Solana has been getting a lot of attention lately, especially after surging in price for the last few weeks. Going from $20.94 to $64.11 in less than a month is notable, but that’s another topic of discussion. Today, we’re talking about the best projects in the Solana Ecosystem.

Raydium (RAY)

Starting with one of the first-ever DEXes on Solana. Raydium is an automated market maker (AMM) which uses a central limit order book. This allows it to execute trades almost instantly with close-to-zero transaction fees. Raydium currently does over $69 million in daily volume.

Raydium also has a launchpad called AcceleRaytor. This allows users to invest in new Solana projects before they get listed on the market. However, allocations are determined by lottery or staking RAY tokens. At the moment, there are no active projects on AcceleRaytor.

Marinade Finance (MNDE)

Staking through Marinade Finance is one of the best ways to stake SOL tokens without relying on a centralized exchange. Marinade monitors the best validators and allows users to delegate only to the best ones in a single pool.

It works by an automated staking strategy created by the Marinade team. When using native staking with Marinade, there are no interactions with smart contracts. On the other hand, with liquid staking, users get “marinated SOL” tokens (mSOL) that they can use to interact with DApps.

Drift Protocol

Drift is the biggest perpetual exchange on Solana, which has done over $1.66b in total volume and currently has $32.6M of TVL.

The problem with on-chain exchanges is that they face issues when porting centralized infrastructure. This causes problems such as slow fills, high spreads, and low liquidity.

The way Drift deals with them is by improving efficiency by incentivizing market makers with three liquidity mechanisms: Just-in-Time Auction Liquidity, Limit Orderbook Liquidity through DLOB, and AMM Liquidity.

Magic Eden

Magic Eden is the biggest NFT marketplace on Solana. It provides a platform for people to buy, sell, and trade NFTs. And since Solana is known for its high-speed and low-cost transactions, Magic Eden is a great alternative to other NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.

Conclusion

By the looks of it, Solana’s ecosystem is in a good place. With a variety of projects for just about everything in DEFI, it’s not hard to see why Solana has made such a big comeback. With its affordable and fast transactions, it’s definitely one of Ethereum’s biggest competitors.