On-chain options have repeatedly failed because pricing and margining them is hard and liquidity fragments across strikes and expiries. Aevo, built by the team behind Ribbon Finance, is the closest thing to a working answer: a real options order book with portfolio margin, settled on its own rollup.
Architecture and honesty about it
Orders are matched off-chain by Aevo's engine and settled on-chain on an Optimism-stack rollup. That is a centralised component in the middle of a decentralised product, and the team documents it rather than obscuring it — a distinction we weight explicitly in the transparency criterion. Custody of collateral remains on-chain and withdrawals do not require the operator's cooperation in the normal case.
Products and margin
Perpetuals across a reasonable market list, plus options with standard strikes and expiries on BTC and ETH. Portfolio margin nets risk across positions, so a covered position requires far less collateral than it would under isolated margin. For traders running spreads or hedged structures, that efficiency is the entire reason to be here rather than on a perps-only venue.
Liquidity is the constraint
Front-month at-the-money BTC and ETH options have workable spreads. Move to longer expiries or further strikes and quotes widen sharply, sometimes to the point where the theoretical advantage of the structure is consumed by execution cost. Perpetual depth is mid-tier. Anyone accustomed to Deribit's options book will find this thin.
Who should use Aevo
Traders who want options exposure without a centralised custodian, and who trade near-dated majors where liquidity exists. For pure perpetual trading there are deeper venues. For serious options size, the centralised alternatives still win on liquidity, which is an honest statement about where this category currently stands.