A quick look at the top 10 Solana protocols in 2024, ranked by cost

Author: Jack Kubinec, Blockworks; Compiler: Bai Shui, Golden Finance

At Lightspeed, we don’t like to measure a protocol’s success by the popular active addresses or total value locked metrics.

Instead, cost can be a useful metric for gauging the needs of different applications and services. Blockchain addresses and TVL can be played with, but fees are real money that can, at least in theory, change hands to do something on the chain. So, based on DeFiLlama data as of December 27, here are the top 10 Solana protocols ranked by fee this year.

1. Raydium – $648 million

It's been a stellar year for the Solana decentralized exchange, which has capitalized on the meme coin craze that's been sweeping the crypto world for much of 2024. Some have accused the app of being a place for meme coins to create fake transaction volumes to appear more legitimate, but the numbers speak for themselves. Raydium charges quite a bit.

2. Jito – $633 million

Jito's Jito-Solana client modified MEV and became the first choice for many validators running Solana software. Jito charges 5% of the MEV “tips” users pay to trade on Solana — an amount that has grown to massive levels this year as meme coins have increased the demand for MEV tips and transactions on the blockchain. .

3. Pump.fun – $308 million

In less than a year, meme coin launch platform pump.fun has brought in more than $300 million in fees. Read this sentence again. If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that cryptocurrency users really, really love speculating on coins.

4. Photon – $248 million

Solana trading platform Photon also rode the wave of meme coins, earning $250 million in revenue. Photon provides meme coin information for users to browse, but its real draw is speed. Photon claims that its data transfer speeds are 15 times faster than DEX Screener, and it offers a "Quick Buy" feature to reduce friction when trading.

5. bloXroute – $136 million

This question confused me a little at first, as I rarely hear anyone mention bloXroute in the context of Solana. The infrastructure company provides a blockchain distribution network and trader API, and is primarily promoted as a way for traders to make 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 app.

7. BONKbot – $118 million

The team behind the popular Solana meme coin has released BONKbot as a Telegram trading bot, suggesting that the creator of the bear meme coin may also have some technical skills.

8. Marinade – $88 million

Marinade is the third most liquid Solana staking token after Jito and Binance. This year, it launched “Marinade v2,” introducing an auction mechanism to its stake pool in hopes of increasing yields and attracting institutions. Marinade has been accused of enabling "sandwich attackers" in the process.

9. BullX — $85 million

BullX is another meme coin trading platform. It advertises itself as offering the “fastest indexing,” the process of making blockchain data readable — an issue Coinbase has been grappling with in recent weeks.

10. Kamino — $81 million

Kamino is a DeFi protocol whose TVL surged to over $2 billion in 2024. The app has gained popularity for its lending features, leading some to liken it to Solana's Aave. Notably, Kamino is the home of most of the liquidity incentives designed to drive adoption of PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin on Solana.