Tech Talk: BULK

A team of former Solana market makers is building what could be the fastest decentralized perpetuals exchange ever created—with latency so low it could challenge centralized giants like Binance. BULK, unveiled at Breakpoint 2025, promises 20-millisecond order execution while maintaining Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) security through a novel multi-operator architecture.

Summary

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BULK represents a fundamental rethinking of how decentralized exchanges can operate on Solana. Born from the team's experience as market makers across various venues, they identified a critical gap: while Solana offers the best blockchain infrastructure and highest net inflow of assets, it lacks a serious trading experience capable of attracting professional traders and liquidity providers.

The exchange introduces three core innovations working in concert. First, a vastly improved pipeline architecture delivers 20-millisecond latencies—orders of magnitude faster than Solana's standard 400-millisecond block times. Second, a multi-operator owned matching system distributes the matching engine, risk engine, and settlement across multiple validators who operate independently. Third, a real-time risk engine actively protects market makers while they provide liquidity.

What makes BULK particularly noteworthy is its approach to the fundamental tradeoff between performance and decentralization. Rather than sacrificing one for the other, the team developed a new leaderless consensus mechanism that separates state agreement from execution. This allows orders to be confirmed within milliseconds while still achieving hard finality within 40 milliseconds through BFT guarantees.

The project also introduces BULK Agave, a new validator client that runs as a sidecar network on Solana. This design allows the exchange to leverage Solana's existing stake for security while sharing 12.5% of exchange fees with validators—creating a direct economic incentive for Solana stakers to support the network.

Key Points

Ultra-Low Latency Order Pipeline

BULK's order pipeline operates in a two-phase system that achieves unprecedented speed for a decentralized exchange. In phase one, all orders are collected and distributed to validators who create mini-sketches—compact cryptographic summaries of the order sets. The system then proceeds directly to matching without waiting for state confirmation, maintaining continuous throughput.

The significance of this speed cannot be overstated. According to BULK's Monte Carlo simulations of price movement over frequency, every additional second of latency costs roughly one participant who focuses on latency-sensitive trading. With Solana's current 400-millisecond block times, participants lose approximately 0.06 basis points per trade on-chain. For high-frequency traders and market makers quoting on decentralized venues, this translates to consistent losses from adverse selection and arbitrage—losses that BULK aims to eliminate by matching centralized exchange performance.

Leaderless Consensus Mechanism

Perhaps BULK's most innovative contribution is its leaderless consensus design. Traditional leader-based systems suffer from multiple attack vectors including censorship and single points of failure. Single-operator exchanges (sometimes called sequencers) present similar centralization risks, essentially functioning as centralized exchanges with different custody arrangements.

BULK's approach ensures every node operates as an independent operator. The system uses mini-sketches—a technology originally developed for Bitcoin Core—to efficiently synchronize order sets across nodes. Mini-sketches create tiny checksums of set IDs with fixed capacity, allowing nodes to detect differences and sync missing orders with 12 times greater bandwidth efficiency than traditional encoding methods. As long as a majority of the network has received your orders, any node can independently propose execution. This architecture also provides built-in censorship detection, enabling the network to identify and jail misbehaving nodes.

Portfolio-Level Risk Management

BULK's risk engine represents a departure from static margin systems used by most exchanges. Instead of applying fixed margin requirements based on configuration files written years ago, BULK implements a Markov-based regime system that dynamically adjusts to current market conditions.

The system identifies whether markets are trading normally, experiencing volatility, dislocated, or quiet, then optimizes margin requirements accordingly. When conditions are favorable, traders receive better credit; when risk increases, the system disincentivizes risky positions. This portfolio-level margin approach considers your entire position set rather than individual trades, allowing for hedging benefits and more efficient capital use. The risk engine accepts any collateral from Solana and other ecosystems while remaining deterministic—ensuring every operator worldwide reaches identical risk conclusions from the same inputs.

BULK Agave Validator Client

BULK Agave serves as the technical foundation housing all components: consensus, networking, and the complete database infrastructure. Critically, it runs as a sidecar network on Solana, maintaining the same upstream as Jito Agave without modifying any signals.

This architecture delivers multiple advantages. The sidecar network inherits security from Solana's existing stake—billions of dollars in economic security that would be impossible to bootstrap independently. Validators receive 12.5% of BULK's exchange fees, which trickles down to Solana stakers, creating a virtuous cycle where making Solana more secure also makes BULK more secure. Being embedded in the Solana stack also provides BULK with rapid access to Solana state, enabling features like unified margin accounts where users can trade perpetuals using collateral held in other protocols without tokenization or rebalancing.

