What To Build for Solana DeFi?

The Top 10 DeFi Themes for Solana to Watch in 2024

Solana DeFi has been performing exceptionally well, with both the TVL and daily DEX volumes exceeding $4 billion. The Solana DeFi teams are firing on all cylinders, led by quality DeFi 1.0 protocols like Marinade, Phoenix, Jito, MarginFi, Kamino, BlazeStake, Solend, Jupiter, Meteora, Orca, Raydium, Lifinity, Sanctum, and Drift. These teams survived the FTX crash, built through the depths of the bear market, and are now reaping the rewards.

However, the new teams entering the Solana DeFi ecosystem have been somewhat underwhelming, partly due to a lack of new narratives and a smaller number of teams focusing on new Only Possible on Solana (OPOS) mechanisms.

It’s time to focus on new DeFi ideas and encourage more teams to build in the DeFi sector, which drives economic activity in Solana.

Here’s my attempt to showcase the top 10 themes, with relevant ideas in each worth exploring. While we are focusing on Solana, some of these themes can be applied to other high-performance chains as well.

This article will be on an intermediate/advanced level; if you are looking to understand Solana DeFi – I have written a 7k Word report on the “State of Solana DeFi”. In a nutshell, we will discuss:

1. DeFi Stablecoins

2. LSTs, MEV, and Restaking

3. Money Markets

4. Interest Rate Derivatives

5. RWAs and DeFi Composability

6. Perp and Derivatives

7. DeFi Infra

8. MemeFi and Social DeFi

9. Protocols Tending to Become Platforms

10. Interfaces (UX Agreggators)

Solana DeFi at a glance

Theme 1: DeFi Stablecoins Mechanisms Will Get Wilder

We need more DeFi-native stablecoins acting as DeFi money, forming liquidity pairs in DEXs and lending/borrowing projects. Primarily, their utility is yield-driven. DeFi stablecoins lack utility as they are not a good medium of exchange (i.e. used for transactions).

Stablecoins, or synthetic dollars, can be widely categorized as follows:

1. Fiat-backed stablecoins, such as USDC, USDT, and EURC. M0 is another upcoming stablecoin player on Ethereum.

2. CDP stablecoins, like DAI and Frax.

3. LST-backed stablecoins, including:

   1. CDP structures like eUSD by Lybra and mkUSD by Prisma.

   2. Delta-neutral projects like Ethena and Resolv Labs (UXD on Solana was a precursor).

4. RWA-backed stablecoins, such as USDV, USDY, USDM and ISC.

5. Perp DEXs that offer their synthetic versions, like Synthetix (sUSD) and Aevo (aUSD).

6. Algorithmic stablecoins, like Gyroscope, use isolated vault reserves to reduce correlation risks and implement a Dynamic Stability Mechanism, utilizing a decreasing bonding curve for redemption.

On Solana, two LST-backed stablecoins are emerging: MarginFi’s YBX and Jupiter’s SUSD, along with very early projects like Surge Finance emerging.

Alpha for Solana builders:

1. Newer design mechanisms, taking inspiration from Ethereum stablecoins.

2. Go-To-Market – Most stablecoins struggle with initial liquidity and traction; since the primary utility is yields – it can be an interesting play to leverage. For instance, increasing DAI-enabled Enhanced DAI Savings Rate (EDSR) led to a boost in DAI’s circulation i.e. increase in ~$1.5 billion of DAI deposits (~30% of the total DAI supply). USDV gives yield to verified minters like DeFi projects to boost circulation, which can then also give incentives to its users (think of how Arbritrum DAO gives ARB to projects that distribute it to users).

3. The hottest Ethereum stablecoin — Ethena ($1.3 billion+ in issuance) is also coming to Solana soon. One can also build a ‘Solena’, where it’s Ethena-like mechanics, but with SOL. However, CEX listings of Solana LSTs and depths of SOL perps are a major hindrance; slowly but surely will get there.

The Case for an On-chain Foreign Exchange (FX) Market

The FX market is huge, with over $6 trillion in daily volume. The availability of fiat-backed stablecoins with adequate liquidity could pave the way for on-chain spot FX markets through order books and AMMs. Envision a scenario where a merchant can accept payments in USDX and instantly convert them to YENX, with Jupiter routing the transaction through multiple liquidity venues. Someone will sooner or later build a spot Forex trading platform on Solana.

