Bulk, the Solana perp DEX that opened its mainnet by invitation on 5 September, launched Season 1 of "The Challenger Series" on 10 October 2026. According to the Bulk docs, the regular season runs for eight weeks, Saturday to Saturday, and ends on 5 December 2026. All traders with Trading AURA are entered automatically; market makers receiving Tier 2+ rebates in a given week and accounts flagged in wash-trading or Sybil checks are excluded.
Each week traders are ranked by the Trading AURA earned that week (referral AURA does not count) and sorted into leagues: Challenger (top 25, 45% of the pool plus Playoff qualification), Diamond (ranks 26 to 100, 25%), Platinum and Gold (down to the top 25%, sharing 30%), with Silver and Bronze earning nothing. The prize pool is 12.5% of Bulk's net revenue (trading fees minus maker rebates), paid in USDC and split pro rata by AURA within each league; the minimum claim is $5. A weekly "Gauntlet" redistributes 50,000 AURA out of the weekly 1,000,000 ("No extra AURA is minted"). Playoff rules will be announced before 5 December.
Two things the docs do not say: what AURA converts into, and whether a token exists. Third-party airdrop guides speculate about a BULK token and a user allocation, but Bulk has published no tokenomics, so we treat AURA as points with no stated value. The exchange program was audited by Zellic in July 2026; access still requires an invite.
For traders, the design is transparent in one respect: rewards come from fees actually earned rather than from emissions, so the pool scales with real activity. Whether the leagues attract or merely rotate volume is something our data refresh will show over the season.