Trojan vs. Axiom 2026: Front-Running Scandals, Real Rewards, and Transparency

Intro

Success in onchain crypto trading is about one thing: an edge. And because the market always evolves, infrastructure providers need to iterate or risk their user base moving elsewhere. Today’s powerhouse trading tools are web-based, non-custodial trading platforms.

For a season, the space was flooded by competitors battling it out for supremacy. The warzone has diminished drastically, and now only a handful of interfaces are even worth considering. 

This will be the first in a short series placing the competition up against Trojan’s terminal. We’re aiming to be as honest and objective as possible by providing pros and cons on both sides so that you can make the best decision for where to engage in your trading activity. But we aren't pulling any punches either.

We’re starting with Axiom. Let’s get in the trenches.

Who is Axiom?

Axiom was originally launched by Henry Zhang and Preston Ellis in February of 2025 as a Y Combinator startup. Since inception their volume ticked up until May of 2025, when it peaked at just under a half-billion dollars of single day volume. Since then, volume has dropped dramatically to between $100-300 million. Daily active users and daily total trades have also slowed considerably. This could point to a slow down in the Solana ecosystem as a whole, however it may also reflect users not finding what they are looking for with Axiom or users being turned off by the recent combination of insiders front-running customers or the surprise KYC measures early last year. We'll cover these in detail in the "cons" section.

Axiom charges a flat 1% fee on all trade executions, though there are cashback incentives which we will cover in the next section which shift the net cost of trading with their platform.

What are Axiom’s Pros?

We’re going to check off some of the interesting features of Axiom. They will be curated to things that either seem unique or of likely interest to users. It’s not a comprehensive list of features and we don’t plan to cover most of the stuff that is just standard tooling, like limit orders and adjustable slippage.

Yield Farming

They are working with a yield provider in order to offer “passive income”. The claim is a variable APY (a little under 9% at the time of writing) on staked USDC. Some might see this as an excellent opportunity to skim a little extra off of their idle cash holdings. This one could probably fall both ways. You would really only want to make use of this if you are bearish SOL, otherwise you miss out on the upside native gains. 

Custom-ish X

Twitter trackers have become practically standard equipment. Socials are a leading avenue for discovering metas and catching alpha, so instantly feeding in posts from select or top accounts can mean the difference between catching a good entry and missing significant profits. Axiom’s X Tracker provides a little extra edge by making it customizable, but it only lets you pick from a list of 1500 Axiom provided accounts. It does not allow you to compile a completely customized list of Twitter accounts.

Live Stream Memes

Pumpfun has made a big deal out of the livestreaming movement. As such, they have a whole category of their platform dedicated to coins that are tied to livestreaming. Axiom has a dedicated section of their platform for these coins. All well and good, but this is essentially just a glorified filter. You cannot view the livestream from within the Axiom platform itself, you still have to go to Pump for that.

Seeking Vision

Axiom’s Vision tab essentially serves the purpose of a filtered leaderboard. You can see a most winning traders list of KOLs, of all Axiom traders, and of wallets you have chosen to track. The benefits to this feature are certainly two-sided. On the one hand, users might be able to find some good wallets to track and copy trade (if that were a feature…) and on the other the KOLs see benefits by collecting clout to gain more social credit.

There are a handful of other pieces that may or may not be of interest which we won’t detail but merely mention:

• They have a beta turbo mode, which is a nonce account that auto-adjusts priority and bribe values.

• Re-use of image counter

• Custom RPC and server selector

• Many token filtering options

What are Axiom’s Cons?

In a similar vein to the set of pros above, we’re going to provide some detail on issues that may either be of concern for users, or even potentially deal-breakers, depending on what you are looking to get out of a trading platform. 

Insider Front-Running Scandal

A recent exposé by Zachxbt alleged insiders at Axiom using internal data to be able to front-run customers of Axiom. It was subsequently confirmed and admitted by both Axiom and one of the individuals involved. A breach of confidence of this size, a company trading against their own userbase indicates a number of serious issues: they don't have quality internal monitoring of their employees, they don't care unless the optics are bad, or they are granting access too broadly to untrustworthy individuals. Any or all of these make should cause traders to deeply consider moving their activity elsewhere. Especially when the rewards structure is so lackluster.

