Deribit has completed a major upgrade to its exchange infrastructure, replacing its Classic matching engine with a new system called Starbase. The upgrade delivers substantial improvements in order execution speed and fairness.
Performance Gains
Starbase reduced median request-response latency from 4.7 milliseconds to 76 microseconds, representing approximately a 61-fold improvement. The enhancement extends to the slowest orders as well: the 99th percentile latency dropped from 124 milliseconds to 234 microseconds, an improvement of roughly 531 times.
The new engine processes more than 100,000 orders per second with sub-millisecond matching. Post-launch data showed Starbase handling a peak of 23,836 requests in a single second.
Enhanced Order Fairness
Beyond speed, Starbase enforces stricter FIFO ordering, ensuring that orders placed at the same price level are filled in the sequence they reached the exchange. The engine also provides equal access for co-located traders at LD4.
Technical Infrastructure
Starbase introduces low-latency APIs using SBE, or Simple Binary Encoding, over both TCP and UDP multicast. This compact message format is designed for rapid transmission, while multicast capability allows the exchange to broadcast market data to multiple recipients simultaneously rather than individually.
Deployment Timeline
The upgrade follows Deribit's acquisition by Coinbase and is part of the platform's integration with Coinbase International Exchange. A testnet launched in April 2026, allowing traders to evaluate their systems against the new engine. Production deployment occurred in early July 2026, with detailed performance metrics published on September 21, 2026.
