Solana Founder Unveils ‘Percolator’ Perp DEX – A Direct Shot at Aster and Hyperliquid
Solana co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko has unveiled a brand new decentralized perpetual trade protocol, “Percolator,” designed to run natively on the Solana blockchain.
The GitHub repository for the project was uploaded on October 19, outlining what Yakovenko described as an “implementation-ready” technical blueprint for a sharded perpetual futures decentralized trade (DEX) that might problem main gamers like Aster and Hyperliquid.
Percolator’s emergence comes at an vital time for the Solana ecosystem. Although Solana’s DeFi ecosystem has seen constant progress, its perpetuals buying and selling sector has lagged behind rivals like Hyperliquid, which have captured a big market share in current months.
Data exhibits Solana-based perp DEX quantity fell by 24.19% week-on-week, with whole month-to-month quantity now round $63.24 billion, reflecting a gentle lack of market momentum.
Yakovenko’s transfer seems to be an effort to carry a brand new layer of infrastructure that might entice liquidity suppliers and high-frequency merchants searching for decentralized alternate options to centralized exchanges.
Percolator Could Reignite Solana DeFi as Meme Coin Activity Cools
Percolator goals to introduce a two-program structure constructed for efficiency and flexibility by that includes a Router program that manages collateral, portfolio margining, and cross-slab routing, alongside modular “Slabs” that function self-contained buying and selling engines operated by liquidity suppliers.
According to the documentation, Percolator seeks to ship CEX-level execution speeds with the multi-shard order books, permitting completely different buying and selling pairs or markets to run concurrently with out competing for a similar computational assets.
This strategy, Yakovenko argues, would stop congestion during times of high buying and selling quantity, which is a recognized ache level for a lot of current DEXs.
“The design retains every LP’s slab absolutely self-contained and innovable,” Yakovenko wrote in his technical abstract. “Aggregate capital effectivity matches a monolithic DEX, usually with higher execution high quality by way of selective routing.”
Although the codebase continues to be in improvement, with a number of processes comparable to account validation and funding charge updates but to be finalized, lots of the core information constructions are already full.
The undertaking’s GitHub information counsel that the system is near stress-testing, marking a probably vital step for Solana’s DeFi sector.
The timing of the announcement is especially related. Solana has just lately misplaced floor in considered one of its strongest fits, the meme coin market. Once Solana’s strongest space of person exercise, retail curiosity has waned sharply from the broader meme coin sector following a serious crypto sell-off throughout October.
Over $28 billion in meme token worth was worn out in mid-October, according to a Cryptonews report. The whole market capitalization of meme tokens fell from $72 billion to $44 billion, erasing months of good points largely pushed by Solana and BNB Chain buying and selling exercise.
The meme coin market crash erased $28 billion in worth, dropping whole capitalization to $44 billion as $DOGE, $SHIB, and $BONK shed double-digit percentages.#memecoin #dip #BONKhttps://t.co/VSD0QwZORc
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) October 16, 2025
This downturn has left Solana in want of latest progress drivers. Activity on Solana launchpads has additionally slowed, with weekly buying and selling volumes declining from $1.5 billion in July to round $600 million by late September.
Against this backdrop, Percolator represents a possible shift, an effort to reassert Solana’s technological edge in decentralized finance by coming into the aggressive perpetual buying and selling area.
Additionally, Solana has been bettering its new community efficiency. The blockchain recently achieved 623 consecutive days with out an outage, its longest operational streak since its launch in 2020, exhibiting the community’s technical maturity.
BREAKING: @Solana has reached 623 days with out an outage, its longest streak since launch in 2020. The earlier document was 347 days, and post-2024 upgrades have strengthened community stability, with Solana remaining absolutely operational throughout main market occasions just like the Trump… pic.twitter.com/AyXr5QdRf7
— SolanaGround (@SolanaGround) October 20, 2025
This enhanced stability may assist restore developer and dealer confidence as Solana makes an attempt to reestablish its presence within the DeFi ecosystem, one thing that Percolator can leverage.
Perpetual DEX Volume Tops $1.15 Trillion as Solana’s DEX Enters the Arena
Perpetual futures exchanges have turn out to be one of many fastest-growing areas in decentralized buying and selling. These platforms enable customers to take a position on crypto costs with out expiration dates, with on-chain settlement and 24/7 market entry.
The sector’s mixed 30-day buying and selling quantity just lately topped $1.15 trillion, according to DeFiLlama, reflecting a speedy migration from centralized exchanges to decentralized derivatives platforms.
Currently, Hyperliquid and Aster dominate the sphere. Hyperliquid, working by itself Layer 1 blockchain, instructions the deepest liquidity with $7.59 billion in open curiosity and $309 billion in 30-day buying and selling quantity.
The trade has turn out to be a benchmark for velocity and execution high quality, dealing with as a lot as $17 billion in each day buying and selling at its peak this yr. Its token, HYPE, carries a market capitalization of roughly $10.2 billion, supported by over $1.19 billion in annualized income.
Aster, in the meantime, has emerged as a formidable challenger. Built on BNB Smart Chain with backing linked to Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the trade has leveraged multi-chain assist and aggressive incentives to seize new customers.
Aster just lately generated $2.97 billion in annualized charges, greater than twice Hyperliquid’s determine, and logged $145 billion in 30-day perpetual quantity. It briefly overtook Hyperliquid in each day buying and selling exercise earlier this month.
Both platforms now lead decentralized derivatives buying and selling, however Percolator’s design may introduce a brand new variable.
By leveraging Solana’s low-cost, high-throughput infrastructure, it seeks to supply the effectivity of Hyperliquid with the modular flexibility of Aster, however in a totally on-chain, native Solana surroundings.
Yakovenko’s determination to launch the design as open-source code suggests a dedication to transparency and group collaboration.
The documentation consists of danger controls comparable to capability-scoped escrow and atomic routing, designed to forestall over-debiting throughout a number of liquidity suppliers inside a single transaction.
The transfer additionally comes amid shifting person flows between blockchains. A July report by VanEck noted that Hyperliquid had been “poaching high-value customers from Solana,” as merchants sought less complicated, sooner alternate options for perpetual markets.
If Percolator succeeds, it may assist reverse that development and entice superior merchants again to the Solana ecosystem.
Still, competitors is intense. Aster and Hyperliquid stay entrenched with giant liquidity swimming pools and institutional participation.
The publish Solana Founder Unveils ‘Percolator’ Perp DEX – A Direct Shot at Aster and Hyperliquid appeared first on Cryptonews.
