What is Orca?

---

> Orca is the easiest place to trade cryptocurrency on the Solana blockchain. On Orca, you can trade tokens cheaply, quickly, and confidently (thanks to our Fair Price Indicator). Additionally, you can provide liquidity to one of our liquidity pools, including our concentrated liquidity pools (Whirlpools) to earn trading fees and token emissions. Orca

Orca is a Decentralized Finance App in solana made for people and not programs, it has 2 types of Liquidity Pools Aquafarms and Whirpools but before explaining these let me talk about Uniswap.

The importance of Uniswap in the Decentralized Finance World and Orca DeFi - Whats is an AMM and OrderBook Model?

---

Uniswap was the first and most important Application on Ethereum in implement the concepts of Automated Market Makers (AMMs) and Liquidity Pools (LPs), prior to that users who wanna trade tokens needed to use Applications based on the OrderBook Model such as Etherdelta.

• OrderBook Model: You put the price you want to buy/sell the tokens, and the application matches the orders from the buyers and sellers based on a set of rules.
  • So you need a buyer and a seller willing to trade the token at the same price to make a Transaction here.
• Automated Market Makers Model: The Application set you a price to Buy/Sell your tokens, based on a Formula (Usually explained in the Specific DeFi Docs).
  • You need a Liquidity Pool with Liquidity (Tokens), for the application (AMM) to give you a price and make a Transaction here.

The Time to trade your tokens using the AMM Model was immediately in comparison with the Orderbook Model and Uniswap became a pillar for DeFi in the Web3, and the Orca Aquafarms are based on Uniswap Legacy of Liquidity Pools.

What is the relation between Uniswap and Orca Whirpools? - How Liquidity and Concentrated Liquidity Pools Works?

---

In May 2021 Uniswap V3 was launched, and focused on maximizing capital efficiency when compare to Uniswap V2 by introducing a new concept, Concentrated Liquidity.

• When Liquidity Providers provides liquidity to a Uniswap v2 Pool their liquidity is distributed evenly along the price curve.
  • For example, Liquidity Pools of Stablecoins only uses 0.5% of capital (liquidity) for trading between $0.99 ↔ $1.01 prices and that 0.5% capital is the one making the most Trading Fees for the Liquidity Pool, and a 99.5% of the remaining capital is never used.
• Concentrated Liquidity Pools from Uniswap V3, solves this problem allowing Liquidity Providers to set a price curves for their liquidity, in other words set a price range to their assets in the Pool.
  • So when users trade in that pool, they trade against the combined liquidity which comes from all the prices curves that overlap at the specific price point.
    • And Liquidity Providers earn trading fees that are directly proportional to their liquidity contribution in a given range, resulting in a better capital efficiency for liquidity providers.

Orca Whirpools are based on Uniswap Legacy of Concentrated Liquidity Pools.

Orca Aquafarms and Whirpools are based on the Liquidity and Concentrated Liquidity pools from Uniswap v3

---

Yes, the concept behind is the same and almost every DeFi or DEX is using the Uniswap Legacy with differents Formulas and Incentives for their users, but Uniswap doesn’t reach Solana Blockchain so thats the reason DeFi Such as Orca are Important.

Today we’ll focus only in Whirpools so let me explain how it works.

Orca Whirpools

---

Users can add their own tokens and create their Whirpools in Orca, but making these type of Pools requires a high capital, and knowledge to make it work. - Orca Whirpool Creation Tutorial

Users can add their Liquidity to Whirpools in Orca and set the price range using 2 different Options. - Orca Liquidity Provider FAQs

• Preset Price Range: Let Orca Application set your price range, using the users feedback.
• Custom Range: Set your own personal preferences, set a price range you can adapt to price movements.

In Both cases you can ask ORCA to notify you when the price range moves and you stopped providing Liquidity so you can rearrange the Price Ranges.

Concentrated Liquidity Pools/Whirpools Tokens are different than Liquidity Pools Tokens.

Liquidity Pools Tokens: Works as an ERC-20 Token which you can stake to farm rewards, or Trade to recover your original Liquidity

Concentrated Liquidity Pools Tokens: Works as an ERC-721 Token (NFT) Which you can trade (as an NFT) losing your rewards and liquidity or Using your NFT To withdraw your liquidity and then burn it or not (At this point the NFT no longer represents any liquidity).

So Now that you know the concept of Whirpools let’s dig into the Analysis.

