Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana, presented Percolator — a new decentralized perpetual futures trading protocol created specifically for the Solana ecosystem.
On October 19, a GitHub repository for the project appeared with technical documentation, which Yakovenko called “ready for implementation.” It describes the architecture of a sharded futures exchange that can compete with players like Aster and Hyperliquid.
The appearance of Percolator has become an important event for the entire Solana ecosystem. Despite the confident growth of the DeFi sector, the perpetual trading direction still lags behind competitors. For example, Hyperliquid has captured a significant market share in recent months.
According to analysts, futures trading volumes on Solana decreased by 24.19% over the week, and the total monthly volume is now about $63.24 billion. This indicates a gradual loss of momentum.
Futures trading volumes on Solana are declining, despite overall growth in DeFi sector activity. Source: DeFiLlama
Against this backdrop, Percolator looks like an attempt to attract traders and liquidity providers who are looking for a decentralized alternative to CEX.
Percolator could breathe new life into DeFi on Solana amid waning interest in memecoins
Percolator offers a new two-tier architecture focused on high performance and flexibility. At its core is a program that manages collateral, portfolio margining, and order routing between “shards”. Each of these “shards” is a modular block called a Slab, acting as an autonomous trading engine managed by liquidity providers.
According to the documentation, Percolator should provide execution speeds on par with centralized exchanges, thanks to a multi-shard order book. This will allow trading different pairs in parallel, without competition for the same computational resources.
According to Yakovenko, this solution should eliminate overloads during trading activity spikes — a typical problem for most existing DEX.
“Each slab is completely isolated and can evolve independently. Overall capital efficiency is comparable to centralized solutions, and due to selective routing, execution quality can be even higher,” Yakovenko noted in the technical description.
The project’s code is still under development: functions such as account validation and funding rate updates have not yet been implemented, but the main data structures are already ready.
According to information from the GitHub repository, Percolator is close to stress tests, which could be a turning point for the entire Solana DeFi sector.
The announcement came at the right time. Solana has begun to lose ground in one of its key segments — the memecoin market. Once the strongest area of retail trader activity on the network, interest in the sector plummeted in October after a massive market correction.
In mid-October alone, more than $28 billion was withdrawn from the memecoin market. The total capitalization of such tokens decreased from $72 to $44 billion, wiping out months of growth, mainly driven by activity on Solana and BNB Chain.
Amid declining activity, Percolator could become a new growth point for Solana
With waning interest in memecoins, Solana is in urgent need of new sources of growth. Activity on the network’s launchpads has also declined: if in July weekly trading volumes reached $1.5 billion, by the end of September they had dropped to $600 million.
In this context, Percolator could become an important turning point — an attempt to restore Solana‘s technological advantage in the world of decentralized finance by entering the futures trading market.
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In addition, Solana continues to improve network performance. The blockchain recently reached 623 days without failures — a record period of stable operation since its launch in 2020, demonstrating the project’s technological maturity.
Such reliability can help restore the trust of developers and traders, especially if Solana truly intends to regain its position in DeFi. Percolator can play a key role in this.
Futures trading volume on DEX exceeded $1.15 trillion — Solana enters the game
The perpetual futures trading segment has become one of the fastest growing areas in the world of decentralized platforms. Such exchanges allow trading crypto assets without expiration, with on-chain settlements and round-the-clock market access.
According to DeFiLlama, the total monthly trading volume in the sector recently exceeded $1.15 trillion. This highlights the rapid outflow of users from centralized exchanges towards decentralized derivatives platforms.
Futures trading volumes on decentralized exchanges continue to grow. Source: DeFiLlama
The leading players in the market remain Hyperliquid and Aster. Hyperliquid operates on its own first-level blockchain network and holds positions in liquidity depth. Open interest is $7.59 billion, and monthly trading volume is $309 billion.
The exchange is considered a benchmark for execution speed and transaction processing quality. On peak days this year, it processed up to $17 billion in daily volume.
The platform’s token, HYPE, has a market capitalization of about $10.2 billion. The project’s annual revenue is $1.19 billion, supporting strong economic performance.
Trading volumes and Hyperliquid metrics continue to grow. Source: DeFiLlama
The Aster platform is rapidly strengthening its position and is already considered a serious competitor. The exchange is built on BNB Smart Chain and, according to insiders, is connected to Binance co-founder — Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. Thanks to multi-chain support and an aggressive incentive system, Aster is actively attracting new users.
The Aster platform is rapidly increasing volumes, temporarily overtaking Hyperliquid in daily activity. Source: DeFiLlama
Recently, the platform showed impressive results: $2.97 billion in annual fees. In the last 30 days, futures trading volume reached $145 billion. Moreover, at the beginning of the month, Aster briefly surpassed Hyperliquid in daily trading activity.
Percolator could change the balance of power in the derivatives market
Today, Hyperliquid and Aster lead the decentralized derivatives sector, but the architecture of Percolator could introduce a new variable to the market.
Using the power and low fees of the Solana network, the project aims to combine the efficiency of Hyperliquid and the modularity of Aster — while remaining a fully on-chain solution native to Solana.
The fact that Yakovenko made the project open source shows a desire to build a transparent system in collaboration with the community.
The documentation includes risk management mechanisms, including capability-scoped escrow and atomic routing, which prevent overspending when interacting with multiple liquidity providers within a single transaction.
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The launch of Percolator also coincided with a shift in user flows between blockchains. In a July report, VanEck stated that Hyperliquid “is poaching valuable traders from Solana,” offering simpler and faster access to futures trading.
If Percolator proves successful, it could reverse the trend and bring experienced traders back to the Solana ecosystem.
Nevertheless, competition remains fierce: Aster and Hyperliquid already have strong positions, deeply integrated liquidity pools, and interest from institutions.
