability, tail risk that does not exist in the same form on a custodial CEX.
3. No token guarantee. The points program is not a promise of an airdrop. Farm it as a free option, not as a certainty — and never lock up more collateral than the funding edge alone justifies.
4. Chain maturity and access friction. N1 is a new Layer 1 with a younger operator set, and early access to 01.xyz may require an invite code. Both are normal for a venue at this stage, but they are real considerations before you move size.
5. Per-leg liquidation risk. In a delta-neutral pair the danger is not market direction but one leg moving against you before you rebalance — if your short leg gets liquidated you are suddenly net long. Conservative leverage and active monitoring of the mark price on both venues are essential.

How to get started with 01.xyz

1. Open 01.xyz and connect a Web3 wallet. There is no email signup or KYC to trade, though early access may require an invite code from the project's Discord or X.
2. Bridge USDC in as margin via Circle CCTP — you can move native USDC from chains like Solana or Arbitrum. Start small while you learn the order types and the interface.
3. Place a test trade with a limit order to see how the on-chain order book and funding settlement behave, and set a stop so you understand liquidation before you size up — this also starts accruing points.
4. Open the Funding Screener and find an asset where 01.xyz's funding diverges from another venue; 01.xyz is tracked on ORBIT and the sign-up link is in the Trade tab.
5. Confirm the net edge in the backtester — it replays real funding history and subtracts fees plus live slippage — then open equal long/short legs to collect the spread (and farm points) each settlement window.

01.xyz vs Pacifica

The most useful comparison for 01.xyz is Pacifica, another newer, pre-token order-book perp DEX in the same points-era cohort. Both are non-custodial, both run an active points program with no token yet live, and both are most interesting to traders who want to farm a possible airdrop while running funding trades — so the choice usually comes down to which venue has deeper liquidity on the specific asset you want to trade and where the funding gap to your other leg is widest right now. Rather than guess, many funding traders run a leg on each and let the screener decide: long the lower-funding venue, short the higher one, and rebalance as the rates move. The live side-by-side — funding, fees, open interest and points status — is on the 01.xyz vs Pacifica comparison.

01.xyz review: verdict

01.xyz is a credible early-stage bet: a non-custodial, on-chain order-book perp DEX built by an experienced order-book team on a chain (N1) designed from the ground up to run a book, with a live pre-token points program that rewards exactly the kind of delta-neutral activity funding traders already do. The trade-off is the usual young-venue one — thinner liquidity and a shorter track record than an anchor like Hyperliquid — so treat it as a farm-and-spread venue rather than your deepest leg. Come for the points optionality and the funding divergence, stick to the markets you can exit cleanly, confirm the net edge in the backtester at your real size, and keep leverage sane on both sides. If you are building a 2026 points-farming book, 01.xyz earns a slot next to your other pre-TGE venues — and the screener tells you, in real time, which pair is worth opening today.