Theme 2: (Re)Staking and LSTs – Moneyness of SOL

Solana’s LST scene has now consolidated into three major players — Jito, Solblaze, and Marinade. Sanctum is another interesting player in the LST space, solving for liquidity and building LST-as-a-service. However, the number of LSTs is still way less, and more LSTs are beneficial for network decentralization too. Further, LSTs are a major contributor to DeFi, and increasing their deposits in lending/borrowing markets or LP pools leads to higher chain TVL.

Alpha for builders:

1. More LSTs — There’s still an opportunity for new LSTs to enter the market and capture a significant share of LSTs on the back of token launch hype and incentives. For instance, Solblaze went from $30k SOL to $3 million SOL in just 8 months, leveraging BLZE incentives and focussing on DeFi integrations.
   
   Another strategy for newer LSTs would be to follow newer design mechanisms — for instance, follow the two-token model like Frax Ether ($1 billion+ TVL), where it has two tokens:

   1. frxETH – 1:1 pegged to ETH and doesn’t accrue staking yields.

   2. sfrxETH – accrues staking yields.

   
   This allows for a higher yield for staked ETH while ensuring deep liquidity for frxETH with ecosystem-wide integrations. frxETH also has higher DeFi TVL compared to peers like rETH, due to Fraxlend integration and liquidity incentives.

2. Validators launching LSTs — With increasing MEV and priority fees, we will very well see validators launching their own LSTs and sharing more rewards with stakers to attract stakers. Sanctum is a key player catalysing this.

3. Yield Maximisers for LSTs – For instance, Kamino Multiply has one-click vault products designed for leveraged yields for LSTs through looping (lending LST and borrowing SOL –> Staking SOL for LST → repeat). There can be a huge array of products in this space (more on this later).

4. SOL Restaking — There’s also an opportunity for Solana to embrace an equivalent to Ethereum’s shared security / restaking layer, enabling projects with access to the best validators to further increase their yields via restaking. Unlike Ethereum, where the AVS are rollups/appchains/bridges that require economic security, the same doesn’t apply to Solana, as it doesn’t have a modular thesis yet.
   
   However, it’s still worth exploring as AVS on Solana can be — Clockwork-type Keeper networks Pythnet-style appchains, or any networks like DePIN which is ‘SOL-aligned’ and requires economic security. Further, if the Rollapp/appchain thesis on Solana picks up, the SOL restaking narrative can be huge!

5. On MEV – Recently, Jito Labs suspended its mempool services provided by the Jito Block Engine due to an increase in sandwich attacks. The decision has sparked mixed reactions within the community, with some appreciating Jito's proactive stance, while critics argue it could lead to private deals and potentially a new, private mempool being developed in response.
   
   With increasing DeFi activity, MEV is only going to increase, and projects (and LSTs) can leverage this to their fullest.

   

The amount of SOL in LSTs is still underwhelming (< 5%), compared to Ethereum (>20%) which needs to be solved. Overall, it’s now time to increase the moneyness of SOL and ensure the upside of SOL prices is also captured by the DeFi ecosystem.

Theme 3: The Next Generation of Money Markets

While the core money markets (lending & borrowing), such as Solend ($300 million), MarginFi ($800 million, and Kamino ($1.1 billion), are established, it’s now time to innovate on the design mechanisms that make them more efficient. For instance, MarginFi still lacks the eMode (a feature by Aave v3), which increases capital efficiency.

Focus on higher capital efficiency: As the blue-chip lending/borrowing like MarginFi and Kamino, exhaust their points and launch tokens; users will want higher capital efficiency, especially for leveraged yield farming.

Alpha for builders:

1. New Design Mechanisms: For instance, a few interesting ones explored by EVM projects are:

   1. Alchemix which are self-repaying loans allows you to leverage a range of tokens without risk of liquidation.

   2. Modular architecture like Euler v2 which consists of ERC-4626 credit vaults (lending pools), connected via Ethereum Vault Connector (EVC) contract. This also enables developers to permissionlessly create & activate lending vaults with all kinds of configurations like selecting any collateral, choosing oracles setting TVL, interest rates, etc. This can have network effects and compound liquidity as one vault’s shares can be used as collateral for any other vault inside the Euler ecosystem.

   3. Morpho Blue for higher capital efficiency

   
   There’s no harm in taking inspiration from upcoming Ethereum protocols with innovative designs; better than just creating Aave v3 forks.

2. Optimizers on Existing Money Markets: Taking MarginFi’s SOL market as an example, there is a considerable spread between lending and borrowing yields — a situation that applies to almost all markets. This is due to the liquidity pool mechanism, where the pools are underutilized, leading to lower yields – [ supply rate = borrow rate * utilization ratio ].

