Solana Perps Turnover Jumps 65% as Spot and Stablecoins Contract

Solana perpetual futures turnover jumped 65% over the past week even as the chain's spot decentralized exchange activity and stablecoin base shrank, according to DefiLlama dashboard data.

The same seven-day comparisons show spot DEX turnover falling 5% to $9.9 billion, while stablecoin market capitalization on Solana declined 4.38% to $14.5 billion. Perpetuals moved in the opposite direction, and the growth is heavily concentrated in one venue.

Who is driving the surge?

GMTrade accounts for the bulk of it. Dividing the protocol's reported weekly turnover by the table's total gives an approximately 77% share. The rounded totals and growth rates also imply GMTrade's weekly increase was roughly as large as the entire table's gain — meaning the rest of the Solana perpetuals field was essentially flat.

There's also a classification wrinkle. DefiLlama's Pacifica page attributes its total value locked to Solana but classifies its $2.6 billion in weekly perpetuals turnover as "off-chain," placing it outside the Solana table altogether. Depending on how such venues are counted, headline Solana derivatives figures may understate or overstate true on-chain activity.

How much of the volume is organic?

The incentive design complicates the read. GMTrade's trading documentation allows $SOL exposure backed by either wrapped $SOL or $USDC collateral — which means a dollar of leveraged turnover cannot be counted as a dollar of new $SOL buying.

The protocol's GT documentation describes points earned through trading, liquidity provision and referrals, with conditional treasury buybacks offering a route to $USDC. The announced Season 2 terms tie a referrer's sellable quota to GT earned through referred traders' activity, so earning points isn't the same as receiving an unrestricted cash rebate.

Fees are modest by exchange standards. Published documentation lists basic crypto-position opening and closing charges of 0.02% or 0.024%, depending on whether a trade improves the balance of longs and shorts. The Season 2 announcement also described a fee-structure change.

What the incentives don't show is causation: how much of the weekly increase they produced, or how much trading would persist without them.

What about the GMX connection?

GMTrade's link to $GMX runs deeper than the branding. GM Labs said in a Sept. 16 governance post that $GMX Solana had been integrated into $GMX, but GT points remain distinct from the $GMX token. In a Nov. 3 forum reply, contributor Jonezee said Solana-side buybacks were adding $GMX to the staking rewards pool.

Is the growth sustainable?

Open interest provides the next test. The Nov. 10 perps table shows nearly $174.9 million in GMTrade open interest, against $235.1 million for the table overall — roughly three-quarters of outstanding positions on the venue side of the ledger.

The metrics measure different things. Open interest counts outstanding positions; turnover measures notional value traded during a period; stablecoin market capitalization measures the price-valued circulating balance. A weekly trend requires comparable observations over time.

The real question is whether GMTrade sustains its turnover across subsequent weeks, with open interest observed over matching periods. That would help distinguish repeat activity from a single weekly jump — while the broader Solana spot market remains quieter.