Uniswap Information and example of concentrated liquidity pool from Finematics.

Summary

---

Orca Whirpools Activity Correlates with 2 major events:

• FTX Crash: Losing an important amount of TVL, but reaching the highest amount of Swaps and Liquidity Adjusting Transactions of all the months in 2022.
  • Although $SOL lost a lot of their value, the Solana Staking Tokens (From Liquidity Staking Projects) helped a lot to raise the TVL From Solana Whirpools Again.
  • Lido, Marinade and BlazeStake where the Liquidity Staking Projects with most activity and Whirpools in ORCA.
• BONK: Orca Whirpools first January was in 2023, and BONK really help every inch of the Solana Blockchain to reached their best performance after all the downtrending followed by the previous event.
  • Sadly the TVL and $USD Volume didn’t reached the same amounts as before the FTX Crash, but BONK Compensates this with one of the best APR for most of the Orca Whirpools, and raising the $SOL Price again.

Orca Whirpools presents a Recent Spike in Popularity, with January 2023 being the best Month for New Users and Liquidity Providers

• USDC: Whirpools with this token are the most stable and presents the highest TVL, and Swap Activity from Arbitrage Swappers, The Best pair for Whirpools were BONK, SOL and USDH.
• SOL: Although most of the TVL was lost after FTX Incident, SOL Raises again with the help of every token in Solana, having the most activity, swaps, $USD Volume, $USD Fees, Adjusting Transactions from Liquidity Providers, and Popularity of all the Whirpools, It pairs really well with all the tokens, but the best are BONK, USDC, (Staked SOL Tokens from Liquidity Staking Projects).
• BONK: Without a Doubt this token was the Heart for the Solana Activity in January 2023, people behind this Token knowed when to launch and aidrop their token, and thanks for the New Year Bullish trend, this token became one with the highest Price Growth ratio, and the one behind the biggest amount of $USD Fees winnings in the Orca Whirpools. It pairs really well with SOL, USDC, and (Staked Sol Tokens)

Liquidity Providers from Orca Whirpools were adjusting their range prices more frequently than Uniswap.

• 🐳**==Orca==**: Since January the Activity from the Liquidity Providers reached their best daily numbers, and the amount of times these Liquidity providers had to adjust their prices during the BONK Price Spike at January 5 singlehandly beats the activity from Uniswap.
• 🦄**==Uniswap==**: Uniswap v3 Concentrated Liquidity Pools Activity is stable, and the minimum values it reached are bigger than the minimum values from Orca Whirpools, but didn’t have any singular day with a powerful Spike, although the recent bullish tendency for BTC and ETH may rise the activity from Liquidity Providers, it wasn’t enough to beat Orca at their best in January.

Yes i have to use a whale emoji because there isn’t a Orca emoji. Thanks for reading

Made by Popex404, twitter link here.

🔎Orca Whirpools - General Metrics #3 Weekly and Tokens Analysis 🔍

---

• Active Users in Orca follows the same trend every week, the curve difference is more visible for Whirpools and New Users.
  • But all 3 metrics curve spiked at the last 3 weeks showing the explosive reaction of users to BONK.
• Most of the Whirpools in ORCA have between 2 to 9 Whirpools, but from that point we can see some really active Tokens such as:
  • Lido, Marinade and Blazestake Staked Sol which are the most active Projects regarding Liquidity Staking in Solana in the last months.
  • USDH from Hubble Protocol being the second most favorite Stablecoin in Solana,
  • ORCA Token from ORCA and Wrapped Bitcoin.
  • And Finally BONK, SOL and USDC being the favorite Tokens in the Solana Ecosystem.
• FRONK is following behind these popular Tokens, trying to raise the same hype as BONK, but it seems that their arrival was late.
  • FRONK is a MEMECOIN of the MEMECOIN BONK, with the intention of capitalizing attention from BONK investors using Pepe the FROG MEME.

---

📊Orca Whirpools - General Metrics📊

Bonk Token, the Pitcher of Solana Spikes in 2023

---

BONK was a MEMECOIN airdropped since December 25, 2022 in different SOLANA Communities, it didn’t take too long to become really viral and one of the key points was their launch prior to 2023.

• January is always a good month for bullish trend, and being at the center of attention, this token price presented an explosive growth.

Liquidity Pools for BONK became really popular and presented APR of over 999% in ORCA Pools, so part of ORCA Whirpool Analysis will considerate BONK token and dates as key ponts to showcase this analysis.

