Key Takeaways
- Jupiter aggregated US$48B in DEX volume in May 2026, making Solana the highest-volume DEX chain by monthly volume for the third consecutive month.
- Raydium’s CLMM pools generated US$42M in LP fees in May, with an annualized fee-to-TVL ratio that significantly outperforms Uniswap v3.
- Kamino Finance’s lending protocol crossed US$2.1B in TVL in June, driven by leveraged yield strategies on SOL liquid staking tokens.
- Solana DeFi benefits from near-zero transaction fees averaging US$0.0003, enabling micro-transaction use cases impossible on Ethereum mainnet.
- Canadian investors can access Solana DeFi directly, or get SOL exposure via Evolve’s SOLH ETF.
For most of 2022 and 2023, Solana was a cautionary tale the chain that went down repeatedly, whose FTX affiliation made it toxic. In 2026, that narrative has been definitively reversed. Solana’s DeFi ecosystem has become the most active by daily transaction volume, led by three protocols: Jupiter, Raydium, and Kamino.
Jupiter: The DEX Aggregator Running the Show
Jupiter is to Solana what 1inch is to Ethereum a DEX aggregator that routes trades across multiple liquidity sources to find the best price. But Jupiter has expanded well beyond aggregation. Its perpetuals trading product handles US$3–5B in daily notional volume, its dollar-cost averaging feature processes thousands of automated buys per day, and its launchpad has hosted some of the most successful token launches of the 2025–26 cycle.
In May 2026, Jupiter’s aggregator processed US$48B in total volume more than Uniswap v3 on Ethereum mainnet and Arbitrum combined. The JUP token rewards governance participants through a buyback program funded directly from protocol fees, making it one of the few DeFi governance tokens with a compelling fundamental value case.
Raydium’s Concentrated Liquidity Renaissance
Raydium’s CLMM pools generated US$42M in LP fees in May 2026 an annualized fee-to-TVL ratio of approximately 28%, compared to Uniswap v4’s blended 9% across all chains. The difference reflects both Solana’s higher trading volumes per dollar of TVL and the concentrated nature of liquidity around active trading pairs. Unlike Uniswap v3, where concentrated LP management required constant active attention, Raydium’s pools benefit from Jupiter routing at the protocol level.
“Solana’s fee environment makes iterative, loop-based strategies economically viable in a way that Ethereum mainnet simply doesn’t allow. A three-loop leveraged staking strategy on Ethereum costs more in gas than it earns in a week.”
Delphi Digital, June 2026 Solana DeFi Report
Kamino: Leveraged Yield Without the Drama
Kamino Finance’s money market has grown to US$2.1B in TVL, largely driven by a popular looping strategy: deposit jitoSOL as collateral, borrow SOL, stake the borrowed SOL for more jitoSOL, and repeat. This generates yields of 15–22% APY depending on SOL staking yields and borrow rates attractive enough to pull capital from Ethereum-based lending protocols.
The Risks Solana DeFi Can’t Escape
Solana experienced two brief network slowdowns in Q1 2026 during periods of extreme memecoin issuance activity not full outages, but degraded performance that temporarily disrupted DeFi liquidation mechanisms. The memecoin dependency is also a double-edged sword: memecoins drive Solana’s transaction count and DEX volume, but they contribute to volatility in fee markets and attract a retail-heavy user base prone to rapid capital rotation. Solana DeFi’s current volumes depend partly on memecoin speculation remaining active a fragile foundation for long-term TVL sustainability.