   

   A potential solution could be to build something like the Morpho Optimizer,, where the supplied liquidity is dynamically matched peer-to-peer as borrowers come and go (effectively 100% utilization rate). For matched liquidity, the lender's yield is the same as the borrower's rate: matched lenders do not share interests. In cases where the liquidity is not matched, it will tap into the underlying lending pool, such as MarginFi or Kamino. Altitude is also a good reference. Flexlend and JuicerFi are well suited to build this.

How Morpho Optimisers adjusts yields

3. Fixed Rate Lending: Most of the current Peer-to-Pool lending protocols like MarginFi and Solend follow floating (variable) rates and a low utilization rate results in a high spread, essentially creating a TradFi-like banking system with high spreads but with a pool as the intermediary. Fixed Rate Lending is a way to fix this.
   
   The DeFi fixed rate market share is below 1%, while the TradFi dominance of fixed rate is ~98%, and this is there for a few reasons:

   1. Passive: Peer-to-pool models do not have expiry dates and, hence, require far less maintenance.

   2. Lindy Effect: Floating rates have been battle-tested, which leads to the lindy effect like sticky TVL.

As Delphi Report notes, Fixed-rate lending in DeFi remains nonexistent. Yield protocol shut down, and Notional Finance’s v2 shutdown (it started with bang with $1 billion TVL and now dropped to $17 million) shows underwhelming demand. Notional Finance’s v3 launch shifts to variable lending and leveraged vaults. Exactly Finance gathered some momentum and brought fresh ideas, but usage was heavily incentivized by OP incentives and native token emissions. Term Finance is another player to watch. A team solving for all hard problems like easy maintanence of loans, kickstarted by incentives can win a potentially big market here.

Lulo Finance (same team as Flexlend) has been trying to solve this on Solana, but still yet to see any significant traction. While Fixed Rates have their share of problems and “ahead of its time idea”, it’s worth exploring.

4. Gearbox for Solana: Gearbox is a composable leverage protocol (leverage via lending/borrowing, but with ecosystem-wide integrations). Solana being highly composable in nature, one can integrate with a wide range of protocols like AMMs and LSTs, particularly for farming points. Assuming a bullish market, more projects will launch with high APY incentive programs that can integrated into this protocol for leveraged yield farming.

An adjacent idea can also be Corporate Debt where on-chain revenue generating companies can start issuing bonds to raise funds. Think of it as revenue-based financing (RBF), but on-chain and fully transparent. This ensures profitable on-chain companies don’t dilute their tokens, while raising funds at the same time.

Theme 4: Interest Rate Derivatives — Unchartered Territory

Interest Rate Derivatives (IRD) are the second-largest market after Forex, with a notional value of $450–600 trillion. Comparing the absolute numbers with TradFi may not be directly relevant; however, the emerging nature of this market in DeFi, particularly on Solana, presents a significant opportunity. This could facilitate the generation of organic yield in addition to the money market (lending/borrowing) yield through asset management contracts.

Alpha for builders:

Taking inspiration from TradFi, some interesting ideas to explore would be:

1. Interest Rate Swaps for LSTs: It’s a forward contract, which typically allows parties to exchange a fixed interest rate for a floating rate or vice versa. Simply put, if you want a fixed staking rate, you can enter into an agreement with someone ready to take the risks of variable staking rates.
   
   This would be attractive to a new class of institutional and retail clients looking to gain DeFi exposure without much speculation. In TradFi, the contract is between two financial institutions, while in DeFi, it would be peer-to-pool. One can either pay fixed yields or receive fixed yields. LSTs like JitoSOL or mSOL via Stake Rate Swaps (SRS) are the best assets to target, as they are considered the native “Risk-free Rate” for SOL in DeFi — more on SRS.

2. ERC-4626 is a yield-bearing Tokenized Vaults standard on Ethereum, ensuring composability of all yield vaults with over $10 billion TVL. Building this on Solana and ensuring it’s adoption can be the key. This can open a range of vaults products like Sommelier.

3. Yield Stripping (Pendle for Solana): Yield stripping is a discounted cash flow play. Users can take a predictable return on the future value of an instrument, while speculators can get the future asset at a discounted value. It involves separating a bond's interest payments from its principal payments. Pendle’s yield tokenization is an implementation of this.
   
   Some examples of Solana yields that can be traded: Liquid-staked SOL, Lifinity Revenue, Meteora Pool yields, Kamino_Finance kTokens, and Solend Protocol’s cTokens (yield-bearing deposit receipts).
   
