BULK Raises $8M Seed Round Amidst Solana Perps Drought

While onchain perps traders fixate on the Hyperliquid-Aster power struggle, an emerging Solana-based DEX aims to revitalize the network’s languishing perps scene.

BULK, Solana’s latest perps DEX, has successfully raised $8M in seed funding, closing a round led by 6th Man Ventures and Robot Ventures, with support from crypto industry heavyweights like Wintermute and Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko listed as an Angel.

Why does BULK believe it can succeed where others have failed, and what could this mean for Solana’s perps sector?

6th Man, Robot Ventures Lead BULK Seed Round

Following its $500k Angel Round in August 2024, BULK has announced the completion of its Seed. Solana's newest entrant into cryptos' perps wars, BULK has raised $8M in a round led by 6th Man Ventures, Robot Ventures, with support from a swathe of prominent funds like Wintermute and Big Brain Holdings. 

Aiming to reinvigorate Solana’s ailing perps scene with sub-40ms trade finality, BULK’s trading platform has been well-received by testers of its Alphanet product. BULK is expected to launch its testnet in the coming weeks and is currently targeting a Q4 mainnet launch.

BULK’s thoughtful approach to perps DEX design seeks to carefully balance performance and decentralization, something CEO Kobie McGlashan argues has been overlooked by modern exchanges in today’s onchain economy.

“It is not enough that a product be decentralised, it must achieve this while providing a product that actually works. You can’t expect people to care about the core ethos of DeFi when they are actively having to sacrifice their experience to support it” - Kobie McGlashan

The vision outlined by McGlashan and co-founder/CTO Junaid Peer evidently struck with some of the crypto industry’s most prominent VCs. Mike Dudas, Managing Partner at 6th Man Ventures, asserted that BULK’s CLOB design could position the DEX as the leading perps platform on the world’s most transacted blockchain.

"We're thrilled to invest in the BULK team after evaluating numerous CLOB designs over the past few years. The BULK team is launching a product capable of supporting CEX-like scale, speed, efficiency, privacy and pricing. The most transacted blockchain in the world with the largest density of traders deserves one of the best perps exchanges in the world." - Mike Dudas, 6th Man Ventures Managing Partner

Of course, the crypto industry is no stranger to lofty promises from emerging apps yet to run the gauntlet on Mainnet. Why are BULK’s supporters and advocates so adamant that the platform can stand on business in the fiercely competitive perps market?

How BULK Intends to Overcome the Layer-1’s Constraints

For all its claims and ambitions to build ‘NASDAQ onchain’, the Solana Layer-1, as it runs today, is poorly equipped for high-frequency trading activity. Courtesy of the staggering diversity of onchain activity, Solana has in many ways become a victim of its own success. 

While a promising indicator of demand for blockspace, unpredictable priority fee spikes and network congestion hardly make the Layer-1 fertile ground for HFT. These obstacles have driven fellow perps platforms like Bullet, formerly Zeta Markets, to build their own Solana Network Extensions, or L2s.

BULK seeks to remedy these concerns by implementing its execution layer directly into Solana’s validator stack. Forking the jito-agave validator client, BULK’s proprietary bulk-agave client introduces what the team calls “BULK-tile”, a sidecar that runs parallel to the Layer-1s runtime.

Theoretically, this architecture enables orders to bypass the general-purpose Layer-1 transaction queue. Processing orders within BULK-tile, the trading platform promises an asynchronous 20ms matching tick and an immediate trade finality of 40ms in a gasless environment.

While BULK’s promised speed is undoubtedly impressive, fellow Solana-based builders have argued that the labelling of the DEX’s architecture could be considered misleading. DefiTuna co-founder Moty Povolotski contends the design is closer to a Solana-adjacent rollup, rather than what Peel calls a “decoupled execution layer”.

“Think of Solana as a robust, multi-lane superhighway, ideal for millions of users… to achieve peak performance for an orderbook , we need a dedicated Formula 1 track. A specialized circuit that leverages Solana’s foundation for unmatched speed. This is the core principle behind BULK.” - Junaid Peel, BULK CTO

Additionally, BULK will introduce a novel revenue-sharing mechanism amongst validators running the bulk-agave client. The protocol routes 12.5% of all exchange taker fees to operators, affecting an estimated 1-2% increase on validator rewards.

Solana’s Perps Drought

For all its success in DeFi spot markets, Solana’s perpetuals scene is decidedly underserved. Onchain data suggests that Solana-based perps volume only accounts for ~4% of market share among rival blockchains. 

According to DefiLlama data, Jupiter remains Solana’s largest source of perpetual trading volume, despite only offering three assets.

While Drift boasts a far greater range of tradable assets and often flips Jupiter in terms of volume, it’s evident that Solana’s perps scene is lagging far behind the industry standard.

“It's clear that the demand for trading perpetual futures is unmatched. Through their stunning design and seamless architecture, BULK's high-octane perps DEX will turbocharge Solana and its ecosystem. We couldn't be more excited to work alongside them as they help fuel the next wave of Solana's growth." - Anirudh Pai, Robot Ventures Investment Partner

Solana’s leadership is undoubtedly eager to see Solana’s emerging perps exchanges rise to challenge heavyweights like Hyperliquid and BNB Chain’s newest competitor, Aster DEX. On September 23, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko unknowingly platformed Quonto, a recently rebranded preps DEX with dubious ties to Zhu Su, the orchestrator of the devastating 3AC collapse that butchered market credibility in 2022.

All eyes now turn to BULK’s testnet, and consequent mainnet launch, which is expected to go live in Q4.

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