Founded in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko, the Solana project is currently one of the big revelations of the crypto ecosystem, mixing validation by proof of stake with an innovative time-stamping system, proof of history. The combination of these two technologies allows Solana to emancipate itself from the traditional triptych of security, decentralization and scalability in which one element is often sacrificed for the benefit of the other two.
Solana’s DeFi system
To date, there are already 157 projects evolving within the Solana ecosystem, with dozens of initiatives continuing to emerge every week. And among this myriad of startups, the field of decentralized finance in particular is booming with 35 new projects stamped “DeFi”, of which we will review some of the most promising players.
It is difficult to discuss the DeFi field on Solana without mentioning Sam Bankman-Fried, the young crypto-billionaire and creator of the FTX exchange hosted on the network. An early support that he confirmed in 2020 with the launch of his flagship project of exchange this time decentralized (DEX) named Serum.
It is perhaps currently the DEX with the lowest fees on the market, 10 to 100 times lower than the best prices seen on Ethereum DEX. In addition, Serum offers a major innovation, a fully managed on-chain order book that offers a visual interface similar to a “traditional” exchange, and therefore much more familiar to investors than the bare and austere charts of a Uniswap or Pancakeswap.
Liquidity, a strategic component
The Raydium project is an automated market maker (AMM) based on the Solana blockchain that uses the Serum order book. This innovation allows both projects to create synergies that benefit the entire industry. On the one hand, Raydium’s liquidity pools will feed Serum’s order book. On the other hand, Serum’s users will have access to the liquidity in these same pools.
Fundamentally, Raydium’s goal is to address the fragmentation of the rapidly growing DeFi ecosystem by providing the liquidity necessary to keep the industry running smoothly, while reducing the costs of doing so.
Thus, on the Raydium platform you can provide liquidity, do yield farming in simple reward or dual yield, but also store your $RAY, the protocol’s native token. The Raydium project being one of the most successful in the ecosystem, you can of course track your crypto assets and your performance directly from the platform.
Tracking your performance within Solana’s DeFi ecosystem
But what if you want to interact with multiple DeFi ecosystems and multiple projects within each ecosystem? As you seek to maximize your returns, it can quickly become difficult to accurately track your performance.
Until recently, you had no way to aggregate the various sources of information to participate, or even just track your portfolio and help you choose from the array of all the offerings on the Solana network.
Recently, the ecosystem has been expanded with a series of integrations that allow you to track your performance across the various projects based on the network. Some projects will even allow you to participate in pools and other vaults with attractive returns, such as Solfarm.
Step Finance is one of the new DeFi aggregators in the Solana ecosystem. With the most intuitive and uncluttered interface, the platform’s dashboard compiles all your assets and allows you to track your performance without being limited to a single protocol.
A principle that other protocols, each in their own way, such as Sonar Watch, follow. The idea being that the multiplication of the offer can only bring a greater adoption and consequently a greater stability to the whole DeFi ecosystem on Solana.
Another initiative called Ape Board allows you to track your assets within the Solana ecosystem, but not only. The Ape dashboard covers the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon and Terra.
Solana’s DeFi ecosystem is currently in full swing. Innovations and improvements are multiplying to the advantage of the pranksters who see their user experience improve and their opportunities diversify in a very significant way.
