What Is Imperial (Imperial Perps) | How to Use Solana Perpetual Futures, Fees and Points

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What Is Imperial (Imperial Perps) | A Perpetual Futures Terminal on Solana

How Armada Works and the Fees | 1bp and Up to 250x

How to Use Imperial | Invite Codes and Getting Started

Imperial Points | Season 1 Allocation and Airdrop Prospects

Imperial Risks | Liquidation Distance, Open-Interest Caps and Held Withdrawals

Summary

Disclaimer

Imperial (Imperial Perps) is a terminal that lets you trade perpetual futures on crypto, US stocks, gold, FX and more from a Solana wallet on a single screen. On its flagship "Armada," Imperial itself takes the other side of your trade, and the fee is kept to 0.01% each on open and close (1bp). It is currently a closed beta that requires an invite code, and Season 1, which hands out points based on trading volume, has been running since September 2026.

What Is Imperial (Imperial Perps) | A Perpetual Futures Terminal on Solana

Imperial is a service for people who want to trade futures with a Solana wallet, using USDC on Solana as is. To people who already use Hyperliquid or other order-book perp DEXs on other chains, the team pitches it as a way to trade on comparably deep books without a bridge or a separate account.

Beyond crypto, you can trade perpetual futures on US stocks, stock indices, commodities, FX, interest rates and pre-IPO companies. All of them only track a price: you never own the stock or the gold itself, and there are no dividends.

Image: Screenshot of the official Imperial app (captured October 29, 2026)

The numbers across the top of the screen deserve a closer look. The 24h Volume for SOL shows about $44 million, but that figure belongs to the market Imperial hedges on.

Imperial's own 24-hour volume, as of October 29, 2026, is about $3.35 million round trip, counting both opens and closes. Total open interest is about $860,000, and 124 people traded in the past 24 hours. The scale is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the on-screen numbers suggest, which makes this a newly launched exchange.

CEO Jordan Prince came from Citadel in the US and worked on Metaplex during his time at Solana Labs. Solana's official podcast tells the origin story: part of the roughly $250,000 in fees he paid on Jupiter Perps turned out to be swap fees that never appeared on screen. The first version of Imperial was a wrapper that showed what you were actually paying. The CTO is Hunter Simmons, who worked on Teleport.

On October 6, 2026, a $1.5 million seed round from Foundation Capital was reported (the investor list has not been disclosed).

How Armada Works and the Fees | 1bp and Up to 250x

The reason Imperial's fees are low lies in its execution mechanism, called Armada.

Image: From the official Imperial Armada site (retrieved October 29, 2026)

Armada Means "Imperial Takes the Other Side"

On Armada, Imperial itself is the counterparty to your order. It then places the same order on an external order book as a hedge and settles on Solana. Your fill price is the actual fill price on the hedge venue, and the slippage limit you set becomes the worst price allowed for that hedge order.

The USDC for your order moves into Imperial's Vault in the same transaction. If the hedge fill is delayed, the order expires after about one minute and is refunded. Fills beyond your limit, or fills more than 10% better than expected, are also rejected by the on-chain program on Solana. Instead of marking up the price, Imperial holds the opposite side of your position itself. That is what leads to the open-interest caps and withdrawal constraints described later.

Imperial Fees | 0.01% on Both Open and Close

The trading fee is 0.01% (1bp) of notional on each open and each close. There is no maker/taker distinction and no spread markup. Open and close a $10,000 position and the round-trip fee is $2. Hyperliquid's base-tier taker fee is 0.045%, so the gap grows the more often you trade at market.

Because the fee is deducted from margin, the 250x cap is displayed as 243.9x on screen. Other costs are as follows.

Cost	Details
Funding rate	Accrues every second, tracking the rate of the same market on the hedge venue (capped at ±0.05% per hour)
Liquidation fee (cross)	1% of notional (capped at the remaining margin)
Liquidation fee (isolated)	All margin remaining in that position

Supported Markets and Leverage

There are 227 listed markets, 31 of which are close-only. The maximum leverage under isolated margin varies by market as follows.

Max	Main markets
250x	BTC, SOL
100x	ETH, gold, major FX pairs
50x	HYPE, AAPL, NVDA, TSLA and others
45x	SPY
25x	US500, US100, AMZN and others

Cross-margin leverage is capped at 25x per account, and if a market's cap is lower, the market's cap applies. Under cross margin, opposing positions offset each other to reduce the margin required. You can have up to six subaccounts per wallet.

How to Use Imperial | Invite Codes and Getting Started

Anyone can open Imperial's trading screen, but you need an invite code to open a new position.

Image: Screenshot of the official Imperial app (captured October 29, 2026)

Getting Started with Imperial | From Login to Entering Your Code

Open the official Imperial app and press Log In
Log in with a Solana wallet such as Phantom or Solflare, or with email, Google, X or Telegram (the latter creates an in-app wallet)
Enter your invite code under Enter Code
Deposit USDC on Solana as margin (if you send SOL, it is converted to USDC automatically in about 30 minutes)

Margin is limited to USDC on Solana, and the only cost on deposits and withdrawals is the Solana network fee. Note that the terms of service say residents of prohibited jurisdictions are excluded from use, but the published version does not list which countries those are. As a result, whether you can use it from Japan cannot be confirmed.

