Author: Jack Kubinec, Blockworks; Edited by: Bai Shui, Jinse Finance
At Lightspeed, we don't like to measure the success of a protocol using popular active addresses or total locked value metrics.
Conversely, fees can be a useful metric for measuring demand for different applications and services. Blockchain addresses and TVL can be manipulated, but fees represent real funds, which in theory can be turned into something actionable on-chain. Thus, according to DeFiLlama data as of December 27, here are the top 10 Solana protocols ranked by fees this year.
1. Raydium—$648 million
This is a glorious year for Solana's decentralized exchanges, taking advantage of the meme coin craze that swept the cryptocurrency world for most of 2024. Some have accused the app of being a platform for meme coins to generate false trading volume 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 go-to for many validators running Solana software. Jito charges users a 5% 'tip' on MEV for exchange payments made on Solana—this year, as meme coins increased the demand for paying MEV tips and trading on the blockchain, this amount grew to massive 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've 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 selling point is speed. Photon claims its data transfer speed is 15 times faster than DEX Screener and offers a 'quick buy' feature to reduce friction during transactions.
5. bloXroute—$136 million
At first, this issue confused me a bit because I rarely hear anyone mention bloXroute in the context of Solana. This infrastructure company offers 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 allowing users to create Solana wallets and buy and sell cryptocurrencies within the messaging app.
7. BONKbot—$118 million
The team behind the popular Solana meme coin released BONKbot as a Telegram trading bot, indicating that the creators of meme coins in a bear market may also possess some technical capabilities.
8. Marinade — $88 million
Marinade is the third-largest Solana liquid staking token, following Jito and Binance. This year, it launched 'Marinade v2,' introducing an auction mechanism for its staking pool, hoping to enhance yields and attract institutions. Some have accused Marinade of fueling 'sandwich attackers' in the process.
9. BullX — $85 million
BullX is another meme coin trading platform. It promotes itself as providing the 'fastest indexing,' even as the process of reading blockchain data has been an issue that Coinbase has been struggling with in recent weeks.
10. Kamino — $81 million
Kamino is a DeFi protocol whose TVL soared to over $2 billion in 2024. The app became popular for its lending features, leading some to compare it to Solana's Aave. Notably, Kamino is the birthplace of most liquidity incentives aimed at promoting the adoption of PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin on Solana.