Unified Margin Accounts

One of BULK's most ambitious features is unified margin accounts that will allow users to trade perpetuals using positions held elsewhere in the Solana ecosystem. Imagine connecting your wallet with USDC positions on Kamino or looping positions on Loopscale, then immediately trading perpetuals with up to 50x leverage—no transfers, no tokenization, no rebalancing required.

This works because BULK Agave has direct access to Solana state and can react to it extremely quickly, especially when operating as the current leader. The risk engine continuously monitors your cross-protocol positions, automatically rebalancing to maintain safety for both the user and the exchange.

Facts + Figures

• BULK achieves 20-millisecond order execution latency, compared to Solana's standard 400-millisecond block times
• Hard finality is achieved within 20-40 milliseconds through BFT consensus
• Every 1 second of additional latency costs approximately one latency-focused participant
• With 400ms block times, traders lose approximately 0.06 basis points per trade on-chain
• Mini-sketches provide 12x greater bandwidth efficiency compared to other encoding protocols
• The BFT system requires 3F+1 operators alive with 2F+1 votes for both consensus phases
• The system provides security against up to F Byzantine (malicious) nodes at any time
• BULK Agave shares 12.5% of exchange fees with validators
• Currently, 5% of Solana's stake is already running BULK Agave
• The testnet will offer up to 50x leverage across three different markets
• Genesis testnet launch is scheduled for the coming weeks
• BULK Agave code is currently undergoing security audits

Top Quotes

"Our aim is to provide execution worth quoting into."

"Solana is the best chain out there to build on... it lacks a serious trading experience, and it all boils down to a couple of things."

"Every one second you lose, you lose up to one participant who is very latency focused."

"With Solana's 400 block times, you lose up to 0.06 basis points on chain."

"Risk engine is the secret sauce of any exchange."

"Instead of saying Bitcoin on your new order is 5% initial margin all the time, we say your margin that's needed to cover this position is a function of your portfolio and the regime that we are in right now."

"BULK essentially makes Solana an F1 circuit in Solana's highways."

"Being embedded so in Solana stack, we get to see Solana state very, very fast."

Questions Answered

What problem is BULK trying to solve?

BULK addresses the fundamental disconnect between Solana's technical capabilities and the actual trading experience available on decentralized exchanges. Despite Solana being the best blockchain for building and having the highest net inflow of assets, professional traders and market makers struggle to compete with centralized venues due to latency disadvantages. BULK aims to create execution quality worth quoting into, eliminating the adverse selection losses that currently plague DeFi market makers.

How does BULK achieve such low latency while remaining decentralized?

BULK separates state agreement from execution through a novel two-phase consensus mechanism. Orders are collected and distributed to validators who create mini-sketches—efficient cryptographic summaries—then proceed to matching without waiting for state confirmation. This allows order execution in 20 milliseconds while achieving hard finality in 20-40 milliseconds. The leaderless architecture means any node can independently propose execution as long as the network majority has the orders.

What makes BULK's consensus mechanism different from other solutions?

Unlike leader-based systems that suffer from censorship risks and single points of failure, or single-operator sequencers that essentially replicate centralized exchange models, BULK uses a leaderless consensus where every node operates independently. The mini-sketch technology enables efficient order synchronization across nodes while providing built-in censorship detection. Nodes that attempt to censor transactions or fall out of sync can be quickly identified and removed from the network.

How does the risk engine protect traders and market makers?

BULK's risk engine uses a Markov-based regime system that dynamically adjusts margin requirements based on current market conditions rather than static configuration values. The system identifies whether markets are normal, volatile, dislocated, or quiet, then optimizes margin accordingly. This protects traders from taking positions that can't be covered during stress while preserving the 20-millisecond latency. The deterministic design ensures all operators worldwide reach identical risk conclusions.

Why would Solana validators want to run BULK Agave?

Validators running BULK Agave receive 12.5% of all exchange fees, creating a new revenue stream that flows to Solana stakers. The client runs as a sidecar network, maintaining the same upstream as Jito Agave without requiring any modifications to core Solana operations. This fee-sharing model aligns incentives: as BULK becomes more successful, validators and stakers earn more, which attracts more stake to Solana, making both networks more secure.

What is the current development status of BULK?

BULK is currently live on a local cluster with genesis testnet launch scheduled for the coming weeks. The testnet will allow anyone to participate, trading with up to 50x leverage across three markets while experiencing portfolio margin and the risk engine. BULK Agave code is undergoing security audits, with 5% of Solana's stake already running the client—verifiable through Solana's gossip table.

How will unified margin accounts work?

Users will be able to connect their wallets and trade perpetuals using collateral held in other Solana protocols like Kamino or Loopscale without moving, tokenizing, or rebalancing funds. Because BULK Agave has direct access to Solana state, it can monitor cross-protocol positions in real-time and automatically manage risk. Users simply sign a message to start trading—the risk engine handles all the complexity of position management behind the scenes.