Pacifica Leads Solana Perps - But Is Volume a Flawed Metric?

Pacifica, an emerging perps DEX, has shocked Solana DeFi after flipping ecosystem heavyweights like Jupiter and Drift in trading volume.

While the new DEX’s surging volumes indicate explosive demand, Pacifica’s surging activity more likely stems from airdrop farmers, rather than organic traders.

Is volume truly the best metric for gauging activity, or should analysts and CT commentators be seeking alternatives, like open interest?

Pacifica Solana’s Biggest Perps DEX?

Pacifica has flipped Solana DeFi stalwarts like Jupiter and Drift Protocol to become Solana’s leading perps venue. Despite still being in private beta, Pacifica has amassed over $729M in daily volume, constituting 51.59% of market share among the network’s perpetual exchanges.

Pacifica’s rise to dominance comes as perpetual trading platforms steal the spotlight on rival chains. Amidst fierce competition between Hyperliquid, crypto’s leading perps DEX, and Aster, a BNB-based competitor, Solana’s DeFi community is evidently eager for greater exposure to one of the industry’s most popular sectors.

Capitalizing on surging demand, Pacifica has temporarily halved all trading fees on the platform. While this sounds like an enticing benefit for traders, one could argue that reduced fees could be an easy way of inflating volume to bring credibility and mindshare to the emerging DEX.

Airdrop Speculation Driving Volume?

Given Pacifica’s unexpected volume surge comes following rampant speculation on the upcoming $ASTER airdrop, some traders believe that the majority of volume on Solana’s newest DEX could be inorganic.

Traders and airdrop farmers have reason to be optimistic. Airdrops from perps dexes have, in recent memory, been some of the greatest wealth creation events in crypto history. These airdrops in turn created a nucleus of high-value power users who continued to patronize the platform and deepen liquidity and open interest.

Between Hyperliquid’s initial airdrop being valued at over $10B today and Aster expected to distribute over $1.4B among users, Solana’s farmers are hoping to see a similar event play out on home soil.

While not clearly highlighted on the DEX’s UI, Pacifica launched its points program on September 4, distributing 500,000 points across all active wallets every Thursday. 

According to Pacifica’s documentation, wash-traders and sybils can have their points slashed retroactively, which could theoretically nullify the benefits of inorganic activity. 

Open Interest or Volume?

Despite Pacifica leading perps trading volume on Solana, other metrics suggest the newcomer is yet to be the network’s most dominant platform. While Pacifica commands more than half of Solana’s perps volume, it only accounts for <5% of Open Interest.

As opposed to volume, which can easily be amplified through wash trading (and inadvertently encouraged by fee reductions), open interest tracks the value of traders’ positions in the exchange. OI reflects how much capital is actively committed to markets, and often correlates with deeper liquidity and healthier funding rate dynamics.

While volume is often considered the de facto metric used to determine trading activity, it’s arguably more liable to manipulation and artificial inflation. OI, on the other hand, represents a more significant commitment of capital and is perhaps a more reliable indicator of organic activity.

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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnFlAzGn9KI