CME’s SPAN has been regarded as the golden standard of how a venue would assess risk since 1988
They realised before anyone else, is that a portfolio aware system not only provides the sophistication for an exchange to recognise correlated/hedged/basis trades, that the margin requirement to maintain these position can be haircut
This essentially meant that now people could utilise the same amount of capital, for higher notional positions, while also having downside protection against volatility with hedged pairs
It caught fire over night due to the sheer dominance it had on margin efficiency over anything else. CME has remained king ever since
As industry defining as it was, this isn’t something you can just pick up and drop into a blockchain to launch your exchange. Several huge crucial elements are still missing
BULK completes the stack with by wrapping the clearing house, matching engine and prime brokerage all into a unified portfolio aware margining system
There is nothing more exciting than realising the endless possibilities when you combine a span inspired exchange with the composability of blockchain and a wider suite of unique markets it offers
You start to realise how early you are when we haven’t even covered spot, options, and even the more traditional futures that will all fall under the same roof
It’s been a great 6 weeks… But the work we have done behind the scenes for the last 2 years have positioned us for the next 20
You have not seen yet a fraction of what the underlying infrastructure can offer
Dream bigger
When you combine this execution with our margin efficiency, ‘who’s next’ becomes obvious
The cheapest place to trade isn’t the cheapest if you still require more capital to trade the same size
TradFi will feel this the most, so whoever solves this problem will have a shot at onboarding that flow
Ask yourself: What does my venue offer that the current leaders do not?
If you can’t come up with a convincing answer, we welcome you to BULK 🫡
kdot | bulk retweeted
We are so early.. back to work, I keep reminding myself perps are 0.1% of traditional derivatives
We have to build systems that trad finance offers, without the clunkiness of crypto to accelerate tam 🫡
We spent 2 years building the foundations
Now in just 6 weeks;
>Only onchain venue with SPAN margin
>Top 5 for onchain execution
>Industry first validator sidecar network
>20ms leaderless consensus
Many industry firsts will be achieved on BULK
There is a realisation that a portfolio aware margin account is not only a luxury, but essential
Expecting institutional folks to use multiple times the capital to do the same activities onchain was never wise
They need a portfolio aware margining system and the discounts it unlocks. We cannot expect them to require use more money on the same activities onchain
BULK launched with this natively on Day 1. This is our bread and butter and now we roll out spot, options and money markets to further strengthen that offering
Similar to being this first to bring this onchain, we will be once again pushing the boundaries of possibility with our next couple of releases
Onwards 🫡
This is live on @bulktrade today 🫡
Looks like Lighter is adding SPAN-style portfolio margin, set to launch with vanilla options
Today Lighter calculates each position's margin on its own and adds them up. On the Q3 investor call, @vnovakovski said the new engine looks at spot, perps and options on the same asset together and asks "what the worst realistic loss would be if the market moved sharply." It revalues the book across moves in price and implied vol. That's the logic of SPAN, the method CME uses for futures and options
Without portfolio margin, an options market maker posts margin on both legs: the options it sells, as if they were naked, and the perps that hedge them. Margined together, the two legs have a smaller worst case, and as Vlad put it, a smaller worst case means less margin. The market maker could then quote tighter and deeper, and a trader buying a single call gets those quotes too
For a regular trader this would make hedging pay. Selling calls on ETH you already hold stops tying up margin like a naked short. Buying a put under a long perp lowers your margin and moves your liquidation further away, instead of only costing premium
Institutions compare venues on how much capital a book ties up there. At CME, options desks are already margined on scenarios, and Vlad said professional trading shops run options books this way. On a venue that margins every leg alone, the same hedged book ties up several times the capital, so a desk keeps its size elsewhere. With SPAN-style margin, Lighter would charge a book for the risk it actually carries, the way CME does, and that's what it would take for the firms that dominate options to trade there once Lighter is live in the US
kdot | bulk retweeted
absolute margin cinema tek by @bulktrade
kdot | bulk retweeted
Bulk is the most serious piece of perp DEX engineering on Solana rn, and the numbers don't show it properly yet imo.
That's exactly the setup I like.
