Solana Perps Scene Snubbed Once Again As Trojan Terminal Integrates Elsewhere

Trojan, a Solana-based trading terminal, is expanding its product suite beyond the trenches and introducing perpetual markets to its growing user base.

Unfortunately for Solana, however, Trojan has steered clear of the network’s perps exchanges, opting instead to join platforms like Phantom and Axiom and integrating Hyperliquid, a rival chain.

Why do trading terminals continue to snub Solana-based perps venues, and can emerging exchanges like Bulk and Bullet breathe new life into Solana’s ailing perps scene?

Trojan Turns to Hyperliquid For Perps Support

Trojan, a trading application boasting over 22,000 daily users, has welcomed perpetual futures to its extensive terminal. Turning to Hyperliquid, crypto’s leading perps venue by volume and revenue, Trojan users can now trade a staggering variety of assets, including crypto, stocks, commodities, and indexes, with up to 50x leverage.

While this is great news for Trojan users, the platform’s integration of Hyperliquid, as opposed to a Solana-based venue, is a difficult pill for the network to swallow. 

Trojan becomes the third major Solana-native application to go multichain for sufficient perps execution, joining Phantom and Axiom. CEOs and co-founders of emerging exchanges like Bulk and Bullet have lamented the fact that Solana-native apps are continually seeking perps execution on rival networks.

When asked why Trojan opted for Hyperliquid over Solana-native venues, co-founder and CEO Reethmos posited that the decision was largely driven by user requests. Additionally, Reethmos asserted that “Hyperliquid is the one place with the most liquidity and different assets like metals and stocks”.

While some Solana perpetual exchanges, like Flash Trade, offer a range of stocks and metals, Hyperliquid remains the industry standard in terms of volume and order book liquidity. Speaking at Solana Accelerate Hong Kong, Drift Protocol Head of Product Kevin Eum teased that the exchange intends to introduce equity markets in the near future. 

Solana Perps Sector Falls Further Behind

Despite dominating onchain spot trading activity, Solana is still painfully behind in perps markets. According to DefiLlama data, Solana (pictured below in brown) ranks sixth across all chains when tracking perpetual trading volume, constituting just 5% of total market share.

On the other hand, Hyperliquid, the DEX of choice for Solana-based applications like Phantom, Axiom, and now Trojan, is currently processing over $7.5B in daily volume, commanding 24% of the market.

In terms of Open Interest, or the amount of funds committed to open positions, Solana ranks even lower. Solana’s leading perps DEX, Drift, currently ranks 14th among all exchanges, representing a mere 2.9% of Hyperliquid’s total OI. With Solana-based trading terminals like Trojan and Axiom searching for perps execution elsewhere, the divide between Solana and rival chains is only expected to grow wider.

Can Bullet and Bulk Bring Traders Back?

Critics have long argued that, as a general-purpose Layer-1, Solana is poorly equipped to support perpetual trading venues. 

According to the critics, unpredictable priority fees and network congestion make Solana an unreliable platform for high-frequency trading. To overcome the constraints of the Layer-1, emerging teams like Bulk and Bullet have both designed dedicated execution environments that give professional traders a more performant venue.

Bullet, the rebranded and relaunched version of Zeta Markets, has just launched its mainnet application after ~10 months of testnet. Co-founder Tristan Frizza claims that Bullet is capable of sub 1ms latency, an industry first.

Bulk, on the other hand, is still in its early testnet phase. While access is still limited to a select group of traders, early reports on the platform’s execution from users have been overwhelmingly positive.

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