Verdict: the best perp venue on Solana, with points — but a small, young book
Pacifica has done what Drift and Jupiter never quite managed: a Solana perpetuals exchange that feels like Binance, with a central limit order book, sub-account support, TWAP and scale orders, and a clean TradingView interface. Its base taker fee of 0.040% is a notch below Hyperliquid's 0.045%, the maker fee is the same 0.015%, and every trade still earns points from a 10-million-a-week pool — something Hyperliquid stopped doing in 2024. The catch is scale and maturity: about $0.9B of daily volume, 97% of it in BTC, ETH and SOL, closed-beta deposit and withdrawal caps that are still in the docs, and a custody model that relies on Pacifica's own engine and multisig rather than a chain you can verify end to end. Use it as a Solana-native second venue and a points play, not as the place for your largest positions.
Pros
- Base fees 0.040% taker / 0.015% maker; maker drops to 0% above $100M 30-day volume.
- 50x on BTC and ETH (and EUR/USD, USD/JPY); 20x on SOL, XRP, HYPE, DOGE, BNB and the S&P 500.
- Live points program: 10,000,000 points a week, snapshots every Thursday 00:00 UTC.
- Connect with any Solana wallet (Phantom, Solflare, Backpack, OKX, Binance Web3 Wallet, MetaMask, WalletConnect) or a social login. No KYC.
- Unified margin: spot holdings count as collateral for perps; TWAP, scale, chase, OCO, trailing-stop and basket ("Atomic") orders.
- An Android app, Pacifica Mobile, on Google Play (no iPhone app listed as of September 2026).
Cons
- About a tenth of Hyperliquid's volume; the 24 stock, FX and commodity perps did about $4M between them on the day we checked.
- No fee discount for referred users — the referral perk is a 5% points bonus only.
- Docs still list closed-beta caps: $500,000 account equity, $500,000 withdrawals per 24 hours.
- Off-chain engine plus hot/cold wallets: you trust Pacifica's operators and multisig more than on Hyperliquid or Lighter.
- Not available in the US, Canada, UK, Philippines, Afghanistan, Crimea and several other places.
What Pacifica is
Pacifica was founded in January 2025 and launched mainnet in June 2025. Its docs say the team comes from Binance, FTX, Coinbase, Jane Street, OpenAI and DeepMind, among others, and that the project has been self-funded with no outside capital. The docs name no founders, but RootData lists co-founder Constance Wang, who was FTX's chief operating officer from 2019 until the exchange collapsed in 2022 and later a partner at the VC firm Ryze Labs. Pacifica claims over $220 billion of cumulative perp volume since launch. The web interface is operated by SkyLake Global Corp, a Panama company, under Singapore law.
Architecturally it is a hybrid exchange: orders are matched by Pacifica's own low-latency engine, while deposits and withdrawals are USDC and SOL transfers on Solana. That is the model of most "CEX-speed" DEXs, and it differs from Hyperliquid, whose order book is itself on-chain, and from Lighter, which proves its matching in a zk-rollup. You sign orders with your Solana wallet and keep your keys; the balance you trade with is a ledger entry in Pacifica's engine, backed by the USDC it holds on-chain.
Beyond perps, Pacifica runs spot trading (SOL-USDC and a growing list of assets that also count as margin), user-deployed Vaults (a manager trades pooled USDC, depositors hold shares), Print (a yield-paying limit order on BTC, ETH, SOL, HYPE and ZEC that only fills at the end of each cycle: 24 hours on any market; 7 or 30 days on BTC) and Swim, a tap-the-grid price prediction game that uses the same balance. There is also a USDC money market: idle balances of at least 1,000 USDC lend automatically, and accounts that go negative against spot collateral borrow implicitly.
Pacifica fees, verified
Fee tiers update daily from your 30-day rolling volume, and sub-account volume counts toward the master account. The same schedule applies to perps and spot. We read the table from the docs and matched it against the public fee endpoint (/api/v1/info/fees) on September 24, 2026.
| Tier | 30-day volume | Taker | Maker |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | $0 | 0.040% | 0.015% |
| Tier 2 | over $5M | 0.038% | 0.012% |
| Tier 3 | over $10M | 0.036% | 0.009% |
| Tier 4 | over $25M | 0.034% | 0.006% |
| Tier 5 | over $50M | 0.032% | 0.003% |
| VIP 1 | over $100M | 0.030% | 0.000% |
| VIP 2 | over $250M | 0.029% | 0.000% |
| VIP 3 | over $500M | 0.028% | 0.000% |
Source: docs.pacifica.fi/trading-on-pacifica/trading-fees and api.pacifica.fi/api/v1/info/fees, September 24, 2026.