Privacy First / KYC Scandal

We realize that not all participants in crypto come from or even know the core pillars that launched the whole movement, but the idea of being able to transact pseudonymously was an early desire in cryptocurrency circles. While Axiom does not require users to sign up with their Google accounts or email addresses, even placing the option in front of new users sets the stage for poor privacy practices. Additionally, at the close of 2025 a scandal blew up all over social media when it seemed Axiom was holding users' rewards hostage in an attempt to collect personally identifying information: name, address, SSN.

Limited Rewards Circle

Axiom provides only three tiers of referral rewards (30% for immediates, then 3%, then 2%). Broader networks always provide greater opportunities for passive income opportunities. 

Copy Trading, DCA, and Autosell are a No-Show

Axiom does not have copy trading, DCA, or autosell. While Autosell may be slightly more advanced, we at Trojan see copy trading and DCA as features that should be automatically included in any trading bot or trading platform for onchain activity. The whole principle behind a webapp is to be a one-stop-shop for all your needs. Requiring users to pursue a third-party app for such foundational tasks seems like poor prioritization.

Thin Documentation

Before we fully dive into this, we have to mention Axiom’s documentation. While not a mess, doing research for this blog was made far more difficult by the lack of adequate detail. A number of features are either barely mentioned or are completely missing forcing users to either figure it out themselves or pester the discord mods for insight.

Over-Crowded UI

Just because you can provide data on something doesn’t mean you should. In a UI which attempts to provide large volumes of instantly digestible information, finely tuned organization is essential. Axiom’s interface feels not just crowded, but at times almost haphazard, like they develop a new data stream and don’t know where to put it, so they just find empty space and inject a new icon. The communication of data is many times at least as important as having it.

Incomplete Perps Offering

Axiom has native perpetuals trading through Hyperliquid. You can run BTC at up to 40x and they have a list of around 200 assets available for trading, though a large number are quite obscure and have very little volume. However, there is no way to select between Cross Margin and Isolated, positions are always Isolated, preventing users from truly putting their balance to work. Anyone who regularly makes use of perpetuals understands the importance of having both options available.

Hidden Level-Up Requirements  

In order to move up the reward ranks on Axiom, which brings an increase in the cashback percentage earned, users must trade increasing volumes. The highest level of cashback a user can achieve is 0.25%. There are seven levels, but there is no place where the progression requirements are laid out plainly that we could find. Users deserve transparency.

Another Points Program?

Similar to the opaque cashback program, there is a points program that is supposed to grant users "additional benefits and potential future rewards”. But, again, there is nothing laid out anywhere that we could find that actually tells what the rewards are or what benefits arise from earning points. We are not fans of ambiguous points programs.

There are other items which we could make note of, complaints of failed or slow transactions and loading, being logged out of sessions seemingly at random, or just general lag.

Who are we?

Trojan’s terminal is the next level of onchain trading brought to you by the same core team behind Trojan on Solana. We have taken everything we learned through the building and development of the most popular Telegram trading bot in crypto and funneled that knowledge into this new onchain exchange (OEX). 

Trojan also charges a flat 1% fee on all completed trades, and there are cashback and rewards incentives that diminish that net cost for users.

What are our Pros?

We’re going to kind of invert things here. First we’ll discuss where Trojan’s terminal fills the gaps Axiom leaves or provides what Axiom fails to, and then in the Cons section it’s going to be vice versa.

The Best Rewards and Referral Program

Not only do we provide a referral program that extends out to 5 tiers of connections, but we created the first truly gamified onchain exchange rewards program: The Arena. With competitions, lotteries, earning seasons, leaderboards, season questing, and much much more, nothing else on the market even comes close. And to top it all off the progression and potentials are all transparent and immediately available with clear goalposts. No promised-but-not-delivered points systems.