   An early-stage project called Exponent is exploring this direction, starting with trading lending yields at MarginFi and then expanding to other yield derivatives. A [redacted] Solana DEX is also exploring “Pendle for Solana”.

5: Making RWAs composable with DeFi

With more RWAs coming on-chain, particularly liquid and yield-bearing ones like T-bills. Logically, all RWAs are permissioned due to KYC and regulatory constraints. However, Ondo's launch of USDY (a tokenized wrapper for tokenized T-bills) and making it permissionless opens up a whole new design space. Ondo also unveiled an intriguing mechanism for tokenized stocks, which, if implemented well, could usher in another wave of DeFi composability.

Alpha for builders:

1. Token Extensions: There are numerous opportunities in RWAs, particularly leveraging Token Extensions. Our essay delves into the details of these.

2. TradFi Giants: With giants like Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, and Fidelity looking to pilot RWAs on Solana, this can unlock a huge opportunity in the next 1-2 years. These can be permissioned, to begin with, but building permissionless wrappers and more DeFi integrations, like Flux Finance for lending and borrowing can be a significant opportunity. For instance, holders may have the opportunity to earn a higher yield on their U.S. Treasuries by tokenizing them, offering them as collateral in a DeFi lending market, borrowing stablecoins, purchasing more Treasuries, and repeating this cycle.
   
   The best part is, BlackRock fund is allegedly composable with USDC

   

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Theme 6: Time for Derivatives to Shine!

Structured products and on-chain derivatives (excluding Perps) were all the rage during the previous bull run. Solana, in particular, experienced a surge of over $500 million in TVL in DeFi Option Vaults (DOVs) through protocols like Ribbon, Katana, and Friktion until the bear market took hold. However, with the bull market returning and the demand for yields increasing, it's no surprise that these products will make a comeback.

Alpha for builders:

1. Vertical Perps or Prediction Markets: Just like Parcl enables one to go long/short, one can build perps for different niches like commodities. This is highly a category creation game and Parcl has done an excellent job at creating the hype and amassing $100 million+ TVL (though it’s heavily farmed and real demand is unknown).

2. Power Perps: An idea by Paradigm in 2021 didn’t quite take off in the last cycle due to timing, but is worth trying this cycle — a few protocols like Exponents are trying this on Berachain. Another adjacent idea would be to explore Everlasting Options (think how perps are to futures, this is for options), proposed by one and only, SBF!

3. Perp Aggregator: Just as we have aggregators for lending and spot DEXs, it’s a big enough opportunity to build perp aggregators, despite the challenges posed by varying design mechanisms. With the emergence of perp aggregators like Rage Trade and MUX, a similar trend could arise on Solana — particularly for designs akin to Flash and Jupiter.

4. Perps as Solana Appchains: In the EVM world, most perp DEXs, especially those based on order books like Aevo, dYdX, and Hyperliquid, are transitioning to their own appchain. In the future, Solana perp DEXs could also build their own chains, which could offer several benefits:

   • Freedom from any mainnet congestion.

   • An enhanced trading experience for users (trades could be gas-free for traders).

   In fact, Zeta has already started moving in this direction.

5. Structured Products – Build a Friktion-type product — In fact, the Friktion code is still available for anyone to fork and use. Asset management protocols like Investin (a previous project by the Flash team) can also be a good idea to revive. Order books like Phoenix or Drift require active liquidity provisioning, which can be achieved via Market-Making Vaults. This ensures decentralized Market Making, else all the liquidity will be at the mercy of Market Maker (which we saw during Alameda flight after FTX crash).

6. On-chain options – Protocols like Ribbon, Ava, and Gravity Markets serve as examples of existing on-chain options trading platforms. One can also build binary options (i.e. if prices go up or down) like Decalls, however getting traction and building a moat is important.

7. HXRO — Being the base layer for derivatives and betting liquidity on Solana, builders can build on top of the:

   • Dexterity, Hxro's derivatives protocol, provides fundamental building blocks of derivatives (whether a traditional DEX interface, advanced trading terminal, API, etc.), underpinning all necessary risk and exchange infrastructure to securely scale expiring, perpetual, and zero-day futures (ZDFs), as well as other margin-based derivative markets on-chain.

   • Hxro’s parimutuel protocol is the backbone for on-chain betting applications, enabling event wagering with constant liquidity courtesy of the network’s “smart” AMM. The protocol can support a wide variety of betting markets on-chain across gaming, sports betting, crypto, and other event markets.