What a trade costs. A $10,000 market-in, market-out round trip costs $8.00 on Pacifica, against $9.00 on Hyperliquid's base tier ($8.64 with our HOLYGRAIL code) and $0 on Lighter's free Standard account. A $10,000 maker round trip is $3.00 on both Pacifica and Hyperliquid. Pacifica's first step is also easier to reach: 0.038% / 0.012% from $5M of 30-day volume, where Hyperliquid's first step needs more than $5M in 14 days.
Discounts. There is no token (so no staking discount) and the referral program gives no fee cut. Two things can lower your rate: the VIP Program, which maps your verified 30-day volume on another exchange to the equivalent Pacifica tier for 30 days (ask via a Discord ticket or the Telegram bot), and the market maker program, which offers zero maker fees to approved liquidity providers.
Other charges. Deposits: Solana gas only, $10 minimum. USDC withdrawals: $1 flat, $1 minimum. Spot-asset withdrawals: about $1 worth of the asset plus gas. Liquidations deduct max(0.75%, maintenance margin × 0.4) of the position value closed. Funding is hourly (below).
Leverage, markets and margin
The public market endpoint listed 78 markets on September 24, 2026: 77 perpetuals and one spot pair (SOL-USDC). Around 53 are crypto; the other 24 are real-world assets — single stocks (NVDA, TSLA, META, GOOGL, PLTR, HOOD, CRCL, MSTR, MU, SNDK, Samsung, SK hynix and more), the S&P 500, ETFs such as a uranium fund, EUR/USD and USD/JPY, and gold, silver, platinum, copper, WTI crude and natural gas. RWA perps trade 24/7 on an oracle built mostly from trade.xyz with Lighter and Bitget prices, and funding keeps running through weekends.
| Max leverage | Markets | Examples | Maintenance margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50x | 4 | BTC, ETH, EUR/USD, USD/JPY | 1.0% |
| 20x | 6 | SOL, XRP, HYPE, DOGE, BNB, S&P 500 | 2.5% |
| 10x | 49 | Most alts (AAVE, LINK, SUI, ZEC, TAO, JUP…), every single stock (NVDA, TSLA, META, MSTR…), gold, silver, oil | 5.0% |
| 5x | 10 | PENGU, WIF, WLD, WLFI, VIRTUAL, ZK, ZRO, STRK, ICP, KAITO | 10% |
| 3x | 8 | New or thin listings: 2Z, MON, PIPPIN, MEGA, BP, CHIP, PONS, USELESS | 16.7% |
From api.pacifica.fi/api/v1/info (max_leverage), September 24, 2026. Maintenance margin is half the initial margin at max leverage (docs: liquidations). Minimum order $10.
Initial margin is 1 / your chosen leverage, and Pacifica raises it dynamically when open interest jumps relative to liquidity — so the headline leverage is not guaranteed on a crowded trade. Per the contract-specifications page, market orders are capped at $4M on 50x markets, $1M on 20x, $500k on 10x and $250k elsewhere (the live API listed a $5M maximum order size for BTC and ETH, so treat these as approximate). Cross margin is the default and is unified: your USDC, unrealised PnL and LTV-weighted spot holdings (typically 90% LTV for BTC and ETH, on up to $10,000 per asset by default) back all cross positions. Isolated margin is per market; leverage can be raised on an open position but not lowered.
Order types go well beyond most DEXs: market, limit (GTC, IOC, ALO post-only, TOB), stop-market, stop-limit, TWAP (1 minute to 24 hours), scale (up to 100 orders), plus strategies — chase, conditional orders that trigger off another market, OCO, trailing stop, "swarm" order slicing and "Atomic" baskets for pair trades.
Funding is paid every hour, sampled every 5 seconds, and built from a premium index plus a fixed 0.01% per 8 hours interest component, with a ±4% hourly cap. At the baseline rate the app shows 0.0012% an hour, which is about 11% a year for longs — the same baseline as Hyperliquid.
