Phoenix

This is Phoenix, the Solana trading app also called Phoenix Trade, made by Ellipsis Labs. It is an exchange for perpetual futures, or perps. A perp is a bet on an asset's price, with leverage, that never expires.

On Phoenix you can trade perps on crypto, US stocks, gold, oil and even private firms before they list. Trading runs all day, every day, even when stock markets are shut. Every order and fill is recorded on Solana, and no company holds your collateral.

Phoenix began in 2023 as a spot exchange. Ellipsis Labs launched the perps version in private beta in December 2025.

How Phoenix trade works: a crankless on-chain order book

Phoenix runs an order book that lives fully on Solana. Buyers and sellers post prices, and the best prices match. Each trade settles in the same step that places it. There is no wait and no outside bot.

Older Solana order books, such as Serum, needed "cranks". These were separate bots that had to finish each matched trade before balances moved. Phoenix dropped that step, so Ellipsis Labs calls it crankless. Co-founder Jarry Xiao explains why on the Validated podcast.

The perps engine mixes two kinds of liquidity, per the matching engine docs. One is a normal order book, where the best price fills first, then the oldest order at that price.

The other is "spline liquidity". Here a market maker posts one mid price and a curve of bids and asks. It does not need to place an order at every price. Under the spline rules, spline orders fill first when they match the book's price. They can never skip ahead of a better price in the book.

This design builds on SolFi, a market-making system Ellipsis Labs launched in 2024. In its perps announcement, the team said it was bringing those "AMM-style innovations to derivatives". The aim is that cheaper quoting for market makers leads to tighter prices for traders.

Phoenix perpetuals markets: crypto, stock, gold, oil and pre-IPO perps

Phoenix lists perps in four groups: crypto, stocks, commodities and pre-IPO firms. All of them trade around the clock. All of them settle in USDC and share one account.

In November 2026, the market specs listed more than 40 stock perps. Big tech names such as Apple, Nvidia and Tesla go up to 20x leverage. Most other names stop at 10x, and a few at 5x.

There are also fund perps on QQQ, SPY and TLT. Commodity perps cover gold, silver, copper and WTI oil. Our news desk tracked the stock listings as they came, from Alphabet, Tesla and Micron to Netflix and Eli Lilly.

In mid-October 2026 Phoenix added pre-IPO perps, including Anthropic. These let you take a view on a private firm's value without owning shares. Later that month it listed the first perps on Solana tokens ORE and MetaDAO.

How Phoenix prices stock perps when markets are closed

A stock perp needs a reference price, but the Nasdaq is shut on Sunday. Phoenix uses outside price feeds for stocks from Sunday evening to Friday evening, US time. That covers the regular session plus pre-market, after-hours and overnight trading. The index price docs set out the full schedule, including shorter hours for commodities.

On weekends and holidays, Phoenix switches to "Impact Pricing". This is a price taken from its own order book. When the outside market reopens, the price snaps straight back to the outside feed.

So if weekend trading drifts away from where a stock opens on Monday, your position can jump in value at that moment. Pre-IPO markets work differently again. They mix inside and outside prices, with limits that reset every four hours.

Phoenix fees, leverage and SOL collateral

Phoenix charges takers 0.035% per trade and makers 0.005%, per its fee schedule. A taker removes liquidity, as with a market order. A maker adds it, as with a limit order that waits in the book.

A $10,000 market order costs about $3.50 in fees, and a referral code cuts that by a tenth. Ellipsis Labs also says trading is gasless for retail users, so you do not pay Solana network fees on each order.

Leverage caps are set market by market. Major stocks and stock funds go up to 20x, and some commodities a little higher. Under the leverage tiers, bigger positions get less leverage, and Phoenix can change the caps. Check the market page before you trade.

Phoenix also accepts SOL as collateral as well as USDC. The collateral docs say SOL counts at up to 80% of its value. So $1,000 of SOL gives you about $800 of margin.

Profits and losses still settle in USDC. If losses leave you owing too much USDC, Phoenix may sell some of your SOL for you to cover the debt.

How to trade on Phoenix: wallets, deposits and access

Getting started takes three steps. Sign in at phoenix.trade, add USDC or SOL, then place a market or limit order. You can sign in with email or Google, which makes a wallet for you. Or you can connect Phantom, Solflare or Backpack.

You can also fund an account from Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum or HyperEVM. A service called Relay swaps the funds into Solana USDC first, per the deposits page.

The full exchange has worked in phone browsers since 1 June 2026. There is no app to install. Crypto Briefing reported that trades settle in about half a second. Our mobile launch story has more.

Phoenix is not open to people in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or sanctioned countries, under its terms of use.

Phoenix Rise SDK, API and Flight builder codes

Phoenix is built for other apps to plug into. Developers use the Rise SDK, in TypeScript or Rust. It streams market data, builds orders and lets Solana programs call Phoenix directly. There is also a public API and a command-line tool.

