Percolator: A Sharded Perpetual Protocol on Solana
Solana Labs co-founder and chief executive Anatoly Yakovenko has published technical plans for a decentralized exchange called Percolator, a sharded perpetuals protocol built directly on the Solana blockchain. The design aims to create a self-custodial, high-speed platform for perpetual futures — instruments that allow crypto traders to speculate on price movements without expiry.
Documentation posted to GitHub describes Percolator as “implementation-ready.” It introduces two core programs: a Router, which handles collateral, portfolio margins, and cross-slab routing, and a Slab program — a matching engine managed by liquidity providers. Each slab runs independently, with what Yakovenko calls “fully self-contained matching and settlement.”
“This design keeps each LP’s slab fully self-contained and innovable, while the Router guarantees atomic routing, portfolio netting, and capability-scoped safety,” Yakovenko wrote. “No single malicious or buggy slab can impact users who never interacted with it.”
The project’s GitHub repository shows completed data structures for order books and memory pools, while work on liquidation systems remains ongoing. At least two developers have contributed pull requests to the codebase. No launch date has been announced.
Investor Takeaway: Solana's Competitive Move
Solana’s move to build a native perps DEX follows a sharp rise in user migration to Hyperliquid. A successful rollout could reassert Solana’s onchain trading dominance.
Context: Hyperliquid's Rapid Growth
The proposal comes as rival Hyperliquid continues to expand its footprint. The derivatives-focused DEX recently rolled out permissionless, builder-deployed perpetual contracts through its HIP-3 upgrade. The feature lets users stake at least 500,000 HYPE tokens — around $18 million — to launch their own perps markets with independent margin rules.
According to a VanEck report, Hyperliquid accounted for 35% of all blockchain revenue in July, drawing users away from Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain. “Hyperliquid has poached high-value users from Solana and has retained them,” wrote Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, alongside Patrick Bush and Nathan Frankovitz. The firm cited its “simple, highly functional product” as a key driver of retention.
Hyperliquid’s 30-day trading volume reached $309 billion last month, according to DefiLlama, double that of its nearest rival Aster. Its all-time monthly peak came in July with $319 billion traded. That surge followed April’s launch of spot trading, which helped the exchange compete with centralized rivals by offering faster listings and lower latency.
Percolator's Competitive Edge: Sharded Matching Engines
Percolator’s architecture centers on “sharded matching engines,” effectively splitting the exchange into smaller, parallel order books that process transactions independently. The approach is designed to reduce congestion while maintaining global price consistency across assets. The Router module aggregates these fragments, ensuring margin accounting and trade settlement occur atomically.
The system could address one of DeFi’s lingering issues: performance bottlenecks in onchain order matching. Solana’s high throughput offers an advantage for such an experiment, especially as Layer 1 competitors push similar scalability upgrades.
The foundation has not yet indicated whether Percolator will receive formal ecosystem support or launch as a community-led protocol.
Investor Takeaway: Execution Risk
If Percolator delivers on performance, it could help Solana reclaim developer mindshare from Hyperliquid and Aster. But execution risk remains high until a live deployment is seen.
The Race Among Decentralized Perpetual Exchanges
Perpetual futures have become one of DeFi’s most active trading segments. Aster, a BNB Chain-based DEX, has recently overtaken Hyperliquid by daily volume, reaching $14.5 billion in 24-hour trades — nearly triple Hyperliquid’s at the time. However, Hyperliquid still leads on a monthly basis and remains the benchmark for decentralized derivatives infrastructure.
Percolator’s emergence reflects Solana’s bid to reassert itself in that race. If successful, it would add to a growing list of native financial primitives built directly on the Solana blockchain, from decentralized options and lending protocols to tokenized asset platforms. The project also signals Yakovenko’s continued hands-on role in product development — an uncommon move for a major blockchain founder at this stage of network maturity.
For now, the code remains under active review on GitHub. Developers following the repository describe the project as “deep in testing,” suggesting a launch could follow once the liquidation and governance components are finalized.