Introduction

There have been many bounties for several different networks that ask you to analyse what attracts users to each specific blockchain - but I was never able to do one for Solana! This bounty comes in very handy for this reason, here I will explore what attracts users to Solana, what are the currently growing platforms and protocols, and also what users like to do while they have already joined the network, i.e. do they stake their SOL, buy an NFT with it, or swap it for a different token?

Attractive Platforms

Firstly, I wanted to look at data from DefiLlama in order to see how popular certain platforms have been lately.

Let's firstly look at the top 10 protocols sorted by their TVLs.

As we can see, it all looks like a red sea - we are in a bear market after all. However, the TVLs of those platforms are still quite significant, so let's see what each one of the top 3 platforms has on offer.

Serum

Serum is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and ecosystem that brings unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance. In summary, it allows users to swap and trade for certain tokens, which all have a different 'power', such as the one shown below. What is attractive to users about it is that they can trade for different tokens in order to unlock interesting possibilities, such as being able to have automated trading with Bonifida, or create an index with Symmetry.

Solend

The second platform with the biggest TVL is Solend, which is an algorithmic, decentralized protocol for lending and borrowing built on Solana. Current DeFi products are often understood to be slow and expensive, what is attractive to users about Solend is that it claims to be 100x faster and 100x cheaper compared to other DeFi lending and borrowing platforms. Solend also aims to be the easiest to use and the most secure solution on Solana.

Raydium

Lastly, Raydium is an on-chain order book AMM powering the evolution of DeFi. It allows users to swap, stake, or provide liquidity to certain pools. It has attracted users thanks to its big variety of pools available.

Platforms with spiked interest in the past 30 days

Let's now have a quick look at the platforms which have significantly grown in the past 30 days.

Swim Protocol has been the most successful in the past month, with the total TVL being just over $40M. It allows users to transfer tokens across chains via multi-token liquidity pools and Solana’s Wormhole. It has been quite successful as it provides users with no delays during transfers, no need for centralized bridges or wrapped assets!

Digging a step deeper - time for data analysis!

Let's now have a look at what users have been doing in the past 30 days - whether they were swapping their SOL for something else, buying NFTs, or staking their SOL for some rewards...

Conclusion

Firstly, I must say that I really enjoyed being able to pick what to write in this dashboard, i.e, being given the freedom of choosing the topic that sounded the most interesting to me. Especially since I was not able to look into what drives users into Solana before, this dashboard was interesting to write. I hope there will be more bounties like this in the future!

In conclusion, this dashboard has looked into which Solana protocols drive the most interest amongst users. I have looked at the top protocols based on their TVLs as well as their transaction counts, and as the final part, I have looked at what new users are doing when they onboard the Solana network.

As we can see here, the biggest part taken in this pie chart belongs to the 'other' category, which is not useful. We can see that 26.2% of users in the past month have staked their SOL, but we don't really see what else has been a popular activity. Let's see next which protocols have been used the most in the past 30 days.

The next step is to look at the daily charts to see what users were doing on a daily basis.

Daily transactions - what are users doing?

Here we can see more clearly how the first pie chart came to be, i.e. the daily outlook into what users are doing on Solana. We can see the dominance of 'other' category, which again, is not very insightful. It includes transactions such as any other interactions with the network, such as transfers, or any contract interactions that are not exactly specified etc.

Digging even deeper - what are NEW users doing?

As a final part of this dashboard, let's investigate what new users are doing when they onboard Solana.

Jupiter Aggregator v2 has been the most popular choice for new users in the past month. We can also see that Serum Dex v3 and Raydium Dex v3 have also been quite popular - which confirms my earlier findings from DefiLlama.

Jupiter Aggregator v2 together with Serum and Raydium are still the top 3 winners when it comes to the count of transactions made by new users. This again confirms my earlier findings and also confirms the hypothesis of how attractive these protocols really are!