Certainly, there are many differences, and my wording did make the "expiry date" appear as the only outstanding factor.

That said, being someone not heavily involved with traditional finance, a lot of its concepts can be a tad confusing.

For example, I talked about "Futures" specifically, but you referenced "Options" in your comment, now I question if they are the same thing, I mean, I've always considered them different?

My understanding is that options involve paying a premium which(could?) becomes the only loss incurred in an event of the trade not being profitable, while with Futures,that does not exist and you can lose everything. Maybe I'm wrong?

That said, the funding rate is indeed an interesting piece of perpetual contracts, one that noob traders generally don't understand how it works, I've literally found people scream at exchanges over these fees and I can't blame anything more than the absence of proper guides on how these things work, extensively.

I personally began trading Perps without understanding(learning?) how they work, fundamentally.

I guess it's degen before learning.