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Solana-based perpetual futures trade Zeta Markets has shipped testnet for Bullet, a low-latency “community extension,” the crew advised Lightspeed completely. The platform’s mainnet launch is deliberate for early Q2 of this 12 months.
The transfer comes as Solana perps builders face competitors from Hyperliquid, a brand new perps DEX working as a layer-1. The chain is presently secured by 4 validator nodes all co-located in Tokyo, which has raised some centralization issues. Nonetheless, Hyperliquid has nonetheless vaulted previous different perps DEXs. It processed roughly 6x as a lot perps quantity as each Solana perps DEX mixed final week, in keeping with DeFiLlama.
“Solana has merely lacked a dependable and performant perps DEX,” Zeta Markets co-founder Anmol Singh stated in an e mail. “[Hyperliquid] has proven the place the bar is, Bullet pushes this bar additional.”
Bullet plans to tug this off with a community extension, which is type of a Solana model of an Ethereum layer-2. Like a layer-2, Bullet will course of transactions with a sequencer earlier than batching and settling the transactions to Solana. Bullet’s zero-knowledge digital machine lets transactions be verified with fraud proofs.
So, is it actually honest to not name this factor a layer-2? Maybe not. Prior to now, Bullet co-founder Tristan Frizza advised me community extensions have been largely a Solana advertising and marketing time period. I might assume Zeta morphing right into a type that appears a complete lot like an ETH L2 will ruffle some feathers in Solana land.
Nonetheless, Hyperliquid’s launch made it appear obvious that customers care about efficiency and UX above all else. Bullet claims it might obtain 2ms latency, which might be a lot sooner than Hyperliquid’s median of 200ms. In fact, take such claims with a grain of salt for now, on condition that Bullet continues to be in testnet and has but to function in a real-world surroundings.
Bullet will roll out lending and spot buying and selling and hopes to grow to be a basis for DeFi apps. This diversification seems like a rising pattern amongst perps DEXs, which can be realizing {that a} single perps product doesn’t a thriving enterprise make.
The Solana perps DEX Drift additionally rolled out lending, and the remainder of the sector has alternate enterprise traces as properly. Jupiter is well-liked for its swap aggregator, and Raydium will get a whole lot of quantity from pump.enjoyable graduations (for now).
