Solana’s Top Protocols by Fees: Raydium Leads with $648 Million

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter.


Lightspeed evaluates protocol success through fees rather than active addresses or total value locked. Fees represent actual funds exchanged on-chain, making them a more reliable metric. Below are the top 10 Solana protocols by fees as of December 27, based on DeFiLlama data.

1. Raydium — $648 million

Raydium, a decentralized exchange, capitalized on the memecoin trend in 2024, generating significant fee revenue despite accusations of inflated trading volumes.

2. Jito — $633 million

Jito’s modifications to the Solana client facilitated increased MEV tips from users, resulting in substantial fee earnings as demand for transactions surged.

3. Pump.fun — $308 million

Pump.fun, a memecoin launchpad, accumulated over $300 million in fees within its first year, highlighting strong user interest in token speculation.

4. Photon — $248 million

Photon, a trading platform, attracted users with high-speed data feeds and a quick buy function, benefiting from the memecoin market.

5. bloXroute — $136 million

bloXroute provides a blockchain distribution network and APIs aimed at expediting Solana transaction processing, contributing to its fee generation.

6. Trojan — $121 million

Trojan features a Telegram bot that enables users to create wallets and trade crypto directly within the messaging platform.

7. BONKbot — $118 million

BONKbot, developed by the creators of a popular Solana memecoin, serves as a Telegram trading bot, showcasing technical capabilities alongside meme culture.

8. Marinade — $88 million

Marinade introduced “Marinade v2” this year, implementing an auction mechanism for its staking pool while facing criticism regarding potential sandwich attacks.

9. BullX — $85 million

BullX markets itself as offering rapid indexing services for memecoin trading, addressing challenges faced by other platforms in processing blockchain data.

10. Kamino — $81 million

Kamino, a DeFi protocol with over $2 billion in TVL, is recognized for its borrow-lend feature and played a key role in promoting PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin adoption on Solana.