Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko unveiled plans for a new decentralized perpetual futures exchange called Percolator, entering a rapidly growing market dominated by Hyperliquid and Aster.

The announcement came through GitHub documentation published on October 19, 2025, revealing an “implementation-ready” protocol built directly on Solana’s blockchain. The timing appears strategic: Hyperliquid has been pulling users and revenue away from Solana throughout 2025.

Percolator represents Yakovenko’s direct response to the explosive growth of perpetual DEXs—trading platforms where users can bet on cryptocurrency prices without expiration dates. These platforms accumulated $1.8 trillion in trading volume during Q3 2025 alone, surpassing the entire previous year’s total.

Why Yakovenko Is Building This Now

The motivation behind Percolator becomes clear when examining recent market shifts. In July 2025, Hyperliquid captured 35% of all blockchain-generated revenue, with growth coming specifically at Solana’s expense. The platform reached $319 billion in monthly trading volume, demonstrating that traders increasingly prefer decentralized exchanges over traditional centralized platforms.

VanEck analysts noted that Hyperliquid successfully attracted “high-value users from Solana” by offering a streamlined and effective trading experience. This user exodus appears to have prompted Yakovenko to take action.

The market opportunity is massive. Perpetual futures DEX volumes topped $1 trillion in September 2025, setting a new record. These platforms now account for roughly 26% of the entire crypto derivatives market—up from single digits just a year earlier.

How Percolator Works: Sharded Matching Engines

Percolator introduces an innovative architecture that differs from existing perpetual DEXs. The protocol uses “sharded matching engines” that split the exchange’s order book into multiple independent engines running simultaneously.

Source: github.com

These mini-engines, called “slabs,” each handle separate order books for different tokens. The design allows liquidity providers to compete while maintaining isolated risk. If one slab experiences bugs or malicious activity, it won’t affect users who never interacted with that specific slab.

Two main components power the system:

The Router program manages user collateral, portfolio margins, and coordinates trading across different slabs. It tracks positions and ensures trades settle instantly.

The Slab program consists of self-contained perpetual engines operated by liquidity providers. Each slab handles its own matching and settlement independently.

According to Yakovenko’s documentation, this architecture guarantees atomic routing and portfolio netting while giving each liquidity provider the freedom to innovate within their own slab. The system aims to match or exceed the capital efficiency of traditional single-orderbook exchanges.

Development Status and AI Assistance

The project’s core infrastructure is already complete. GitHub documentation shows that essential data structures—including the Router, Slabs, memory pools, and order book systems—are finished. However, critical components like the liquidation engine remain on the development roadmap.

Interestingly, Yakovenko revealed he used Claude AI to help generate and test code. On social media, he clarified he was “just messing around with Claude to see how well it can generate” the protocol, encouraging others to “steal the idea.” This transparent, open-source approach contrasts with many crypto projects that keep development under wraps.

At least two external developers have already submitted pull requests to contribute to Percolator, signaling early community interest in the project.

The Battle for Perp DEX Dominance

Percolator enters a fiercely competitive landscape. Hyperliquid currently dominates with approximately 70% of the perpetual DEX market share and maintains over $280 billion in monthly trading volume. The platform’s HYPE token reached a market cap of $16.38 billion, placing it among the top 15 cryptocurrencies globally.

But Hyperliquid faces growing competition. Aster, launched on Binance’s BNB Chain and backed by Binance co-founders CZ and Yi He, recently overtook Hyperliquid in daily trading volume. Aster hit $14.5 billion in 24-hour volume—nearly triple Hyperliquid’s daily numbers. Over the past month, Aster accumulated $493.61 billion in trading volume, capturing roughly 50% of market share.

Other platforms like Lighter and EdgeX are also gaining ground, fragmenting what was once Hyperliquid’s near-monopoly.

Percolator’s advantage lies in being native to Solana—a blockchain capable of processing up to 65,000 transactions per second. This raw throughput could enable faster execution and lower fees compared to competitors running on their own specialized blockchains or other networks.

What This Means for Solana

If fully realized, Percolator could become one of Solana’s most important DeFi projects. The protocol would demonstrate Solana’s ability to handle sophisticated, exchange-grade workloads entirely on-chain without compromising decentralization.

The project could also help Solana recapture trading volume and users who migrated to competing platforms. With perpetual DEXs now processing over $1 trillion monthly, even capturing a modest market share would generate significant activity for the Solana ecosystem.

Market observers note that Solana has been consolidating around $190-200, with technical analysts identifying potential for upward momentum if key developments like Percolator gain traction.

The Road Ahead

No official launch timeline exists for Percolator. While the “implementation-ready” designation and completed core infrastructure suggest development is advanced, critical components like liquidation mechanisms still need work.

The project’s open-source nature means other developers could build competing implementations or contribute improvements. Yakovenko’s explicit encouragement to “steal the idea” suggests he’s more interested in proving Solana can support competitive perpetual trading than maintaining exclusive control over Percolator.

Given the pace of development and existing pull requests from external contributors, a testnet launch could potentially occur within weeks to months—though this remains speculation without official confirmation.

Final Take

Yakovenko’s Percolator represents a calculated move to reclaim Solana’s position in the booming perpetual derivatives market. With perp DEXs growing 530% in 2025 and showing no signs of slowing, the timing makes strategic sense. Whether Percolator can compete against Hyperliquid’s first-mover advantage and Aster’s Binance backing remains to be seen, but Solana’s technical capabilities give it a fighting chance in this rapidly evolving space.