Because Bonk Activity started earlier for some users, we’ll use December 24, 2022 to mark the After and Before the ==BONK== in Orca Whirpools.

🔎Orca Whirpools - General Metrics #1 Monthly Analysis🔍

---

• With a Simple look at the Monthly Activity, January 2023 a Month which is still incomplete beats every other month performance in New Whirpools created and New/Existing Sharks (Users) interacting with the Whirpool.
• Since BONK Release in December 24, 2022, the amount of New Whirpools really spiked and more than 50 of these are from Solana Tokens with BONK.
  • The Average Daily Amount of New Users interacting with Whirpools in Orca increased in 2820.
  • The Monthly New User Percentage rises above the 50%.
• And the Growth Rate for ==New Users increased from -1% to 72% (73% Increase)== and the Growth Rate for ==New Whirpools from 11.5% to 31% (19.5%) Increase==.

These Monthly Numbers will continue increasing and Orca Whirpools will end this month as their best since.

🔎Orca Whirpools - General Metrics #2 Daily Analysis (Since December 2022)🔍

---

• We can see that Whirpools of BONK where released days before their launch, 1 at December 20 (Probably for Test Purposes) and 2 at December 24 (Preparing for the Launch).
• One significant Insight is that after the first creation of a Whirpool with BONK the day after (December 21) 12 differents Whirpool were created, with the first significant spike in Created Whirpools Growth Rate.
• December 25, when BONK was launched there is a significant Spike for Sharks (Users):
  • A growth rate of 67% active sharks in comparison with the day before.
  • A new user percentage spike of 22%, ==being the first day of December having more than 1000 new users.
• January 2 was the day with most Growth For Active users (92% more active users than New year) and abig Spike for the New user percentage with 32.5%.

That Uptrending started at New Year, and finally in January 5 the amount of new users and old users reached their spike with more than 10k of New users and 26k of Old Users.

• Since December 30 there is at least 1 BONK Whirpool created daily.

🔎Orca Whirpools - General Metrics #5 Total Value Locked (TVL) Analysis 🔍

---

• We can see that after the FTX and Alameda Incident the total TVL from the Whirpools in Orca suffers a lost of more than $15,000,000 (USD) going from 28M to 12M in less than 1 week.
  • This TVL comes from their Whirpools only, their Liquidity Pools (Aquafarms) probably presented the same or worse lost in TVL.
  • The Growth Rate during this incident peaked at -39% of TVL (November 8) in comparison with the day before
• Bonk Arrival raises their total TVL from 14M to 17M, so is matter of time until the TVL from the Whirpools recover.
• At the start of the New Year the TVL from the Whirpool BONK↔SOL became significant reaching 2M of TVL and beating the Stablecoin Whirpool of USDH↔USDC in some days.
  • But Since January 11, the TVL from this Whirpool (BONK↔SOL) decreased reaching values behind 1M.
• USDC Whirpools presents the higher TVL from Whirpools in January 13.
  • USDC ↔ USDH is the best Whirpool in TVL and because both are the popular stablecoins in Solana, this Whirpool TVL will be in the top for a longer time.
  • The main reason USDC Whirpools are at the top is because of the FTX/Alameda Crash, prior to that date SOL Whirpools presented the highest TVL with USDC↔SOL at the Top with more than 3M.
    • But after the Crash TVL from all the Pools crashed to less than $1,000,000 per top Whirpool, it took a while but thanks to BONK and the different Staked SOL Tokens, Solana raised again in TVL

🔎Orca Whirpools - General Metrics #4 Liquidity Provider Analysis 🔍

---

• In the Monthly New/Existing users the amount of New Liquidity Providers reached their biggest amount in January 2023 with 3447 new Liquidity providers from the 3460 New Liquidity Providers which arrived at Orca after the BONK Launch.
  • The New user percentage reached the same values as May 2022 with 72%.
  • January 2023 is the best month for New and Old Liquidity Providers reaching their biggest spike before the first half of the Month.
• Since December 24, BONK Whirpools presents the biggest amount in New Liquiditry Providers with SOL↔BONK Whirpool at the Top.
  • USDC↔BONK also have a significant amount of Liquidity Providers.
  • A lot of differents Tokens such as (bSOL, Orca and unlabeled tokens) launched their own BONK pools receiving New Liquidity Providers.

