Solana’s jump in tracked perpetuals trading is concentrated at GMTrade, a derivatives venue that accounts for about 77% of reported weekly turnover in DefiLlama’s Solana table.
Spot trading moved the other way, leaving a narrower demand picture than the derivatives headline suggests.
In the Nov. 10 snapshot, the Solana dashboard reports nearly $9 billion in seven-day perpetuals turnover, up 65.29% from the preceding week. GMTrade, listed by DefiLlama as GMX Solana, contributed nearly $7 billion, with a displayed weekly increase of 105%.
Over the same dashboard’s seven-day comparisons, spot decentralized exchange turnover fell 5% to $9.9 billion, and stablecoin market capitalization fell 4.38% to $14.5 billion.
02 / Trading activity or outstanding exposure?
GMTrade’s share of seven-day reported trade notional, calculated from rounded displayed totals.
GMTrade’s share of outstanding notional at the November 10 snapshot. This is a level, not a weekly growth rate.
Turnover counts trades; open interest counts outstanding notional. Neither measures fresh collateral or new SOL buying.
Shares use DefiLlama’s Solana classification, excluding Pacifica turnover classified Off Chain. Perps cover multiple underlying markets. Turnover is a seven-day flow; open interest and stablecoin market capitalization are stocks. The snapshot establishes no weekly open-interest trend or incentive causation.
DefiLlama’s Pacifica page attributes its total value locked (TVL) to Solana but classifies its $2.6 billion in weekly perpetuals turnover as “off-chain,” a turnover outside the Solana table.
Concentrated turnover and trading rewards
Dividing GMTrade’s reported weekly turnover by the table’s total gives an approximately 77% share. The rounded totals and growth rates also imply that GMTrade’s weekly increase was roughly as large as the entire table’s gain.
GMTrade’s trading documentation allows SOL exposure backed by either wrapped SOL or USDC collateral. A dollar of leveraged turnover cannot simply be counted as a dollar of new SOL buying.
GMTrade’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’ trading, so earning points is different from receiving an unrestricted cash rebate.
The published fee documentation lists basic crypto-position opening or 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.
The incentives don’t show how much of the weekly increase they caused, or how much trading would persist without them.
GMTrade’s connection to GMX extends beyond the label. 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.
Outstanding positions are 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.
Open interest measures outstanding positions, while turnover measures the notional value traded during a period.
A weekly trend requires comparable observations over time, while stablecoin market capitalization measures the price-valued circulating balance. Falling spot turnover likewise measures activity.
The next test 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 spot market remains quieter.
