Perps are quickly becoming the next big thing in futures prop. On October 20, Funded Futures Family launched FFONE Perps and Funded Futures Network launched FFN Perps, both on the same day. Tradeify is also turning its Tradeify 247 product into Tradeify Perps, now in early access.
MyFundedFutures announced its perps brand back in July, and MyFundedPerps went live on September 10.
If that sounds familiar, it should. The team behind MFFU, led by CEO Matthew Leech, has a habit of showing up to the next big thing in prop trading just before everyone else does.
Early to CFD
MyFundedFX launched in June 2022 out of Dallas, with Leech as founder and CEO. CFD prop firms already existed, but the real boom was still ahead. Over the next two years, hundreds of new firms piled into the space. You could argue that if MyFundedFX had launched just a few months later, it would never have grown the way it did.
MyFundedFX got in before the crowd and became one of the better-known names. A little after launch, it dropped the time limit on its challenges. Back then, most firms still gave you 30 or 60 days to pass the challenge. A few firms already offered no time limit on Phase 1 or Phase 2, but MyFundedFX was one of the first to make it a selling point and really made it popular, and today almost every firm lets you take as long as you need to pass the challenge.
The firm also made it through the February 2024 crackdown, when MetaQuotes cut off prop firms serving US clients on MT4 and MT5. Plenty of firms closed or paused. MyFundedFX kept trading by moving US clients to other platforms.
By then, though, the team's attention was already somewhere else.
Early to futures
MyFundedFutures started in June 2023 as a sister company to MyFundedFX.
Futures prop trading wasn't new. Topstep, Apex and a few others had been around for years. But most CFD firms hadn't touched it yet. That changed after the MetaQuotes crackdown in early 2024, when CFD firms started rushing into futures. By the time they arrived, MFFU had a year's head start.
In 2026, MFFU is the second-largest payer among the firms tracked by PayoutBoard, with $135 million in on-chain payouts this year alone. That only counts payouts through Rise. MFFU pays traders through other methods too, so the real number is likely higher. The company has paid out more than $250 million to traders since 2023.
Includes payouts sent through Rise only.
Meanwhile, the CFD side wound down. MyFundedFX was rebranded under Seacrest, and in February 2026 Seacrest closed its prop business to run as a broker only, after more than $56 million in total payouts. The broker didn't last either. Seacrest's website now says it is no longer operating.
So what are perps?
Perps, short for perpetual futures, are futures contracts that never expire.
You can hold a position for as long as you like.
They started in crypto, where they're now the most traded product on most big exchanges. Today you can also find perps on stocks, indices, forex, gold and oil.
For prop traders, the appeal is simple: one account, lots of markets, and 24/7 trading, weekends included.
Now perps
In July, MFFU announced a perps brand called Funding Perpetuals and opened a waitlist. It launched on September 10 as MyFundedPerps.
What made it stand out wasn't just perps. It was what they offered: crypto, stocks, indices, forex and commodities, all from one account, with trading open around the clock. Accounts run from $10,000 to $100,000, and by October the platform listed 122 markets.
MFFU was the first big futures firm to announce perps across every market, not just crypto. It wasn't the first to go live, though. In August, Tradeify turned its crypto product into Tradeify 247 and added tokenized stocks and commodities. E8 launched its own multi-asset perps on September 3. Since then, the list has grown fast:
Crypto-only prop firms have offered perps for years. What's new is that the big futures firms are now moving in, one after another.
The perps-first firms aren't standing still either, and some now have serious money behind them. Vest Markets, a New York perps prop firm from the team behind the Vest Exchange, raised $13 million this month in a round led by Portal Ventures, with Coinbase Ventures, Amber Group and others joining. Senior executives from Citadel Securities, BlackRock and KKR also invested personally. Propr, backed by the crypto platform SwissBorg, runs on Hyperliquid and offers crypto, stocks and forex perps.
Why every futures firm wants perps
The market never closes. CME futures shut down every evening and all weekend. Perps run 24/7, so traders can trade at any hour.
A bigger audience. Because of exchange and platform restrictions, futures prop firms can't accept traders from a lot of countries, far more than a typical CFD prop firm. Perps come with far fewer of those limits, so firms can open up to traders in many more countries.
Everything in one place. With multi-asset perps, a futures firm can offer Bitcoin, Apple, EUR/USD and gold from a single account, without running a separate CFD business.
Cheaper to run. Futures firms pay exchange data fees for every trader. Perps pricing comes from crypto exchanges like Binance, Bybit, OKX and Hyperliquid, whose market data is public and often free, or close to it.
It's getting easy to start one. Prop firm tech providers are already selling ready-made perps setups. On October 22, Trade Tech Solutions, which works with more than 85 prop firms, launched perpetual futures prop technology. It claims a new firm can launch in about 25 days, and an existing one can add perps in about 48 hours.
We expect a lot more perps prop firms to launch over the next year, including some backed by bigger, established names in the industry.
Early, not always first
To be fair, MFFU hasn't been first at everything. CFD prop existed before MyFundedFX. Topstep and Apex were in futures long before MFFU. Tradeify had crypto perps out earlier this year and added stocks and commodities in August.
But being first was never really the point. Each time, MFFU's team arrived just as a market was about to take off, before the crowd showed up. It happened with CFD challenges in 2022, with futures in 2023, and now with multi-asset perps.
That probably comes down to how invested Leech is in the industry. He follows what traders want and where the market is heading closely, and that's likely why his team keeps moving before most firms have even noticed.
What's next? Maybe prediction markets
If the pattern holds, the more interesting question isn't whether perps will catch on. It's what Leech's team is already working on next.
Leech has publicly expressed interest in prediction markets. In June, MFFU took an equity stake in Funding Predicts, a prop firm where traders take a challenge on Polymarket contracts covering elections, crypto, sports and more. Funding Predicts is directly backed by the MFFU team, with MFFU's capital, risk infrastructure and experience behind it.
It will be interesting to see if prediction market prop firms are the next thing to take off. If they are, maybe Matthew Leech really is a wizard.
Sources: payout data from PayoutBoard