Theme 7: Building Infra and Tooling for DeFi Protocols

With many billion-dollar DeFi protocols on Solana it’s the perfect time to build infra and tooling for these DeFi protocols, given there is a significant immediate TAM.

Alpha for builders:

1. OEV: A subset of MEV, Oracle Extractable Value (OEV) is when applications rely on an Oracle update for arbitrageurs or liquidators to capitalize on this state inconsistency. As multicoin notes, there is an opportunity for the application to capture the OEV; the design space is still being explored.

2. DeFi Infra as a Service: A few protocols like Aave/Compound are forked multiple times; the same for Solana where protocols fork Solana Lab’s reference implementations. There is substantial cost when it comes to development, audit, and maintenance. One can standardize and build a sustainable development firm out of this offering “DeFi protocols in a box” – one can also think of it as “Metaplex for DeFi”, creating multiple standards. Rari Capital (now dead) had a similar vision and created vaults infra. A low-hanging fruit is to build ERC-4626 equivalent infra for Solana and ride the complete yield hype on Solana by offering services to DeFi projects.

3. A risk management organization: this can be structured as a Risk DAO or an advisory board, which does research and risk analysis for DeFi protocols. These entities can publish public “Risk Analysis Dashboards” with key metrics for the Solana ecosystem and offer paid research, risk assessment frameworks, and risk rating services to DeFi projects.

4. Bribe Aggregator or Marketplace: In EVM, Curve Finance lets their token holders determine how much of their token incentives go to each of their pools. This creates a dynamic where projects will "bribe" token holders to vote for pools containing their tokens. Votium Protocol aggregates these bribes and automatically delegates token holders' voting power to maximize the incentives received. Having an aggregator makes coordinating activity between bribers and voters much more convenient and leads to greater market efficiency. On Solana, this can be applied to:

   1. LSTs via governance token to direct stake to validators.

   2. Jupiter LFG Launchpad, where projects can bribe their voters and give token allocation in return.
      – inspired by Durden’s tweet.

5. Privacy for DeFi: Privacy finds PMF in unexpected places like airdrop farming. For example, CEXs are also used by whales to anonymize their transactions, and protocols like Elusiv were hence heavily used by farmers.

Theme 8: MemeFi and Making DEXs More Vertical:

Memecoins are culture on financial steroids. Their value comes purely from attention and social consensus, not from a DCF model. We might be in a Memecoin Supercycle with Solana at the forefront.

Further, DeFi apps will also become inherently more social. We are already seeing some early trends:

1. Buying through telegram bots like Bonkbot doing $250 million in daily volumes!

2. Projects like Zeta or Kamino have public points leaderboards.

It's highly possible that the next front end of DEXs won’t be a Jupiter-type swapping interface, but rather a live streaming platform where creators and audiences bet alongside each other, a social feed with trading integrations, or a group of friends who instantly raise funds for the next network state, among other possibilities.

UI-Layer Composability — Telegrams bots makes UI composable for DEXs. Previously people would learn about information somewhere on the internet (X, Reddit, news, Telegram groups, etc), and then navigate to a separate UI to trade (e.g., Drift, Binance, Coinbase, etc.). Telegram bots bring trading to Telegram, where people are already hanging out, socializing, and exchanging information (eg. Ansem’s group).

Alpha for builders:

1. Continuous Prediction Markets Powered by Memecoins:

   The existing prediction markets like Polymarket are binary and discrete, hence the upsides are very limited. Most people want continuous, unlimited upside. A crypto-native prediction market can be in fact, memecoins (eg. $BIDEN, $TRUMP). One can build a niche platform for trading memecoins (eg. a political platform where you can trade all political memecoins and predict who’s winning). In fact, MetaDAO is an example of vertical and continuous prediction markets, but only for governance.

   

2. Memecoin Frontends: The memecoin trading UX is still not the best — one has to discover the memecoins, check all its details at Birdeye or DEXscreener, and then trade at Jupiter, while for many early memecoins wallets don’t even have basic support. One can simply make a birdeye, but specialized for memecoins and much more social, where influencers can also shill and copy trade each other. Pump.fun is another interesting platform, where one can ape-in memecoins very early (till $69k market cap). Another adjacent idea to explore would be a DEX, particularly suited for memecoins (currently, it’s Raydium, but the experience isn’t the best).

3. Vertical DEXs: More experimentations in DEX designs for a use-case like Memecoins or LSTs. For instance, Sanctum’s Infinity is essentially a AMM for LSTs.

