In the field of Perp DEX, despite the continuous evolution of liquidity and user interfaces, constrained by the underlying consensus mechanism and block generation time of public chains, DEXs have always struggled to fully match CEXs in terms of latency and throughput.
Bulk Trade has taken a different path, choosing a technical route unlike conventional Perp DEXs: delving into the underlying infrastructure, it attempts to build a trading layer that combines centralized-level matching speed with decentralized settlement capabilities by customizing the Solana validator client architecture.
What's the Background?
According to official disclosures, Bulk raised $8 million in a seed funding round, led by 6th Man Ventures and Robot Ventures. Other participants included market maker Wintermute, Chapter One, Mirana Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, as well as angel investors Anatoly Yakovenko (Toly, co-founder of Solana) and Ceteris, Head of Research at Delphi Digital.
Bulk's two co-founders are quite active in the crypto community:
· Co-founder and CEO Kobie McGlashan: Co-founded Web3 recruitment and consulting firm BEExperience in February 2022 and served as CEO. From April to August 2022, he was Vice President of Marketing and Development at Orderly Network. Prior to that, he also worked as a Regional Control Manager at UK telecom giant Openreach.
· Co-founder and CTO Junaid Peer: Self-proclaimed "orderbook oligarch," serving as co-founder of Bulk. His public information indicates long-term involvement in building order book-related systems, but detailed career history is limited in public channels, with content primarily centered around the Bulk project. He has about 9,300 followers on platform X, with content mostly discussing trading infrastructure and the Solana ecosystem.
What is the Core Architecture?
The operation of the Solana blockchain relies on numerous "validators." Bulk did not start from scratch but built upon a fork of the mainstream Solana validator client Jito-agave, called Bulk-Agave, and equipped the validator with a dedicated plugin—Bulk Tile. This plugin can run in parallel with the validator's original work, specifically handling key logic such as order matching and liquidation engines, significantly improving processing efficiency.
Regarding the order propagation logic of the BULK trading platform, simply put, after users deposit funds on the Solana chain, they can start trading. Orders are imported through the BULK Net propagation layer, which first breaks the order into 8 small shards; any validator can reconstruct the original order by obtaining any 6 of them. Then, BULK uses the UDP protocol to have core nodes "forward upon receipt, transmitting only small shards," which not only solves the packet loss problem in high-frequency trading but also significantly increases propagation speed.
Next is the issue of order matching. BULK's order matching is not done arbitrarily but follows a fixed rhythm—triggering a "matching cycle (tick)" every 20 milliseconds. All orders are sorted according to a fixed rule calculated from "public key, random number, matching cycle number." All nodes produce results based on the same rule, with no center and no manipulation, preventing front-running and striving for fairness as much as possible. What truly determines order priority is only the matching cycle in which the order enters the system.
In addition, Bulk will also have a Self-Trade Prevention (STP) function. For market makers and professional quantitative traders, who often place orders at both the bid and ask simultaneously, it's easy to accidentally trigger self-trades. This mechanism can effectively protect such professional traders.
At the final step of the entire trading process, it's final confirmation and settlement. BULK first uses a fast economic confirmation of 25-40 milliseconds to meet the speed requirements of high-frequency trading, allowing traders to act immediately; then it synchronizes the trading results to Solana to complete the final on-chain settlement confirmation.
What are Bulk's Features?
The Bulk trading system is built around a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) for each perpetual contract market. All contracts are margin settled in USDC.
In terms of speed, according to Delphi Digital's explanation, Bulk has faster price refreshes, more genuine liquidity, and higher cost efficiency. While ordinary trading platforms in the Solana ecosystem refresh every 400 milliseconds, Bulk updates asynchronously every 20 milliseconds, completely decoupled from block generation. Additionally, makers on other platforms might cancel orders before execution, creating illusory liquidity. Bulk requires that orders remain valid until actively canceled by the maker, meaning the liquidity seen is actually executable. Regarding settlement, Bulk uses price-time priority rules, with orders executed in the sequence they arrive.
Bulk states that its platform allows for gas-free order placement and the use of APIs and CCXT, simplifying the user experience and eliminating blockchain complexity for traders. Furthermore, Bulk further compresses trading costs by processing orders in batches.
In terms of security, Bulk states, "There's no need to hand over assets to the platform for custody, no cross-chain or sequencer involved, eliminating risks of platform runaway or fund misappropriation, as well as the security vulnerabilities and centralization risks commonly found in cross-chain and Layer 2 solutions."
Moreover, for validators, while running BULK's trading logic, they do not forfeit the MEV收益 generated from Jito's block space auctions and can also profit from the order flow of Bulk's order book, forming a良性生态激励机制 (benign ecological incentive mechanism).
Summary
Bulk Trade represents another attempt to build a high-performance derivatives trading platform on Solana. By integrating the matching engine into validator nodes, the project aims to achieve performance close to that of centralized trading platforms while maintaining decentralization.
Currently, Bulk Trade is already in the internal testing phase and is about to open its public testnet. As the public testnet approaches, we will continue to observe whether this high-performance trading platform can change the competitive landscape of on-chain derivatives.
