The Solana Foundation is aggressively pushing for the development of fully onchain perpetual futures, targeting a key segment of crypto trading that remains dominated by centralized and hybrid exchange platforms. This move signals a strategic effort to shift derivatives trading execution entirely onto the Solana blockchain, bypassing offchain components that currently underpin most perpetual futures products.
Perpetual futures, or perps, represent a major financial product within cryptocurrency markets, yet most trading volume still funnels through centralized exchanges or hybrid systems using offchain sequencers and matching engines. The Foundation described this setup as a temporary phase, emphasizing their ambition to back teams building infrastructure where every step—from order submission to settlement—runs fully onchain, ensuring transparency and reducing reliance on external systems.
To achieve this, the Solana Foundation plans to offer distribution channels, technical support, and crucial capital funding for projects that develop onchain perpetual futures and related derivative applications. Importantly, the Foundation expressed preference for pricing models driven by genuine market competition, such as orderbooks and request-for-quote (RFQ) systems with active makers, rather than pool-based pricing models that rely on liquidity deposits.
This initiative arrives amid the growing popularity of platforms like Hyperliquid, which have gained considerable traction by providing onchain perpetual futures with robust product-market fit. Although Solana did not explicitly name Hyperliquid, its messaging clearly positions the Foundation’s effort as a direct challenge to the hybrid market structure that Hyperliquid helped pioneer. The Foundation’s emphasis on fully onchain execution targets one of the most demanding trading products, requiring fast updates, deep liquidity, and competitive market making.
By advocating for comprehensive onchain price discovery and order processing, the Solana Foundation seeks to unlock the full performance potential of its blockchain for institutional and retail participants alike. This step reflects Solana’s broader ambition to shift derivatives trading infrastructure away from centralized intermediaries and toward fully decentralized solutions.