Cross-chain aggregators for high-performance chains – With activity increasingly spread across different L1s like Aptos, and Sui – building cross-chain aggregators are a good opportunity with significant first mover advantage. Intents-based DEXs (tending to order books) are also an interesting direction for better quotes for users.

Theme 9: Protocols Tending to Become Platforms

Platforms enable the creation of new products. Amazon is a platform, while a brand on Amazon is a product. The launch of Uniswap v4 hooks marked DeFi’s first platform moment, enabling developers to launch their product on top of these protocols. Not just Uniswap, all blue-chip DeFi protocols, like Jupiter, have begun to build ecosystems atop their protocols.

Project Serum (now Openbook) exemplified ecosystem building as a platform, with over 30+ projects developing on top of it. The platformization of Solana DeFi projects is still in its infancy but is expected to surge in the coming months. It is advantageous for builders to identify such protocols, position themselves strategically, and be early participants in the ecosystem.

Alpha for builders:

Some projects of note include:

1. Jupiter — Initially an aggregator, Jupiter is rapidly evolving into an ecosystem. Adrastea is a prime example, offering leveraged yield on JLP.

2. Drift — The largest perpetual DEX on Solana. Circuit trade features market-making vaults for Drift DEXs, and similar products can be developed around DLP.

3. Phoenix — Still nascent, but as an orderbook, Phoenix has the potential to develop a comprehensive ecosystem. It's a matter of time until the team focuses. For example, Root Exchange, built on Phoenix, provides enhanced limit orders.

Structured products and strategy vaults present clear opportunities for more product development on these platforms. While transitioning to a platform is a long-term endeavor, it greatly benefits value accrual (a reason why Layer 1/Layer 2 solutions are valued significantly higher than apps) and shifts the revenue generation responsibility to applications built on them. This also benefits the token holders of the platform protocol.

Theme 10: Interfaces (UX Agreggators) will become stronger

Attention is scarce in crypto, and aggregators command it. Whether they are DEX aggregators (like Jupiter/1inch), bridge aggregators (like Jumper/Bungee), or even chain aggregators (like Polygon), they have emerged as the new, attractive narrative.

The principle is straightforward — aggregators control demand and capture user attention. Although they currently don't accrue much value (most charge no fees), it’s likely that the underlying protocols they abstract will soon offer them fees or profit-sharing to gain priority or remain featured (similar to how brands pay Amazon for advertising).

Interfaces add extra value on top of the on-chain protocols they facilitate transactions for. With additional tools like UniswapX or Jupiter’s DCA tool, interfaces can win customer acquisition battles and capture value.

In fact, Solana boasts one of the strongest aggregators, with Jupiter leading the pack, and others like Flexlend aggregating yields.

Alpha for builders:

Opportunities in aggregation include:

1. Yield Aggregators

2. Perp Aggregators

3. Memecoin Aggregators

4. Instadapp-like everything DeFi aggregator for leveraging, Refinancing, and migrating positions

While there may appear to be a blurred line between “Platforms” and “Aggregators,” the distinction is that aggregators are front-ends, whereas platforms are the base upon which products are built. A protocol can serve as both, as is the case with Jupiter.

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Closing Thoughts: Time to seed Solana DeFi 3.0

It’s high time newer protocols on Solana get built. While EVM definitely serves as an inspiration, protocols should focus on core design innovations, participate in research discussions, and build truly OPOS like Sanctum or Phoenix. We will the Solana DeFi getting more divergent from the Ethereum Take inspiration from TradFi, and see what can be built on-chain, leveraging the high capital velocity and speculation.

The infra has finally reached a point where it can withstand a high scale of activity. Many DeFi primitives that previously failed due to being too early are now viable again. It will be exciting to see how this will unfold over the coming years.

Feel free to contact me at Yash Agarwal (@yashhsm on Twitter) for any suggestions or if you have any opinions. If you find this even slightly insightful, please share it — justifies my weeks of effort and gets more eyeballs :)

Special thanks to  Sitesh (Superteam), Kash (Superteam), Apoorv (Stella),  Akshay (Superteam), Anas (Flash Trade) who reviewed and provided insights at different stages of the draft.

Disclaimer:

This essay is completely my perspective and thoughts on the Solana DeFi Ecosystem and in no way represents any organization. Given the comprehensive and informal nature of the essay, some amazing projects might have been missed or received lesser attention as compared to other projects. None of this is financial advice or any recommendation towards a particular project. As usual, everything discussed is Not Financial Advice, please Do Your Own Research.