Forget Hyperliquid, the next wave of perps will happen on Solana

The article argues that the next major wave of opportunity for perpetual decentralized exchanges (Perp Dex) is likely to occur on the Solana blockchain, rather than on platforms like Hyperliquid. The author presents several key reasons for this prediction:

Technical Superiority: Solana's architecture allows for application-specific optimizations at the validator level, enabling a transaction experience close to the speed of Hyperliquid. This is seen as an advantage over Ethereum's Layer 2 solutions, which are described as having layers of technical debt.
Validator Incentives: By embedding a trading engine directly into the validator stack, a "VIP channel" can be created, sacrificing some decentralization for extreme performance. The success of Jito, which shares MEV revenue with validators, demonstrates the feasibility of this model. The author suggests that stable transaction fee income would provide even stronger motivation for validator participation.
Mature Ecosystem: Solana boasts a mature DeFi ecosystem with a large developer and user base. Its advantages in liquidity depth have been repeatedly proven, particularly during meme coin frenzies. This existing foundation is seen as giving Solana a higher development ceiling than application-specific chains like Hyperliquid.

The conclusion is that for investors who missed earlier opportunities, projects on Solana—such as Bulk and Bullet (formerly Zeta Market)—represent the next potential wave, even if established protocols like Drift have older architectures.

I would boldly speculate that if Perp Dex Summer continues, it will eventually explode within the Solana ecosystem:

1) Solana can perform application-specific optimizations directly at the validator level and can run a dedicated transaction engine inside the validator node to achieve a sub-second transaction experience close to Hyperliquid.

Ethereum's Layer 2 expansion strategy is wrapped in layers of technical debt, including L2 centralized sequencers, transaction batches, and finality state dependence on L1. In comparison, Solana's existing technical architecture advantages are more suitable for the development of Perp Dex than Ethereum.

2) When the trading engine is directly embedded in the validator stack, it can bypass the normal trading pool competition, which is equivalent to building a "VIP channel", sacrificing some decentralization in exchange for more extreme trading performance;

In fact, Jito's success has already demonstrated the feasibility of dedicated optimizations at the Solana validator level. Simply by giving validators an additional share of MEV revenue, coupled with the value capture of $JTO tokens, validators are highly motivated to participate. Already, 60% of Solana validators are running the Jito client.

Switching to the Perp scenario, using transaction fee income instead of MEV fees will be more stable and predictable, and validators will be more motivated to participate;

3) Solana has a relatively mature DeFi ecosystem and a large developer and user base. Especially during the MEME craze, Solana has repeatedly verified its advantages in liquidity depth.

If Solana and Hyperliquid are both trying to leverage high-frequency trading application scenarios with a centralized approach, Solana's existing ecological foundation gives it a greater ceiling for development than Hyperliquid. After all, the difference between incubating applications with a chain and incubating a chain based on applications is obvious.

So, for those who missed out on Hyperliquid's last wave of opportunities, don't worry about the Aster and Lighter investors who took the plunge with Fomo. Your next wave of opportunities may be brewing quietly on Solana. As for recommended projects, while Drift Protocol's architecture is a bit outdated, projects like Bulk, which recently raised $8 million, and Bullet, formerly Zeta Market, are pursuing similar approaches, and there's more to come.