Author: Jack Kubinec, Blockworks; Translated by: Bai Shui, Jinse Finance
At Lightspeed, we don't like to measure the success of a protocol by popular active addresses or total locked value metrics.
Conversely, fees can serve as a useful metric for gauging demand for different applications and services. Blockchain addresses and TVL can be manipulated, but fees represent real funds that can theoretically be used to do something on-chain. Therefore, based on DeFiLlama data as of December 27, here are the top 10 Solana protocols ranked by fees generated this year.
1. Raydium - $648 million
This is a magnificent year for Solana's decentralized exchange, capitalizing on the meme coin craze that swept the cryptocurrency world for most of 2024. Some have accused the application of being a place where meme coins create fake trading volumes to appear more legitimate, but the numbers speak for themselves. Raydium has generated quite a bit of fees.
2. Jito - $633 million
Jito's Jito-Solana client modified MEV and became the preferred choice for many validators running Solana software. Jito charges users a 5% 'tip' on the MEV for trading fees on Solana - this year, as meme coins increased the demand for paying MEV tips and trading on the blockchain, this amount grew to enormous levels.
3. Pump.fun - $308 million
In less than a year, the meme coin launch platform pump.fun has generated over $300 million in fees. Read that sentence again. If we learned anything this year, it's that cryptocurrency users really love speculative tokens.
4. Photon - $248 million
The Solana trading platform Photon has also benefited from the meme coin wave, generating $250 million in revenue. Photon provides meme coin information for users to browse, but its real calling card is speed. Photon claims its data transmission speed is 15 times faster than DEX Screener and offers a 'quick buy' feature to reduce friction during transactions.
5. bloXroute - $136 million
Initially, this question puzzled me a bit, as I rarely hear anyone mention bloXroute in the context of Solana. This infrastructure company provides a blockchain distribution network and trader API, primarily marketed as a way for traders to execute Solana trades faster.
6. Trojan - $121 million
Trojan offers a popular Telegram bot that allows users to create Solana wallets and buy and sell cryptocurrencies within the messaging application.
7. BONKbot - $118 million
The team behind the popular Solana meme coin has released BONKbot as a Telegram trading bot, indicating that the creators of bear market meme coins may also possess some technical capabilities.
8. Marinade - $88 million
Marinade is the third-largest Solana liquid staking token, behind Jito and Binance. This year, it launched 'Marinade v2', introducing an auction mechanism for its staking pool in hopes of increasing yields and attracting institutions. Some have accused Marinade of fostering 'sandwich attackers' in the process.
9. BullX - $85 million
BullX is another meme coin trading platform. It markets itself as providing the 'fastest index', even as the process of making blockchain data readable - while Coinbase has been struggling with this issue in recent weeks.
10. Kamino - $81 million
Kamino is a DeFi protocol whose TVL soared to over $2 billion in 2024. The application has gained popularity due to its lending features, leading some to compare it to Solana's Aave. Notably, Kamino is the origin of most liquidity incentives aimed at driving the adoption of PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin on Solana.
