Solana Foundation Backs Fully Onchain Perpetuals Push to Challenge Hyperliquid

The Solana Foundation has announced it will actively back teams building fully onchain perpetual futures, setting out a specific technical bar that goes beyond most existing derivatives infrastructure on any chain.

The initiative comes as Hyperliquid commands roughly 70% of all decentralized perpetual futures volume across chains, a position the Foundation characterized as "one of the strongest product-market-fit stories in crypto," while arguing that Solana's throughput makes a credible onchain alternative possible.

Technical Bar for Foundation Backing

To qualify for distribution support, technical assistance, and capital through Solana Foundation channels and local Superteam chapters, the program sets four explicit requirements:

• Every order submission, oracle update, match, cancellation, and settlement must occur onchain. Hybrid models with offchain execution are excluded.
• Price discovery must be two-sided: orderbooks or request-for-quote systems rather than pool-based AMM designs.
• Projects must be Solana-first, with application revenue "structurally routed back to the chain, preferably at the protocol level from launch." The Foundation described this as a cultural as much as a technical requirement.
• Code must be open-source. The announcement states: "Onchain integrity means little if the code behind it can't be inspected."

The Foundation said it is also open to existing teams with live products who want to migrate from offchain or hybrid architectures to a fully onchain model on Solana.

Ecosystem Infrastructure Beyond Core Perps Venues

Beyond the core trading products, the initiative targets surrounding infrastructure: vaults, structured products, aggregators, advanced trading interfaces, market making operations, and social trading applications. The Foundation is building toward a full ecosystem layer rather than backing a single protocol.

Hyperliquid Holds ~70% of Decentralized Perps Volume

Hyperliquid's dominance in decentralized derivatives is the market reality the Foundation is responding to. At roughly 70% of onchain perpetual futures volume, the platform has demonstrated that traders will use a fully onchain derivatives venue at scale, something that was not obvious a few years ago.

The Foundation's framing reads Hyperliquid's position as market validation: if demand exists and a fully onchain model can work, Solana's architecture can support that quality of execution while offering the ecosystem depth of a general-purpose chain.

Drift Protocol DRIFT$0.016-0.7% (Drift Protocol) has been the most prominent Solana-native perps venue to date, though its model differs from the fully onchain orderbook standard the Foundation is now prioritizing. Phoenix (Phoenix), whose perpetuals product became accessible via mobile browsers last week, fits more closely within the technical profile the Foundation is now formally backing.

The perps infrastructure landscape on Solana is also developing in parallel with regulatory activity. Kalshi this week filed with the CFTC for regulated perpetual futures on SOL and eleven other altcoins, a separate track toward institutional-grade derivatives exposure.

Distribution, Technical Help, and Capital on Offer

The Foundation is offering three categories of support: distribution (surfacing projects to users and ecosystem partners), technical assistance, and capital. Grants may be available through the Foundation directly or through regional Superteam chapters.

The initiative does not name specific projects or commit specific dollar amounts publicly. It does define a clear architectural standard (fully onchain, orderbook or RFQ, open-source, Solana-first) that teams can build toward with explicit Foundation support.

Perpetuals are among the highest-volume financial primitives in crypto. Whether that volume migrates toward Solana-native venues will depend on execution quality and liquidity depth more than on Foundation backing. The initiative represents a coordinated effort to attract and accelerate the teams positioned to make that case.