Solana Foundation Accused of Favoring One Perps Team Over Others

Recently, Solana's perps market saw significant volume, with $1.34 billion in 24-hour trading and $445.11 million in open interest. However, this has sparked controversy over the Solana Foundation's role in supporting specific teams.

The issue began when Flash.Trade founder Anas Khader shut down his perps exchange on August 7, citing among other reasons the Solana Foundation's support for another team, Phoenix. Khader claimed that the Foundation had a plan to back Phoenix 'to the teeth' in the run-up to Breakpoint, its flagship conference.

Phoenix meets all of the Foundation's criteria for its perps program, which prioritizes teams with genuine onchain price discovery and protocol-level revenue routing to Solana. However, Khader argued that this support was unfair, as his own exchange, Flash, did not receive similar backing despite having a higher trading volume.

Foundation President Lily Liu responded by stating that the Foundation's goal is to attract talent and capital to Solana through an 'open meritocracy', allowing competition to decide which teams succeed. She argued that concentration of support behind one team would cap the amount of capital and talent that can be attracted to the chain.