Secured $8 million in seed funding, Bulk Trade aims to become the "performance king" of Perp DEXs

Author: KarenZ, Foresight News

In the field of Perp DEX, despite continuous evolution in liquidity and user interface, constrained by the underlying consensus mechanism and block generation time of public blockchains, DEXs have always struggled to fully match CEXs in terms of latency and throughput.

Bulk Trade takes a different approach, choosing a technical route distinct from conventional Perp DEXs: delving into the underlying infrastructure, and through a customized Solana validator client architecture, attempting to build a trading layer that combines centralized-level matching speed with decentralized settlement capability.

What’s the background?

According to official disclosures, Bulk raised $8 million in seed funding, led by 6th Man Ventures and Robot Ventures. Other investors include market makers 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.

Two co-founders of Bulk are quite active in the crypto community:

• Co-founder and CEO Kobie McGlashan: In February 2022, he co-founded Web3 recruitment and consulting firm BEExperience and served as CEO. From April to August 2022, he was VP of marketing and development at Orderly Network. Previously, he also worked as a regional control manager at UK telecom giant Openreach.
• Co-founder and CTO Junaid Peer: Self-described as an “orderbook oligarch,” he is a co-founder of Bulk. Public information shows he has long been involved in building order book-related systems, but detailed professional history is limited, mainly centered around the Bulk project. He has about 9,300 followers on X platform, with content mainly discussing trading infrastructure and Solana ecosystem topics.

How is the core architecture?

The Solana blockchain relies on numerous “validators.” Bulk did not reinvent the wheel but built upon the mainstream Solana validator client Jito-agave, creating a branch called Bulk-Agave, and equipped validators with a dedicated plugin — Bulk Tile. This plugin runs alongside the validator’s original functions, responsible for key logic such as order matching and clearing engine, significantly improving processing efficiency.

Regarding the order propagation logic of BULK Exchange, simply put, once users deposit funds on the Solana chain, they can start trading. Orders are propagated through the BULK Net dissemination layer, which splits each order into 8 small fragments. Any validator that obtains any 6 of these fragments can reconstruct the original order. Then, BULK uses UDP protocol to have core nodes “receive and forward, only transmitting small fragments,” solving high-frequency trading packet loss issues and greatly increasing propagation speed.

Next is the order matching problem. BULK’s order matching is not done randomly but follows a fixed rhythm — a “matching cycle (tick)” triggered every 20 milliseconds. All orders are sorted according to a fixed rule based on “public key, random number, matching cycle number.” All nodes produce results following the same rule, with no central authority or manipulation, preventing front-running and aiming for fairness. The only factor that determines order priority is the matching cycle in which the order enters the system.

Additionally, Bulk has a self-trade prevention (STP) feature. For market makers and professional quantitative traders who often place both buy and sell orders simultaneously, this mechanism effectively protects these professional traders from accidental self-trades.

The final step in the trading process is confirmation and settlement. BULK first provides a rapid economic confirmation within 25-40 milliseconds to meet high-frequency trading speed requirements, allowing traders to operate immediately; then, the trading results are synchronized to Solana to complete the final on-chain settlement confirmation.

What are Bulk’s features?

Bulk’s trading system is built around a central limit order book (CLOB) for each perpetual contract market. All contracts are settled in USDC as collateral.

In terms of speed, according to Delphi Digital, Bulk updates prices faster, offers more realistic liquidity, and is more cost-efficient. While typical trading platforms on Solana refresh every 400 milliseconds, Bulk asynchronously updates every 20 milliseconds, completely decoupled from block production; additionally, other platforms’ order book holders may cancel orders before execution, creating false liquidity. Bulk requires orders to remain valid until explicitly canceled by the order holder, so the visible liquidity is actually tradable. For settlement, Bulk uses price-time priority rules, with orders executed sequentially based on arrival time.

Bulk states that its platform eliminates the need for gas fees for order placement, as well as the use of APIs and CCXT, simplifying user experience and removing blockchain complexity for traders. Moreover, by batch processing orders, it further reduces trading costs.

On security, Bulk claims, “There is no need to custody assets on the platform, no cross-chain or sequencer reliance, eliminating risks of platform insolvency or fund misappropriation, and avoiding common security vulnerabilities and centralization risks associated with cross-chain and layer-2 solutions.”

Furthermore, for validators, running BULK’s trading logic does not forgo MEV profits generated from Jito block space auctions, and they can also profit from the order flow in Bulk’s order book, creating a healthy ecosystem 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 near-CEX performance while maintaining decentralization.

Currently, Bulk Trade is in internal testing and will soon open a 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.