It’s seems that New Whirpools of (USDC/SOL↔BONK) with different Fee rate are receiving NEW Liquidity Providers.

---

📊Orca Whirpools - Moving Actions of Liquidity Providers📊

🔎Orca Whirpools - Moving Actions of Liquidity Providers Analysis 🔍

---

• It’s seems that that the amount of Monthly Whirpools Liquidity Adjustment is similar for both options, activity in November during the FTX/Alameda Crash was significant with more than 54k of Adjustment, which most of them may come from week when the SOL price crashed.
  • November is the Month with more adjustment from 2022.
• But January 2023 in less than Half of their days surpassed the Adjustment activity from November.
  • The main reason is behind the explosive growth of BONK, in the case of SOL during the crash, although their price crashed by a lot than BONK, the price change ratio was significant different for SOL Than BONK.
    • BONK price Change ratio move it between the 2 to 4 digits (XX% to XXXX%) meanwhile SOL Change ratio was small in comparison during the FTX Crash, because of that Liquidity Providers from BONK were constantly changing the prices to receive the Transaction Fees Rewards.
• Since the launch of BONK, Whirpools of BONK↔USDC/SOL were the one with most price changes, with BONK↔SOL having almost 1/2 of the total Price Changes.
  • BONK Price really affected other Altcoins price in Solana specially SOL, so it isn’t a surprise that SOL↔USDC is at third place, and SOL↔BONK at the first place.
    • Liquidity Providers were constantly changing their prices during the rise and the fall of BONK Price.

---

📊Orca Whirpools - Whirpools Swap Performance📊

---

📊Orca Whirpools vs Uniswap v3 Concentrated Liquidity Pools ==Since December 23, 2022== - by Liquidity Adjustments 📊

🔎Orca Whirpools - Whirpools Swap Performance - Analysis🔍

---

• Fees: At the Beginning 0.25% Fee Whirpools are the only available, but when Whirpools of 0.3% appeared most people started using that whirpools, and they’re the ones providing most $USD in Fees, During the SOL Crash swappers started using 0.05% pools because the SOLANA Red was really busy, and the need for cheaper transactions fees was evident, It’s seems that during the BONK hype people started using the 1% Whirpools and they’re the ones which provide most $USD in transactions for the Liquidity Providers.
  • Swaps: The amount of daily Swaps in Whirpools is really high during the SOL Crash, but didn’t reached the same amount as when the BONK Price reached their spike.
  • $USD Fees: The amount of Fees coming from Whirpools reached values that never the whirpools seen before skyrocketing the APR to more than 999%.
  • $USD Volume: In December the Swapped Volume was really low with the exception of December 5, but after New Year Reached the same values as the FTX Incident.
• Whirpools: Although BONK was at the center of attention the SOL ↔ USDC Whirpool was the most used to Swap, by heavy DEX traders looking to winning with Arbitrage Swaps, BONK↔USDC/SOL where the pools with most $USD Volume during the spike of January 5, but after BONK price decreased, SOL ↔ USDC Whirpool presented the highest $USD Volume. it was SOL ↔ BONK the Whirpool with most $USD in transaction Fees.

Swap Activity in Whirpools followed the same trend as the BONK Price.

🔎Orca Whirpools vs Uniswap v3 Concentrated Liquidity Pools - by Liquidity Adjustments - Analysis🔍

---

We can see that in the past weeks Orca Whirpool has been more active, as explained before January 2023 is an important month for bullish trends and a lot of activity is present in that month.

• Liquidity Providers and Adjustments: Although the Charts seems bigger for Uniswap at first view, the ranges of both are completely different.
  • 🐳Orca: During January the amount of Active Liquidity Providers spiked at 3143 with 18,427 Liquidity Events (Adjustments) in January 5, 2023.
    • Liquidity Provider Range: 289 - 3143 Liquidity Events Range: 971 - 18,427
  • 🦄Uniswap: In January Uniswap reached their Spike in January 9 with 2991 Adjustments and January 12 with 1404 Liquidity Providers.
    • Liquidity Provider Range: 722 - 1404 Liquidity Events Range: 1303 - 2,991
• Adjustments per Liquidity Provider and per Minute: Uniswap Values are better correlated than Orca, but since New Year Orca values starts to correlating.
  • 🐳Orca: During January the amount of Adjustments per LP reached 11.6 and Adjustments per minute 12.7 in January 5
    • Adjustments per Liquidity Provider: 5.2 - 11.6 Adjustments per Minute: 0.6 - 12.7
  • 🦄Uniswap: During January the amount of Adjustments per LP reached 4.5 in December 31 and Adjustments per minute 2.07 in January 9
    • Adjustments per Liquidity Provider: 3.6 - 4.5 Adjustments per Minute: 0.9 - 2.07
• Total Adjustments: In Uniswap Decrease Liquidity Range was the favorite Option by 51.5% and in Orca it was Increase Liquidity Range with 63%
  • 🐳Orca: Increase Liquidity Range: 68,782 (63%) Decrease Liquidity Range: 40.465 (37%)
  • 🦄Uniswap: Increase Liquidity Range: 20,152 (48.5%) Decrease Liquidity Range: 21,356 (51.5%)