Flight is the builder-code layer. An app that sends orders to Phoenix can add its own small fee and keep it. For now, that fee applies only to orders that take liquidity.

Several apps already run on Phoenix. Solflare added Phoenix perps to its wallet in August 2026, and our coverage tracked its first week of trading.

On 3 November 2026, Ocelot opened a beta of leveraged tokens powered by Phoenix. Ocelot said its own audits were still under way.

Phoenix rewards, referrals and the airdrop question

Phoenix has not announced a token, and its terms bar referrers from implying that one is coming. Its rewards so far have been paid in USDC.

The first rewards scheme was Flight Club. It paid 420,000 USDC over four weeks from 27 July 2026. Our Flight Club story covers the launch.

Phoenix is also a venue for Frontier Traders, the Solana Foundation's scheme for active traders. In October 2026 Phoenix told traders to sign up there, trade on Phoenix and open reward crates. Our coverage of the Season 1 contest has the details.

Referrals are the steady option. After you trade $10,000 in total, you can make your own code. You then earn a share of the fees your referrals pay, sent weekly in USDC, per the referral rules.

Who should trade on Phoenix perps

Phoenix suits traders outside its blocked countries who want leverage on Solana without a company holding their funds. It fits best if you trade often with limit orders. It also fits if you want stocks or gold next to crypto in one account, or if you hold SOL and would rather use it as margin than sell it.

Market makers get a cheap way to quote, through spline liquidity and a low maker fee. Builders get an SDK and a share of fees through Flight. Phone traders can use it without an app.

Phoenix is a weak fit if you live in the US, Canada or the UK, or want to own real shares. It is also a poor choice for anyone new to leverage. At 20x, a 5% move against you can wipe out your margin.

Is Phoenix trade safe? Audits, upgrade authority and risks

Phoenix is non-custodial, and every trade is on-chain. But you still trust code that its makers can change. The only public audits cover the old spot program, and the perps exchange is less than a year old.

OtterSec audited the spot program between January and February 2023, and a MadShield report sits in the same repository. The code is open source. OtterSec's verify service confirms the live spot program matches that code. The program is not frozen, so its upgrade key holder can still change it.

The perps exchange runs on separate programs, which the developer docs name but do not pair with any audit report. We found no published perps audit in November 2026, and we could not confirm who holds the perps upgrade keys. Phoenix does run a bug bounty. If audit scope matters to you, check the docs and the Ellipsis Labs GitHub before you trade large sizes.

What can go wrong with a Phoenix position

These are the main ways a Phoenix trade can go wrong:

• If your account falls below its margin need, Phoenix first cancels risky open orders. Then it closes positions in the market. A backstop account takes what the market cannot absorb.
• As a last step, the liquidation docs describe auto-deleveraging. This trims winning traders' positions to cover losing ones. The docs do not mention an insurance fund.
• Stock and commodity perps use Phoenix's own prices at weekends. Prices can gap when the outside market opens.
• USDC withdrawals have a rate limit and can queue, and the app charges a small flat fee on each one.
• The risk warning also lists code bugs, Solana slowdowns or outages, and price-feed failures.

Phoenix vs Hyperliquid, Drift and Jupiter perps

Phoenix stands out if you want a full order book on Solana, with stocks and gold as well as crypto. QuickNode's Phoenix listing describes a target of about 5 basis points of price impact, against about 15 on other on-chain venues.

Hyperliquid is the obvious rival. It also runs an on-chain order book, but on its own blockchain. Trading there means moving funds off Solana. Phoenix keeps your margin, wallet and the apps built on it inside Solana. It even takes deposits from Hyperliquid's HyperEVM.

On Solana, Jupiter runs perps that trade against a shared pool of funds. Prices there come from price feeds, not an order book. Drift is another Solana-native perps exchange.

Phoenix fits people who use limit orders, want stocks and gold at any hour, or want to use SOL as margin. A pool-based venue may suit someone who just wants quick market orders on a few big coins.

Phoenix Legacy spot exchange and Ellipsis Labs history

Phoenix launched in early 2023 as a spot order book. By December 2025, Ellipsis Labs said that program had handled more than $75 billion in volume.

The spot exchange still runs as Phoenix Legacy at legacy.phoenix.trade. The team now puts its work into perps, which first opened to a small group around Breakpoint 2025.

Ellipsis Labs is led by CEO Eugene Chen, with co-founder Jarry Xiao. Besides Phoenix, it built SolFi and Atlas. Atlas is its own chain. It runs Solana's code but settles to Ethereum.

In October 2024, Ellipsis Labs raised $20 million from Haun Ventures to build Atlas. Chen explains the team's view of market design in a July 2025 Lightspeed interview.