Solana’s Drift Launches v3, With 10x Faster Trades

Drift, one of the largest perpetuals trading platforms on Solana, has launched Drift v3, a major upgrade meant to make onchain trading feel as fast and smooth as using a centralized exchange.

The new version will deliver 10-times faster trade execution on the platform thanks to a rebuilt backend, marking the largest performance jump the project has made so far.

With v3, the Drift team says that about 85% of market orders will fill in under half a second, and liquidity will deepen enough to bring slippage on larger trades down to around 0.02%. The upgrade is intended to make on-chain derivatives trading feel smoother and more consistent for everyday users.

Tools like take-profit and stop-loss orders will also update more quickly, operating within a single Solana slot rather than several seconds. Oracle prices will refresh on the same timeline, and gas fees will continue to be abstracted away so users don’t have to deal with transaction costs mid-trade.

Alongside the speed improvements, Drift will roll out a refreshed user interface, including a cleaner portfolio page, clearer account displays, and a simpler borrow-lend section.

“Drift v3 reflects our commitment to delivering CEX-level performance on Solana,” said Cindy Leow, core contributor of Drift. “Our goal is to build the fastest, most intuitive and most capital-efficient perpetuals platform in crypto. With this upgrade, we are meaningfully raising the bar for what DeFi derivatives can be.”

As for what’s next, Drift will tackle auto-signing, easier deposits, isolated margin, and eventually a mobile app. The team is also testing a new Drift Liquidity Provider Pool, aimed at letting users more easily supply liquidity to perp and spot markets while earning yield.

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