Privacy Centric

Trojan is adamant about not collecting your personally identifiable data (PID). We don’t ask for or want your email or google account or telegram connection. The only way to sign up with us is with a wallet address or a passkey. We don’t control your PID, just like we don’t control your funds.

Autosell

Autosell is easily one of the most powerful tools in all of crypto and Axiom doesn’t have it. It automatically places take-profit and stoploss orders the instant a user buys a token so that portfolio risk is always predetermined and traders can focus on trading instead of watching charts. 

Copy Trading and DCA

It seems odd to even have to make mention of Copy Trading and DCA, but suffice it to say that we offer it. The interface is straight-forward, easy to access, and simple to use. You can even establish a Copy Trade directly from the wallet analysis menu.

Full Perps on Tap

Trojan, like Axiom, has integrated Hyperliquid perpetuals. Unlike Axiom, however, we have provided the ability for users to select between Isolated and Cross Margin trading. This seems like a basic decision. In our opinion, more freedom is pretty much always a better. Additionally, on Trojan you can trade precious metals, FX pairs, commodities, and a whole host of stocks. No one else offers this. Trojan truly provides a complete offering of cross-asset trading.

Thorough Documentation

We don’t want you guessing as to what we provide or how our products work. In order to prevent confusion our documentation hits every detail, every feature, step-by-step. Trojan prides itself on providing in-depth communication so you don’t have to waste your time wondering.

Easy to Read UI/UX

Massive quantities of rapid fire data is no good to you if you can’t digest it. One of the reasons the Trojan terminal’s design is superior is because we agonize over every detail. If we can’t justify the benefit to you of adding another icon, number, or progress bar, we don’t include it. No flashbangs, no casino lights. Neat, orderly, and direct communication, so you can focus on what matters.

There are a number of other areas where Trojan’s OEX provides value that we can make brief mention of:

• We show Pumpfun comments below the charts

• We have holderscan and instant security audits

• We provide a direct Orders page access link

What are our Cons?

Everyone has places where they can potentially improve. So let’s take an honest look at where Trojan could maybe fill things in some.

Staking Elsewhere

In a similar vein to the above, we don’t provide native yield farming…yet. We detailed our thinking above on why this doesn’t seem to be a priority. We’re not sure if user demand for swap SOL into USDC and then locking it up in order to capture a 7-9% yield is really there. If/when we offer this feature, it will be with the most secure provider and with the best, most flexible terms possible for our users. Definitely not something done in a hurry.

X-Tracker

While we feel that our X-Tracker is far more user-friendly and better curated than Axiom’s, we recognize that being able to completely customize the feed so that it can be tailored to each user’s preferences would be a great tool to have. We might roll this one out.

Hyper-Customization

You can’t upload your own sounds or set up infinite themes or do a bunch of the other little nuanced alterations. We may offer greater levels of customization in the future, but we spent an enormous amount of time in design to make the UI comfortable and extreme individualization stood as lower priority than providing top-quality buildout. Themes may be coming in the future.

Which is better?

The million dollar question. Of course, most anyone reading this will think that we’re just going to recommend Trojan. Slow down. First we’re going to give an honest assessment of Axiom, and then we’ll provide recommendations, and you might be surprised.

Brass tacks on Axiom:

• They have a broad user base currently

• They have pushed development in many areas

• Their UI feels rushed and crowded, with pieces appearing shoehorned in

• Their documentation leaves users to mostly figure it out themselves

• Their app lacks what we consider basic tooling

So look, if we didn’t think we were the best choice for most users, then we would be building differently. But that doesn’t mean that we’re perfect for all traders in all situations, so here’s a quick table that provides a breakdown:

Conclusion

Frankly, we think the choice is pretty obvious. And while we covered a lot here, there are plenty of other elements we didn’t even touch, like the opportunities available for greater earning potential with a fresh referral program as opposed to trying to compete with one that has filled with so many participants already. 

Trojan’s terminal is an exceptional onchain platform from a respected and established team. And while we may not have filled every crevice with bells and whistles, we believe that Trojan offers an unmatched experience that is the best in the industry.