About the Editor: Spencer Noon is an independent angel investor. Looking to get in touch? DM him on Telegram or reply to this email and say hi 👋
EXCLUSIVE ONCHAIN COVERAGE:
DEXs 💱
① Orca 👑
👥 Lewis Harland | Website | Dashboard
📈 Orca facilitates >40% of Jupiter aggregator volume, >48% Solana DEX market share
Orca is a Solana automated market maker (DEX) launched in February 2021. To date, the exchange has facilitated over $40.8B volume, generating $72.4m in fees. Weekly volume hovers at ~$1B, after peaking at >$3B during the Solana DeFi and JUP airdrop momentum. Despite volume fluctuations, Orca has consistently dominated as the leading Solana DEX despite increasing competition — the DEX commands a ~45% market share today.
The % of Jupiter aggregator volume sourced from Orca >40% and has been generally trending up from ~22% since June last year. Given Jupiter users still pay for Orca LP fees on the backend, what has been good for Jupiter has also been good for Orca.
Since January, the DAO treasury now takes ~12% of fees from high-fee pools (>0.3% rate), taking in $3m+ in fees. 88% of total 30D trading fees are driven by high-fee pools but only account for 16% of total volume. Capturing revenue from the more esoteric asset pools has been economically successful.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: DAO treasury fees are programmatically siphoned to the designated treasury address. Leading up to the JUP airdrop event, Orca fees surged as more users traded on Jupiter. In a single treasury income transaction, Orca took in $600k. It signaled that during periods of high volatility and speculation, Orca can generate meaningful income based on its revised economic model that can be directed to future development and the long-term success of the platform.
② Uniswap 🦄
👥 Matías Andrade | Website | Dashboard
📈 Uniswap Has Broken $34B+ in Cumulative Volume in 2024
Since its inception, Uniswap has revolutionized the way people think about trading in crypto, thanks to its seamless token swaps without the need for centralized parties. As we step into 2024, Uniswap's trading volumes have surged past $34 billion, showing strong recovery from the challenges faced in 2023.
Uniswap V3 is one of the most popular DEXs out there and boasts trading pairs with volumes in excess of $100M/mo. The mechanism that allows V3 pools to trade with lower fees, starting at just 0.05%, caters to high volume traders, driving deeper liquidity—a trend distinctly visible in the robust stablecoin markets.
Uniswap V2 continues to be a nurturing ground for newer token pairs thanks to its simple process to list and seed liquidity. While the total volume may not match that of Uniswap V3 — thanks to the latter’s concentrated liquidity model — the diversity of pairs on V2 is notable, as it offers a platform for smaller and often more speculative tokens such as HPOS10I, PEPE, and other meme coins.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: One of the largest swaps in 2024 was worth a staggering $36M on a USDT-USDC V3 pool. This swap funded an MEV bot and later triggered a series of ~23 transactions that cumulatively earned the validator proposing that slot 3.57 ETH. MEV bots act as pressure-relief valves by routing liquidity between different pools and exchanges. Although some see MEV as a negative externality that can adversely affect individual trader's execution, it increases the efficiency of the markets at reacting to price shocks.
③ Jupiter 🐱
👥 Vishesh Choudhry | Website | Dashboard
📈 Jupiter does $50B+ volume in past 12 months, 1.9M+ traders
Just looking back at the past 12 months, Jupiter did $50b in trading volume, about 60% of which was single-trade swaps. Often arbitrage takes the form of a multi-trade transaction. This ticked up significantly starting in December, coinciding with the Jito airdrop announcement on Dec 7. There were large spikes of volume around Christmas 2023, and Feb. 1 2024. Since Dec. 7, we have seen daily volume fluctuate mostly between ~$400M and ~$700M with a few days hitting $1B.
Jupiter recently hit 2M traders (wallets). There have typically been more new than returning wallets month over month. This changed in February, where the number of returning wallets is on track to outpace the number of new wallets interacting with Jupiter. Based on some rudimentary heuristics, it seems ~70% are retail/human traders.
Orca (Whirlpool) has accounted for ~40% of Jupiter's daily trading volume in the past 90 days. Lifinity and then Raydium follow as a close 2nd and 3rd currently around 15% and 12% respectively. The top 5 AMMs account for ~87% of Jupiter volume. Meteora also accounts for ~3.5-4% of volume.
Quick Links: Disclosures