Volume and where Pacifica ranks
At 06:33 UTC on September 24, 2026 Pacifica's API showed $881M of 24-hour volume and about $119M of open interest. BTC ($446M), ETH ($315M) and SOL ($94M) were 97% of it; ZEC and HYPE followed at about $5M each, and all 24 stock, FX and commodity perps together did about $4.3M. DefiLlama recorded about $142k of fees in the same 24 hours. The table is refreshed at build time from CoinGecko's derivatives data.
| # | Exchange | 24h volume | Open interest | Perp pairs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hyperliquid | $7.62B | $15.02B | 341 |
| 2 | Variational Omni | $3.00B | $1.85B | 575 |
| 3 | Lighter | $1.96B | $1.10B | 202 |
| 4 | Aster | $1.43B | $2.42B | 613 |
| 5 | Pacifica | $826M | $121M | 77 |
| 6 | edgeX | $636M | $362M | 187 |
| 7 | Lighter (Robinhood Chain) | $604M | $419M | 58 |
| 8 | Extended | $490M | $185M | 331 |
Data as of 2026-10-20 00:59:57 UTC. Pacifica: $826M volume, rank #5.
Among the Solana venues on CoinGecko's derivatives list it was the clear leader on September 24, 2026, with about twice the volume of GMX's Solana deployment. Against the whole field it sits in the second group, behind Hyperliquid, Variational, Aster, Lighter, edgeX and Extended. In practice the BTC and ETH books are tight (a $1 tick and 0.001% spread on BTC when we looked) and fine for retail size; for altcoins and stock perps, check depth first.
Pacifica points and the airdrop question
The points program started on September 4, 2025. Every Thursday at 00:00 UTC Pacifica takes a snapshot and, within 24 hours, distributes 10,000,000 points among eligible users. Points come from organic trading via the app or API; self-trading and sybil accounts earn nothing, and Pacifica says 100 accounts give no advantage over one. The formula is "dynamic and opaque by design" and changes weekly; points cannot be bought, and Pacifica discourages trading them on secondary markets. Builders have a separate pool of up to 10M points, and market makers 1M a week.
Many older guides still quote 500,000 points a week and a 0.02% / 0.05% fee schedule with a beta discount — the current docs say 10M points and 0.015% / 0.040%.
Is there an airdrop? Not announced. As of September 24, 2026 there is no Pacifica token, CoinGecko lists no Pacifica coin, and the docs describe points only. Points programs have often preceded tokens elsewhere, but nothing obliges Pacifica to convert points into anything. Trade because the venue suits you; treat points as a possible bonus, and do not overtrade to farm them — at 0.040% taker, every $100,000 of churned volume costs $40.
Pacifica referral code: what you actually get
Pacifica's referral program pays in points, not fee discounts:
- You (the new user) get a 5% points bonus. There is no fee discount.
- The referrer receives 10% of the points you generate.
- You claim a link when you connect a fresh wallet through it, or enter a code later in the Referral section; a deposit is required to claim it.
- Anyone with $10,000 of volume can create their own link at app.pacifica.fi/referral.
- Affiliates — a selective, application-only tier via Pacifica's Discord — can earn up to 40% of referees' perp and spot fees plus 10% of their realised Print yield.
Our Pacifica code: we do not have one yet, so our links open the app without a code. Because the bonus is only 5% of points, it is worth using any code you trust, but it is not a reason to choose Pacifica over a cheaper venue.
Trade perps on Solana with Pacifica
Referral code: none from us yet. Start with a small deposit, try BTC or ETH first, and check the restricted-country list below.
Open Pacifica →How to start trading on Pacifica (5 minutes)
Open the app
Go to app.pacifica.fi and click Connect. The dialog offers Solflare, Phantom, Backpack, OKX Wallet, Binance Web3 Wallet, MetaMask (Solana), WalletConnect and a social login. Ledger works via a browser extension. No KYC. On Android you can install Pacifica Mobile from Google Play instead; the same Terms and country restrictions apply.
Claim a referral (optional)
If you arrived through a referral link, confirm it after connecting; otherwise open Referral in the top menu to enter a code. It is linked once you deposit.
