Flash.Trade founder Anas Khader gave three reasons for shutting down his Solana perps exchange on Aug. 7, and the second one named the Solana Foundation. Four days later the Foundation's president was publicly rejecting the word "kingmaking."
The underlying discussion is how an organization with a treasury and a large audience should behave in a category where several teams are competing. It can concentrate support behind the product it judges best for the chain, or spread support across all of them and let volume settle the question.
Solana's perps market cleared $1.34 billion in 24-hour volume on Wednesday with $445.11 million in open interest, per DefiLlama, against Hyperliquid's $4.45 billion and $11.21 billion. Phoenix, the venue Khader later named, ranks fourth on Solana by 24-hour volume at $40.23 million, behind GMTrade's $918.05 million, Pacifica's $262.88 million and Jupiter's $109.65 million. Flash.Trade did $4.79 million.
"The thing that hurt me personally was the sincere disregard by the folks at the foundation," Khader wrote on Aug. 7. "It was really painful, you never expect such coldness, supporting only one team so dearly bcz it help Solana succeed in their view."
He said he had learned of a plan to back that team "to the teeth" in the run-up to Breakpoint, the Foundation's flagship conference, because "Solana needs one winner, and they really do." Khader added a caveat in parentheses, declining to blame the Foundation for the choice and calling his own reaction emotional: "watching one team being crowned dearly, which is wrong of me." The shutdown post named no team.
