Solana Protocol Feature: orca.so

Q97. Choose a defi protocol from the following list and create a dashboard with the new Flipside layout that can refresh once a day highlighting at least 4 metrics of your choosing that helps show the "health" of the protocol and what is happening on it. 

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Introduction

Orca.so is an onchain DEX located on the Solana blockchain. Users may swap their tokens for any other token, provided there is liquidity for the swap. Users may also provide liquidity for and trading pair, earning them passive income from the fees accrued by the pair. Orca is a very popular choice on Solana, even receiving funding from the Solana Foundation. This dashboard will analyze certain aspects of the use and TVL of Orca as a way to try and figure out how it is doing.

Methodology

• Analyze the amount of unique users and how often they are swapping.
• Analyze the tokens users are swapping to and from on Orca.
• Analyze the downfall of Stepn and it’s affect on Orca.
• Analyze the failure rate of transactions on Orca.

Swaps // Unique Users

The charts above indicate that the amount of unique users and the number of swaps they are making has actually decreased a lot in the past month. It has seemingly returned to the normal level of swaps from before the peak in May.

Most Popular Coins Swapped

These charts really speak for themselves. Users are often selling their tokens for USDC or other stable coins. It is also interesting to see how popular both GST and GMT are as for the number of swaps. This may have to do with the fact that the Stepn app uses Orca to allow users to sell or buy those tokens.

Stepn Activity Analysis

It is interesting to see how the downfall of Stepn has affected the usage of Orca. We can see that the general downtrend of both GMT and GST (the native tokens of Stepn), line up almost perfectly with the downtrend in usage of Orca in general.

Stepn was a very popular “game” on Solana, where users could buy NFTs which would reward them for going on walks or runs. However, as game grew, many users began coming out against the project, calling it a ponzi scheme. In fact, Stepn did use several techniques often colluded with or known as “ponzinomics”. To begin earning money, users were forced to buy an NFT. If they wanted to upgrade that NFT, they could either go on walks or runs until they earn the tokens needed, or buy them on a DEX, for example Orca. Once there were no more new investors or users, the values of the NFTs and the Tokens fell very quickly.

Failed Transactions

While many transactions on Solana fail (usually around 50%), the amount of failed transactions for a DEX can represent several things. The failure rate for Orca transactions is fairly low, meaning they have good oracles and usually provide accurate prices to users. :)

Conclusion // Key Takeaways

From both my experience and the fact that Orca has received millions in funding, it is apparent that Orca is a very good DEX. However, I do not think it receives enough credit or usage for what it deserves. Furthermore, I did not include TVL in my analysis of the DEX. The reason behind this is I do not think the charts of TVL would indicate any useful information. With both the crypto markets dropping and the downfall of Stepn, the TVL has almost freefalled. It is better to show the number of swaps and unique users rather than the amount of money they have in the reserves.

Appendix

This dashboard was written on 11/07/2022 with data from December 2021 onwards.

Data from Flipside Crypto.

Sources:

• https://orca.so/

You can contact me on Discord @ vision#6636