Solana Decentralized Finance Ecosystem Analysis: Main Products and Development Trends

According to the latest report, the trading volume of Solana's Decentralized Finance continues to grow, with the daily average spot DEX trading volume significantly rising to $1.5 billion. This growth is primarily driven by Memecoin trading. Solana has become a hub for retail and Memecoin traders due to its extremely low transaction fees and fast transaction confirmations. Against the backdrop of the rising SOL price, Solana's total locked value has also increased to $4.311 billion. Similar to other public chains, Solana's TVL mainly comes from DEX, LST, lending platforms, and perpetual contract trading.

Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

Decentralized exchanges typically operate around specific ecosystems, particularly for non-EVM chains like Solana.

| Project | TVL ( billion USD) | Circulating Market Cap ( billion USD) | FDV ( billion USD) | 24h Trading Volume ( billion USD) | |---------|-----------|------------|-----------|---------------| | Raydium | 9.65 | 4.58 | 9.65 | 6.50 | | Jupiter | 5.96 | 11.72 | 86.82 | 8.18 | | Orca | 2.36 | 1.07 | 2.68 | 5.96 |

Raydium

Raydium allows users to create liquidity pools, a feature that has facilitated the launch of a large number of meme coins. Raydium was once the project with the highest TVL in the Solana ecosystem, at approximately $965 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of around $1.162 billion.

However, with the rise of other meme coin issuance platforms, Raydium's dominance may face challenges. If these new platforms start to build their own DEXs, Raydium may be more significantly affected.

Jupiter

Jupiter, as a liquidity aggregator, can find the best price routes across major DEX and AMM on Solana, minimizing slippage and transaction fees. It is not only a leading DEX platform but also offers decentralized perpetual contract trading, supporting leverage of up to 100x.

Users can participate as traders or liquidity providers. JLP holders can receive most of the fees generated by the perpetual exchange, which are directly reinvested into JLP, increasing the value of JLP.

Jupiter has also launched the MEME market mining tool APE, helping users discover newly launched tokens and conduct risk assessments.

Orca

Orca is known for its "human-centric DEX" slogan and has long been at the forefront of Solana DEXs. It offers a concentrated liquidity automated market-making mechanism similar to Uniswap V3 - Whirlpools.

Under this model, liquidity providers can concentrate liquidity in specific price ranges, improving capital efficiency and earning more market-making profits.

Liquid Staking (LST)

The demand for liquid staking among users on Solana is relatively low, mainly because there is no minimum staking amount requirement on Solana, and the relatively low price of SOL lowers the barrier to becoming a validator.

| Project | LST | APY | TVL ( billion USD ) | Circulating Market Cap | FDV | |------------|---------|------|------------|-------|------------| | Jito | JitoSOL | 8.26% | 17.05 | 295 million | 2.374 billion | | Marinade | mSOL | 7.44% | 14.13 | 27.41 million | 101 million | | BlazeStake | bSOL | 7.06% | 2.75 | Unknown | 6.83 million |

Jito (JTO)

After launching the airdrop points program in September 2023, Jito quickly became a leading project in the field. JTO's TVL is $1.705 billion, making it the project with the highest TVL in the Solana ecosystem. The staking APY for Jito SOL is currently 8.26%, which includes Solana staking yields and MEV revenue sharing.

Marinade

Marinade is more popular in native staking, with a higher APY, making it a leading project in the ecosystem with a locked amount of $1.413 billion. Although its locked amount is similar to Jito's, its market cap and FDV are vastly different, which may indicate that $MNDE has certain growth potential.

BlazeStake

BlazeStake is the second largest LST project in the Solana ecosystem, with a TVL of approximately $275 million. The estimated staking APY is currently 7.06%, slightly lower than Jito. Its FDV is $6.87 million, which shows a significant gap compared to Jito's $2.387 billion, possibly reflecting growth potential, while also indicating that the ecosystem is primarily composed of memecoin players.

Lending

Save

Save (formerly known as Solend) is an algorithmic decentralized lending protocol on Solana. It aims to provide faster and lower-cost services compared to traditional lending products.

Save once experienced an oracle attack targeting the stablecoin USDH, resulting in bad debts of 1.26 million dollars, but later full compensation was made. This incident highlights the importance of oracles in the Decentralized Finance ecosystem.

Currently, Save uses the PYTH oracle to provide price data and market data for various assets.

Derivatives

Derivatives are financial contracts that derive value from underlying assets, used to manage risk and speculate on future market trends. Major derivatives protocols on Solana include Drift, Flash Trade, and Zeta.

| Project | TVL ( million USD) | FDV | |--------------|------------|------------| | Drift | 3.6 | 530 million | | Flash Trade | 0.1469 | 550 million | | Zeta Markets | 0.097 | Not Issued |

Drift

Drift is a multifunctional integrated DEX that offers pre-market trading, 20x leverage, and collateralized lending features. It is supported by Multicoin Capital and has attracted over 15,000 users within six months, with a trading volume exceeding $10 billion.

Flash Trade

Flash Trade is a decentralized spot and contract exchange focused on the Solana network, characterized by low trading fees and minimal price impact. It employs a unique multi-asset pool system and an innovative NFT structure to enhance user engagement.

Zeta Markets

Zeta Markets is a Decentralized Finance derivatives platform aimed at popularizing derivatives trading by providing liquidity, undercollateralized derivatives options, and futures trading. It offers two core products, DEX and FLEX, simplifying the derivatives trading experience.

PYTH

PYTH is the main oracle on the Solana chain, with many innovations compared to traditional oracles. It is not only applicable to the Solana chain but can also be applied to other blockchains, offering enormous development potential.

Conclusion

The DeFi ecosystem of Solana is rapidly developing, with new projects constantly emerging. While mature products have their advantages, emerging products can also quickly attract users by improving user interfaces, enhancing user education, and building communities. As more innovative products appear, the DeFi ecosystem of Solana will become more prosperous and diverse.