By Far 🐳Orca Liquidity Providers are adjusting Liquidity more Frequently than 🦄Uniswap v3 Liquidity Providers.

Methodology

---

Image Links: BONK - ORCA #1 - ORCA WHIRPOOLS #2 - UNISWAP V3 - SOLANA - Screenshots taken from Google (Thanks to Medium) and Orca Liquidity Provider FAQs

Using FlipsideCrypto Data tables From Solana, but most of the queries comes from marqu:

• The reason behind is that the Solana labels table take a while in being updated so a lot of recent BONK Pools weren’t present (and the Token Too).
• Marqu made an excellent dashboard with clean queries to get important data from all the Whirpools.
• So i decided to use their Queries, but modified to show different results and other perspectives using my own SQL recipes.
  • This time i’ll skipped Stickiness Ratio and Dau/Mau, and tried to add a reasonable amount of Number metrics and New vs Existing Users.
• But basically information from whirpools is get with the solana.core.fact_events and solana.core.fact_transactions from the Json texts which have all the data.
  • After filter all the transactions to get only the Whirpools creations txs with
  • and program_id = 'whirLbMiicVdio4qvUfM5KAg6Ct8VwpYzGff3uctyCc'
  • and events.inner_instruction :instructions[0] :parsed :type ::string = 'createAccount'
  • and events.inner_instruction :instructions[0] :parsed :info :newAccount ::string = instruction :accounts[4] ::string
  • and regexp_replace(log_messages[1], '^Program log: Instruction: ') = 'InitializePool'
  • The remaining transactions are only for Whirpool creation and has the necesary data:
  • instruction :accounts[1] ::string as token1,
  • instruction :accounts[2] ::string as token2,
  • instruction :accounts[4] ::string as whirlpool_id,
  • instruction :accounts[5] ::string as vault_a,
  • instruction :accounts[6] ::string as vault_b,
  • instruction :accounts[7] ::string as fee_tier_acc,
• This is only the surface that Marqu mades with the JSON, and there is a lot of high complex SQL behind every Querie.

MetricsDAO Question

---

> Orca Whirlpools are a way to provide concentrated liquidity in specific price ranges on Orca (the leading decentralized exchange on Solana). This allows for higher capital efficiency than a standard AMM design (think Uniswap V3). > > * Create a dashboard highlighting the growth of Orca Whirlpools over time. What pools have risen in popularity and generated the most fees for liquidity providers? > * How often are LPers moving in and out of their positions in order to adjust for specific price ranges? > * How has the launch of $BONK changed the popularity of these pools and are users now experimenting with other pools? > * Optionally, show if LPers are adjusting liquidity more frequently on Orca than on Uniswap.

🤔Final Thoughts 🤔

---

There is a single chart with Daily Refresh and it’s the one measuring the Whirpools Daily performance based in $USD Fees, so you can saw by yourself above.

• I didn’t know where to put the Bonk Price, but as we seen in all the dashboard activity from the Orca Whirpools are correlated with the BONK Price,

• Since NEW Year Bonk started an Uptrending which rallies every Solana Application in the same trend, and after reaching the Spike in January 5, the activity starts their Downtrending.

  But as long that the BONK Price can mantain their value, the Solana activity will seen one of their best months after the Bearish Year.

Welcome to my Orca Whirpools Dashboard!

---

• If you don’t know anything about Liquidity Pools or the Importance from Uniswap for the DEXes i recomend you to read the introductory text.

• If the charts doesn’t load correctly, i suggest to change your Web Browser, Mozilla never fails me.

  TL;DR? Don’t Worry, just see the charts and read my Summary at the end to Know the Key Insights.