But first, quick recap of what @bulktrade actually is:
Solana validators run a second binary (bulk-agave) next to their normal client, form their own leaderless BFT network (BULKBFT), agree on each batch of orders, and then every validator runs the same deterministic matching engine on the same batch.
Custody stays in a Solana program, so there is no bridge, no sequencer, and no block proposer to bribe. On top sits a portfolio margin engine that prices your full holdings against a live correlation matrix across 9 volatility regimes.
Nobody else on Solana is doing this. Pacifica matches on its own servers offchain, Bullet runs a bonded sequencer, and Phoenix mainly bets on the L1 catching up (which is hard against app-specific designs).
Bulk is the only one that sits inside the validator set itself.
Okay cool. But what do the numbers say?
46 days after the 5th of Sep mainnet, Bulk sits at:
- About $1.3B in cumulative volume, $36M in the last 24h, 7d average back around $30M
- OI $14.6M, up from $1.4M on the 9th of Sep, so roughly 10x in six weeks
- TVL $8.3M, fees about $9K a day, $353K over 30d
- Realized fee take around 3.5bp, roughly $4M annualized. Hyperliquid prints $82M a month, Pacifica carries 4x the OI
- 12 live markets, incl $NEAR listed this month
However, while the growth trajectory is clear, it's still tiny from a data-driven perspective next to the venues it's gunning for. But OI is the one number on a perp DEX you can't fake with wash flow, and currently, it keeps building.
What also keeps building, is the team. On the product.
BIP-1 hit testnet on the 19th too, a.k.a. anyone can deploy a perp market, isolated margin first, full portfolio margin after a $2M USDC bond. That’s imo also the main growth lever that can be a rapid accelerator if there is deployers that deploy markets that you can't find in other places.
They also have a pretty interesting incentive structure in place. The Challenger Series runs until the 5th of Dec, where 12.5% of net revenue flows into weekly USDC pools ($5K to $10K a week rn). The rank likely matters more than the cash part tho if you think about a potential airdrop, and the top of the season goes to "Playoffs". Since the 20th, referrals pay 10% of your referees’ net fees in USDC too, no cap for Season 1.
The real test is December tho.
The 25ms taker speed bump sunsets between the 4th of Dec and the 3rd of Jan, the “first 30 days” of zero maker fees (still running on day 46) should be over by then, and Challenger Season 1 ends on the 5th of Dec.
That means three sets of training wheels off in the same month. If the book holds once makers pay to quote and the league points stop, this gets a lot bigger.
Until then the setup is simple: the most ambitious architecture in Solana perps trades at a rounding error of its competitors’ size, points still running, no token out. That’s usually the moment to be early.
NFA ofc.
But Bulk is the only Solana perp DEX I actually trade on.
So apparently nerds can make gold in a lab now
What's amazing about this is that you can long BTC and short Gold with up to HALF of the margin required anywhere else
Need a code? Let me know below 👇
Bitcoin is the new gold
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.
Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.
Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
Thank you @anza_xyz 🫡
Genuinely excited for this to hit mainnet
BULK deposits and withdrawals currently wait for solana finalisation to process which takes about 12 seconds today - with new alpenglow finalisation taking about 150ms to 400ms this unlocks huge possibilities
>Faster/Near-instant deposits and withdrawals to bulk
>Cross composability to solana - the ability to execute/talk to solana programs becomes near instant, allowing us to use solana's great spot liquidity through propamms and routers
>BULK's risk engine now can talk to solana lending/borrow protocols faster and finalise the decisions needed - unlocking cheaper haircuts
>Ability for solana programs to execute bulk actions in the future by talking to bulk program on solana directly
When we start looking at LSTs and Kamino positions as collateral, Alpenglow cleara a huge blocker for us to be able to realise this sooner
Props to the team as always 🫡
kdot | bulk retweeted
REFER FRIENDS TO BULK. GET PAID. 💰
It’s not just AURA anymore… referrers now earn:
→ 10% of your referrals’ fees
→ 1% of THEIR referrals’ fees
→ No earnings cap for Season 1
You're gonna get tired of winning 👀
Grab your ref link: app.bulk.trade/referrals
The majority of trading happens algorithmically
As AI continues to upskill the average user, we will see this continue to grow
Agents scout for the best execution on a venue where their margin is utilised the most efficiently
This is our bread and butter