what's Percolator?
Percolator is an experimental decentralized perpetual futures exchange (perp DEX) developed on the Solana blockchain by Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana. It introduces a novel architecture with "sharded matching engines," dividing order books into independent "slabs" to enable parallel processing, reduce congestion, and achieve ultra-fast on-chain trade execution while remaining fully decentralized. The protocol explores innovative mechanics like prop AMM-style liquidity provision and competition for perps, using a single memory slab for LP risk management and order matching. Implementation is available on GitHub, generated in part with AI assistance (Claude), and awaits audit before potential mainnet deployment. It aims to demonstrate Solana's capabilities against competitors like Hyperliquid and Aster.
Solana teases Percolator reveal this week, amid ecosystem promo, community backlash, and Anatoly's experimental role.
Reached market capitalization of $1.1 million as of February 11, 2026, after previously peaking at $5 million and bottoming at $400,000.
LIQUID protocol is forked from Percolator and optimized for PUMPFUN memecoins.
The official Solana account teases something big dropping this week while Solana ecosystem projects join coordinated promotional activity hinting at a Percolator reveal.
Strong community backlash emerges against promotional activity, with explicit warnings about shilling behavior related to the project.
Anatoly Yakovenko clarifies he is only experimenting with Claude AI to test ideas for Percolator, not actively building the perpetual exchange as previously reported.
Market cap surges from $99.5K to $6.4M (64.3x increase) in 5 hours, while community developers begin actively working on the project.
Solana founder Anatoly builds sharded perpetual DEX on Solana, with GitHub development, vibe-coded memecoin perps, and project forked by developers.