Deposit USDC on Solana
Send at least $10 of USDC (Solana SPL) from your wallet; the only cost is Solana gas. If your USDC is on an exchange, withdraw it on the Solana network to your wallet first. SOL and other supported spot assets can be deposited as collateral too (daily cap $50,000 per asset).
Place the order
Pick a market, choose Cross or Isolated and set leverage (start well below the 50x maximum), then use Market, Limit or a stop with TP/SL. The ticket also shows a max-slippage setting (3% when we looked).
Withdraw
Withdrawals are paid to your Solana wallet for a $1 fee. You can withdraw unrealised profit subject to a 10% initial-margin floor; per the docs, withdrawals above $500,000 in 24 hours are gated during the beta.
Pacifica vs Hyperliquid
| Pacifica | Hyperliquid | |
|---|---|---|
| Taker / maker (base) | 0.040% / 0.015% | 0.045% / 0.015% |
| Tier window | 30-day volume; 0% maker from $100M | 14-day volume; 0% maker from $500M |
| Discounts for you | VIP tier match for 30 days; no referral discount | 4% referral (HOLYGRAIL) · 5–40% HYPE staking |
| Max leverage | BTC 50x · ETH 50x · SOL 20x | BTC 40x · ETH 25x · SOL 20x |
| Markets | 77 perps (24 stock/FX/commodity) + spot | 178 perps + HIP-3 builder markets, 329 spot pairs |
| 24h volume (September 24, 2026) | ~$0.88B | ~$9.6B (typically $4–8B/day) |
| Funding | Hourly | Hourly |
| Architecture | Off-chain engine, Solana settlement, hot/cold multisig wallets | Own L1 with on-chain order book (HyperCore) |
| Wallet / login | Solana wallets or social login | EVM wallet or email |
| Deposits | USDC and spot assets on Solana, $10 min | USDC from Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, Polygon + native BTC, ETH, SOL |
| Incentives | 10M points a week (live) | No points program (ended 2024) |
| Token | None yet | HYPE |
Pick Pacifica if you already live on Solana, want points exposure while you trade, or want 50x on ETH. Pick Hyperliquid if you trade size, altcoins or stock perps: ten times the volume, far more markets, an on-chain book and discounts that stack. On a pure taker basis Pacifica is about $0.64 cheaper per $10,000 round trip even after our 4% Hyperliquid code — small next to the slippage difference on anything outside BTC and ETH. Details: Hyperliquid review · Hyperliquid fees.
Want the deepest perp liquidity instead?
Join Hyperliquid with code HOLYGRAIL for 4% off fees on your first $25M of volume.
Is Pacifica safe? How your funds are held
Pacifica's fund-security design splits deposits into two layers. A hot wallet, run by the matching engine, pays withdrawals instantly up to a programmatic spending limit (the docs give $5M a day as an example). The bulk of funds sits in a cold vault governed by a Squads multisig whose signers are spread across continents; it can only refill the hot wallet, cannot send to arbitrary addresses, and any change to limits or upgrade authority goes through a time lock. The USDC and SOL bridge and cold-vault addresses are published in the docs, so balances can be checked on-chain. The perp contracts were audited by BlockSec (report dated April 2025).
What this does and does not protect: an engine or key compromise should expose only the hot wallet, not everything. But your trading balance is a record in Pacifica's off-chain engine, and the docs describe no forced-withdrawal path that bypasses it — you depend on Pacifica processing withdrawals. That is the trade-off of hybrid DEXs, and a real difference from Hyperliquid (on-chain book) or Lighter (zk-proved matching).
Risks and what to watch
- Restricted countries. The Terms (updated June 11, 2026) exclude the United States, Canada, the UK, China, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, the Philippines and sanctioned jurisdictions; the docs' trading overview also names Afghanistan and Crimea (including Sevastopol). Trading from those IPs is blocked, and circumventing that with a VPN breaches the Terms. Japan is not named.
- Beta limits. The docs still apply closed-beta caps: $500,000 of account equity per account and $500,000 of withdrawals per 24 hours, plus an exchange-wide withdrawal cap.
- Thin books outside majors. Stock, FX and commodity perps did about $4M in a day; 18 markets (mostly RWAs, plus PAXG, MEGA and BP) are excluded from the backstop liquidator, so liquidations there go to the order book and, failing that, to auto-deleveraging.
