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Right here at Lightspeed, we’re not followers of measuring protocol success by the favored metrics of energetic addresses or complete worth locked.
As a substitute, charges is usually a helpful measure of demand for various apps and companies. Blockchain addresses and TVL are playable, however charges are actual funds that change fingers to do one thing onchain, at the least in principle. So listed here are this yr’s high 10 Solana protocols by value, primarily based on DeFiLlama information as of December 27.
1. Raydium – $648 million
It was a banner yr for decentralized change Solana, which capitalized on the memecoin fever that contaminated the crypto world for a lot of 2024. Some accused the app of being a venue the place memecoins may create pretend quantity to look extra official, however the numbers inform a transparent story. Raydium raised fairly a couple of charges.
2. Jito – $633 million
Jito’s Jito-Solana consumer made MEV changes and have become a go-to for a lot of validators utilizing Solana’s software program. Jito takes 5% of the MEV suggestions that customers pay to transact on Solana – which has turn out to be an enormous quantity this yr as memecoins have elevated the demand for paying MEV suggestions and land transactions on the blockchain.
3. Pump.enjoyable — $308 million
In lower than a yr, memecoin launch platform pump.enjoyable has raked in additional than $300 million in charges. Learn that sentence once more. If we have discovered something this yr, it is that crypto customers actually Actual like to take a position on tokens.
4. Foton – $248 million
The Solana buying and selling platform Photon additionally rode the memecoin wave price 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars}. Photon gives memecoin feeds for customers to view, however its actual calling card is velocity. Photon claims that its information is available in 15 instances sooner than DEX Screener, and that it gives a “fast purchase” function to scale back friction throughout buying and selling.
5. bloXroute — $136 million
This one was a little bit of a head-scratcher for me at first, as I hadn’t heard bloXroute talked about a lot within the context of Solana. The infrastructure firm gives a blockchain distribution community and service provider APIs which might be largely marketed as a manner for retailers to get Solana transactions sooner.
6. Trojan Horse – $121 million
Trojan gives a preferred Telegram bot that permits customers to create a Solana pockets and purchase and promote cryptocurrencies, all inside the messaging app.
7. BONKbot — $118 million
The group behind the favored Solana memecoin launched BONKbot as a Telegram buying and selling bot, indicating that the bear market memecoin’s creators may need some technical expertise as effectively.
8. Marinade – $88 million
Marinade gives the third largest Solana liquid staking token after choices from Jito and Binance. This yr it debuted “Marinade v2,” which introduced an public sale mechanism to its stake pool in hopes of accelerating yields and wooing establishments. Some accused Marinade of enlisting sandwich attackers within the course of.
9. BullX – $85 million
BullX is one other memecoin buying and selling platform. It markets itself as providing the “quickest indexing,” which is the method of constructing blockchain information readable – and one thing Coinbase has struggled with in current weeks.
10. Kamino – $81 million
Kamino is a DeFi protocol that has risen to over $2 billion in TVL by 2024. The app is standard for its lending function, main some to match it to the Aave or Solana. Notably, Kamino was dwelling to many of the liquidity incentives doled out to drive adoption of PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin on Solana.