Rails: A Hybrid Perp Exchange With On-Chain Custody

Rails is a crypto perpetuals exchange that combines centralized-exchange speed with on-chain custody. Rick, its co-founder, president and COO, joined Julian Stafford of Surgence Labs for a live broadcast in December 2025. Rick is a five-time founder and angel investor who served as COO of Grindr through its New York Stock Exchange listing in November 2022. The idea for Rails came from trading on FTX. The founders liked its speed and range of assets, and they wanted the same execution without trusting a company to hold their money.

Rick explains the model in two parts. Rails matches orders on a proprietary engine that he describes as microsecond fast. User funds sit in audited smart contracts on chain. Traders work with a virtual equivalent of those funds inside Rails, and because perps are a directional bet and not a purchase of the underlying asset, a liquidation simply unlocks the contract and returns the account value. Rick contrasts this with centralized exchanges that hold customer funds and with decentralized venues that struggled with volume during the October 10 market crash. Rails says its systems held up that day. The company takes a compliance first approach, requires KYC or KYB, and is working toward more licenses, which means it cannot yet serve every country.

The traction numbers Rick shared are specific. Rails launched in June after more than two years of building. It has executed over 60 million trades with close to zero downtime, handled more than $3 billion in trading volume and raised over $20 million. Kraken and Slow Ventures are among the investors. Rick also said the Discord and X communities grew three to four times in roughly 60 days, which he sees as a tipping point in awareness.

For growth, Rails has two threads. The first is Rails Play, an evaluation product where a trader pays $20, $50 or $100, tries to reach a 15% gain in a set period, and if successful is staked at five times the entry. A further 5x leverage on Rails means a $100 entry can become $2,500 of trading capital. It is a low cost way for newcomers to test a strategy. The second is community: a new head of marketing, quests and rewards, and a future token launch. Rick also said large traditional finance firms have reached out because Rails is one of few regulated crypto perps providers. His internal goal is $1 billion in daily volume.