- Dynamic margin. Initial margin can rise when open interest spikes, and liquidation costs at least 0.75% of the value closed.
- Points are not money. The formula is secret and no token exists. Don't size trades around an airdrop that has not been announced.
Frequently asked questions
What is Pacifica DEX?
Pacifica is a perpetual futures exchange on Solana with an off-chain matching engine and on-chain USDC deposits and withdrawals — it calls itself a hybrid exchange. Founded in January 2025 and live on mainnet since June 2025, it is self-funded. On September 24, 2026 its public API listed 77 perpetual markets plus a SOL-USDC spot market, and it cleared about $0.88B of 24-hour volume with about $119M of open interest.
What are Pacifica fees?
New accounts pay 0.040% taker and 0.015% maker on perps. Tiers are set by 30-day volume across sub-accounts: 0.038% / 0.012% above $5M, down to 0.028% taker and 0% maker at VIP 3 (over $500M). Spot uses the same schedule. Deposits cost only Solana gas; USDC withdrawals cost $1. There is no referral fee discount and no token-holding discount.
Is there a Pacifica airdrop?
No airdrop or token has been announced as of September 24, 2026, and CoinGecko lists no Pacifica coin. What exists is a points program that started on September 4, 2025 and distributes 10,000,000 points a week, snapshotted every Thursday at 00:00 UTC. Pacifica says the formula is opaque by design and that points cannot be bought. Many traders farm the points in the hope of a future token; treat that as speculation, not a promise.
How does the Pacifica referral code work?
Any user with $10,000 of trading volume can generate a referral link at app.pacifica.fi/referral. A new user who signs up through it gets a 5% points bonus; the referrer receives 10% of the points the new user generates. There is no fee discount for the new user, and the link is only claimed once you deposit. Separately, selected affiliates can earn up to 40% of their referees' fees; that program is by application through Pacifica's Discord.
Is Pacifica available in the US, UK or Japan?
Not in the US or UK. Pacifica's Terms of Use (updated June 11, 2026) exclude residents of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, the Philippines and sanctioned jurisdictions, and the docs' trading overview adds Afghanistan and the Crimean Peninsula (including Sevastopol). Trading from those IP addresses is blocked. Japan is not named in either list; check your own local rules before trading.
Does Pacifica have a mobile app?
Yes, on Android. "Pacifica Mobile" is on Google Play (last updated July 23, 2026) and covers trading, charts and order books, positions, deposits, vaults, referrals and points with a Solana wallet. We found no iPhone App Store listing on September 24, 2026; on an iPhone, use the web app at app.pacifica.fi. The same Terms of Use and country restrictions apply to the app.
Is Pacifica safe?
It is younger and more centralised than Hyperliquid or Lighter. Matching and balances run in Pacifica's engine; deposits sit in Solana wallets split into a hot wallet with a programmatic spending limit and a cold vault controlled by a Squads multisig with time-locked upgrades. The perp contracts were audited by BlockSec in April 2025. The docs still describe closed-beta limits of $500,000 account equity and $500,000 of withdrawals per 24 hours. Size positions accordingly.
Pacifica vs Hyperliquid: which is better?
Pacifica is slightly cheaper for takers (0.040% vs 0.045%; 0.0432% on Hyperliquid with code HOLYGRAIL), offers 50x on BTC and ETH, runs a live points program and lets you trade from a Solana wallet. Hyperliquid has roughly ten times the volume (about $9.6B vs $0.88B on September 24, 2026), 178 perps plus HIP-3 markets, deeper altcoin books and an on-chain order book. For size and liquidity, Hyperliquid; for Solana-native trading and points, Pacifica.
Related: all exchange reviews · best DEX for Solana perpetuals · live perp DEX ranking · Hyperliquid review · Hyperliquid referral code HOLYGRAIL · Hyperliquid app guide · edgeX review · no-KYC DEX guide.
Disclosure: we may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this page; it does not change your fees. Links to Hyperliquid use our referral code HOLYGRAIL. All Pacifica figures were read from its official docs, public API, Terms of Use and app on September 24, 2026; volumes are one-day snapshots and programs change. Nothing here promises a Pacifica token or airdrop. Perpetual futures are high-risk instruments.