How to Get an Imperial Invite Code and How Codes Multiply

An invite code is only needed to open new positions. Closing and withdrawing do not require one. If you do not have a code, the prompt directs you to join the official Discord via "Need a code? Join our Discord."

Once you have a code, you can invite others too. You start with three invite codes, and you get one more each time the people you invited trade $1,000. Invite links take the form "imperial.trade/?armada=CODE".

Imperial Points | Season 1 Allocation and Airdrop Prospects

There are two rewards you can take part in right now.

Program	What you get	Conditions and deadline
Trading and referral points (Season 1)	Imperial points	Trade with an invite code, allocated weekly, no set end date
Referral rewards	USDC	A share of the trading fees paid by people you referred, no set end date

How Season 1 Points Accrue

Season 1 began on September 20, 2026. Each week there is a fixed pool of 15,000 points for trading and 5,000 for referrals, and the trading pool is split by your share of that week's volume. Volume counted toward points is capped at 250x your average open interest, so if you churn trades on a small position, you hit the ceiling quickly.

You get a boost if you meet the following conditions.

Boost	Bonus	Duration
Link Telegram	+0.50x	7 days
Sign up via a referral code	+0.25x	7 days
Sign up via a boosted referral code	+0.50x	30 days

Points are credited in one batch at the weekly close, and you can see your rank and estimated points on the Leaderboard.

Image: Screenshot of the official Imperial app (captured October 29, 2026)

Weekly round-trip volume grew from about $2.7 million in the week of July 27 to about $24.6 million in the week of October 19. The growth is concentrated after Season 1 started, and whether it continues once the distribution ends is still unknown.

Referral Rewards (USDC) and Imperial Airdrop Prospects

A share of the trading fees paid by the people you referred is paid out to you in USDC. You can claim it on the Rewards page starting 24 hours after each trade.

No token or airdrop has been announced yet, and the team has not said what points can be exchanged for. The view that points will lead to a token remains community speculation.

Imperial Risks | Liquidation Distance, Open-Interest Caps and Held Withdrawals

High Leverage and Open-Interest Caps

At 250x, a move of roughly 0.2% against you is enough to get liquidated. Under isolated margin, you lose all the margin left in that position. The constraints you may run into while trading are as follows.

Situation	What happens
A market where orders pile up in the same direction	New orders beyond what Imperial can absorb are rejected with "No capacity" (closing is still possible)
While the underlying market for a stock or index is closed	New market orders do not go through, and the price can gap when it reopens

Held Profit Withdrawals and the Team Behind It

Profit from fills that cannot be reconciled against the Pyth price oracle is held for up to 8 hours. Profit withdrawals are also subject to platform-wide hourly and daily caps. Principal withdrawals are not restricted, so the impact is felt only when you want to pull out just the profit right after a big win.

Authority to upgrade and administer the program is held by a Squads multisig. The audit report and bug bounty sections of the docs are still blank. The operating company, Imperial Labs Pte. Ltd., holds no license and is not registered with any regulator. Disputes are governed by English law and referred to arbitration at the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA).

Summary

Imperial is an invite-only terminal where you can trade perpetual futures on crypto and US stocks at a 1bp fee without leaving your Solana wallet. The low fee comes from the Armada mechanism, in which Imperial takes the other side of your trade. In exchange, new orders can be rejected at the open-interest cap, and profit withdrawals can be held or capped. The fees and withdrawal terms can be judged on the information available today, but the value of the weekly points has to stay an open question until the link to a token is spelled out.

Sources

Disclaimer

・This article is created for informational purposes only and should not be used to solicit the sale, purchase, or underwriting of cryptocurrencies, securities, or other financial products, nor should it be considered an invitation to engage in such transactions, or constitute financial or investment advice.
・The information and opinions in this article are obtained from sources that we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee their accuracy, completeness, suitability, timeliness, or truthfulness.
・We, the authors, and all related parties are not responsible for any damage or loss caused by or related to the information published in this article. Cryptocurrencies involve hacking and other risks, so please conduct thorough research before using them.

Supervised by

Shingo Arai

CEO, Rokubunnoni Inc.

After completing a Master's degree in Management Engineering at Tokyo University of Science in 2013, Shingo Arai worked as an engineer, data scientist, and data analyst at multiple companies in the web, app, and advertising industries. He entered the cryptocurrency and blockchain space around 2017, founded Rokubunnoni Inc. in January 2018, and launched Crypto Times — a blockchain-focused media outlet — in February 2018. With approximately 9 years in the industry, his expertise spans DeFi, L1/L2 protocols, tokenomics, ZKP, and domestic/international regulatory trends. He actively conducts on-chain asset management and research. He has authored and supervised hundreds of articles, spoken at conferences in Japan and abroad, served as a DeFi investment seminar instructor, and operated KOL ambassador programs.

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