Solana Foundation just drew a line in the sand: if your perps protocol uses an offchain sequencer, you're building transitional tech, not the final form.
Most perpetuals volume today goes through CEXes or hybrid architectures that rely on offchain matching engines. Solana's post calls that a "transitional state, not a permanent one." They're putting capital – grants and direct support – behind teams willing to build fully onchain execution from the ground up.
The Six Requirements for Funding
The Foundation published a clear, no-surprises list. Get these right or don't apply.
Fully onchain execution. Every order, oracle update, match, cancellation, and settlement recorded on-chain. Hybrid offchain paths compromise the trustlessness that makes onchain markets worth building.
Competitive pricing through real price discovery. Two-sided flow, not pool-based or deposit-dependent pricing. Orderbooks, RFQ systems with genuinely competing makers, or anything where active participants set bids and offers against each other.
Solana-first. Optimize for Solana's design and culture. Application revenue should route back to the chain at the protocol level from launch, not depend on future governance whims.
Innovation. New architectures and optimizations that push Solana toward being global financial infrastructure. The same rigor that made Solana the best spot venue now applied to derivatives.
Experienced teams. Teams with a live hybrid or offchain product willing to migrate to a fully onchain model on Solana.
Open source. Core contracts and execution logic must be open and verifiable. "Onchain integrity means little if the code behind it can't be inspected."
What This Means for Builders
The Foundation isn't just throwing money at whoever shows up. They're explicitly saying: don't half-ass the trustless part. If you've been building a hybrid perps protocol on Ethereum or an L2 and thinking about moving to Solana, the door is open – but only if you go all-in on onchain execution.
They're also supporting complementary infrastructure: frontends, vaults, structured products, aggregators, market making ops, social trading. Grants available at solana.org/grants-funding or through local Superteam chapters.
This is the strongest signal yet that Solana sees derivatives as the next frontier after dominating spot trading. The network's performance claims have always been about throughput and latency at scale – now they're betting that same architecture can make fully onchain perpetuals competitive with centralized exchanges. If you're building a perps protocol and still leaning on offchain crutches, you just lost your excuse.
Source: Build Fully Onchain Perps on Solana
Domain: solana.com
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