Solana's Imitation Show: Can It Catch Up with Hyperliquid?

Recently, heavyweight players in the Solana ecosystem jointly released a technical roadmap titled "Internet Capital Markets ( Internet Capital Markets, ICM )". The core concept of this roadmap is "Application Controlled Execution ( ACE )", aimed at granting on-chain applications millisecond-level autonomy in transaction ordering, creating a decentralized "on-chain Wall Street".

Interestingly, although Hyperliquid is not directly mentioned in the roadmap, many of the designs seem to target Hyperliquid's advantageous features. This inevitably brings to mind Solana's statement: "What Hyperliquid can do, we can also do, and we will do it better!"

Given Hyperliquid's dominant position in the on-chain perpetual contract market, Solana's release of this ICM roadmap is clearly aimed at responding to competition. So, what exactly is the content of this "imitation show"? Can Solana really catch up with or even surpass Hyperliquid? Let's analyze this in depth.

Main Content of ICM

The ICM roadmap mainly focuses on improvements in three areas:

1. Transaction Sorting Mechanism

ICM proposed the concept of controllable execution (ACE), which decentralizes the transaction ordering rights to various chain applications. This allows DeFi applications to implement the following custom sorting rules:

• Oracle price update insertion: Update the latest price before large transactions to prevent arbitrage by market makers.
• Order cancellation priority execution: allows market makers to timely withdraw orders in unfavorable market conditions.
• Tail auction: Auction the trading opportunities after large orders and return the MEV profits to the users.

Before the official launch of ACE, Jito Labs introduced the Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM) as a transitional solution. BAM allows application developers to customize various sorting rules for their contracts through plugins.

These designs are clearly learning from Hyperliquid. As a dedicated chain, Hyperliquid has implemented many mechanisms at the chain layer to protect market makers, such as order cancellation priority and latest price guarantee. Solana now hopes to replicate this effect through ACE/BAM.

2. Instant finality

Solana plans to launch a brand new Alpenglow consensus protocol, aiming to compress the block finality time to about 150 milliseconds, achieving instant finality similar to Hyperliquid.

Alpenglow adopts a dual-track voting system:

• Fast track: If 80% or more of the rights agree, confirm finality immediately.
• Slow channel: If 60%-80% of the equity agrees, initiate the second round of voting.

This design is very similar to Hyperliquid's HyperBFT consensus. However, achieving millisecond finality while maintaining a high level of decentralization is technically much more challenging for Solana than for Hyperliquid.

3. Asynchronous Execution Pipeline

ICM proposed an asynchronous program execution ( APE ) solution, attempting to replicate Hyperliquid's dual pipeline execution model. APE will remove transaction execution from the critical path of block confirmation, allowing validators to first confirm the transaction into the block and then asynchronously execute program calculations.

However, achieving secure parallel execution on a decentralized general-purpose chain is a significant challenge. The technical difficulties faced by Solana are much higher than those of the single-function Hyperliquid.

Can the imitation show succeed?

In summary, the Solana ICM roadmap is essentially a deep "imitation" of the Hyperliquid technical architecture. However, the prospects for this imitation show are not optimistic:

1. The technical difficulty increases exponentially: Solana's challenge to reach Hyperliquid levels while maintaining generality and decentralization is far greater than that of Hyperliquid itself.

2. The contradiction between decentralization and efficiency: Solana's multi-party game decision-making mechanism may result in slow upgrade progress, while Hyperliquid can iterate quickly.

3. Competition goes beyond technology: Hyperliquid also has advantages in token economics, product innovation, and other areas. Relying solely on technology is not enough to win over users.

4. Limited time window: Even if Solana achieves all its goals before 2027, it will only catch up to the current level of Hyperliquid, which may have already established new advantages by then.

Therefore, it is not easy for Solana to gain an advantage in the perpetual contract market. However, the breadth of the Solana ecosystem far exceeds that of Hyperliquid. If it can innovate in other areas and apply the improvements brought by ICM, there is still a chance to consolidate its vision of an "Internet Capital Market."

Conclusion

The Solana ICM roadmap demonstrates its determination to catch up. However, imitation is easy, but surpassing is difficult. For Solana to successfully perform this imitation show, it must fully exert effort in technological breakthroughs, ecological collaboration, and market strategies. In the short term, Solana may improve the on-chain trading experience through BAM and other means, but to truly shake Hyperliquid's position, it will likely require more time and more innovations.

However, regardless of the final outcome, this competition is expected to bring users a better on-chain trading experience. Let's wait and see if this imitation show can ultimately be successfully staged.