Raydium, Jupiter, Orca and Meteora are the top four contenders, who will dominate the Solana DEX market?

Solana's DEX landscape is shifting towards higher efficiency and deeper Liquidity concentration.

Authored by: vik0nchain, Researcher at Cyber Capital

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

In the fourth quarter of 2024 to early 2025, the competitive landscape of Solana's DeFi ecosystem gradually emerged, mainly reflected in the rise of aggregators, abstraction of user experience (UX), significant integration, and evolving token economic standards. Although these changes were not initially obvious, recent data has clearly shown the impact, particularly in the reallocation of liquidity, fee generation, and changes in market share.

This analysis delves into the Liquidity positioning of the major decentralized exchanges (DEX) based on Solana - Raydium, Jupiter, Orca, and Meteora, focusing on their advantages, disadvantages, and potential investment impact relative to existing and emerging competitors.

Investment Analysis Framework

Raydium (RAY) Outlook Optimistic: Deep Liquidity and Buyback Advantage

• Liquidity and trading volume dominance: Raydium remains the most powerful and frequently used decentralized exchange for Liquidity in the Solana ecosystem. Over 55% of trades routed through Jupiter settle on Raydium. In addition, Raydium, along with the long-term leader Uniswap, dominates the market among all decentralized exchanges on all blockchains, sometimes even surpassing Uniswap, while its fully diluted valuation (FDV) and market value are only about one-third of Uniswap's.
• Raydium/Uniswap Fully Diluted Valuation Ratio: 28.72828346 billion dollars / 91.02379018 billion dollars = 31.5%
• Raydium/Uniswap Market Cap Ratio: 15.05604427 billion USD / 54.65824531 billion USD = 27.5%


• Pump.fun integration: Key partnerships including integration with Pump.fun have increased trading volume and protocol stickiness due to the migration of all new Meme pools to Raydium.
• Token Buyback: Raydium's 12% fee buyback program has repurchased over 10% of the total supply of tokens, significantly alleviating selling pressure. It is noteworthy that the amount repurchased by Raydium far exceeds that held by centralized exchanges.

![Raydium, Jupiter, Orca and Meteora compete for the championship, who can dominate the Solana DEX market?])https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-5e5dcf560bdb442763c8a8d1ab0380c1(

)# Jupiter (JUP) outlook optimistic: Market-leading aggregator

• Liquidity Aggregation Advantage: Jupiter, as a leading aggregator on Solana, plays a crucial role.
• Acquire Moonshot: Acquiring Moonshot enables Jupiter to integrate deposit/withdrawal channels within its decentralized exchange, enhancing competitiveness by simplifying user experience.
• Unlocking Pressure: Due to token unlocking, Jupiter is facing a 127% increase in supply, bringing mid-term inflation risks. Despite the recent announcement of a buyback mechanism, the internal estimated annual repurchase rate is 2.4%, which provides some support for the token economy, but has limited impact in competition with Raydium.
• Business model: Since the aggregator fee is charged on top of the underlying protocol fee, the aggregator model faces a dilemma in the low-fee dimension.
• Lack of competitors: As the first aggregator on Solana, Jupiter lacks strong competitors.

Meteora Outlook Optimistic: The Rising Liquidity Aggregator

• Aggregated Liquidity Efficiency: Unlike standalone decentralized exchanges, aggregators like Meteora inherently have lower downside risk and more stable capital efficiency.
• Token issuance catalyst: The successful issuance of the Meteora token may change Liquidity preferences and provide long-term support for its market positioning. Unlike industry LP leader Kamino, MET points are not publicly displayed in the user interface. In addition, there has been no official statement regarding airdrops since the MET points system was first announced over a year ago. Although Liquidity providers can earn higher returns elsewhere in the ecosystem (such as lulo.fi), market positioning and airdrop expectations may be the main drivers for Liquidity providers.
• Total Value Locked (TVL) retention: Meteora has achieved development through Pengu airdrops, as well as major events such as the launch of Memecoins related to Trump and Melania. Although during the Memecoin launch period, the volume/Total Value Locked (Vol/TVL) ratio of many trading pairs increased due to temporary demand, Meteora's total locked value continued to rise after the event, demonstrating a good retention rate.
• Integrated Development: Virtuals migrates to Solana in the first quarter of 2024 and announces integration with Meteora Liquidity pool.

![Raydium, Jupiter, Orca, and Meteora's fierce competition, who can dominate the Solana DEX market? ]###https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-98dd9780abe3e11f26631bb6e4fdc6f2(

![Raydium, Jupiter, Orca and Meteora, the four powerhouses competing, who will dominate the Solana DEX market?])https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-eb24cdc22bf16ea61248de2c4ef55cad(

) Orca outlook bleak: Liquidity retention insufficient

• Insufficient Liquidity: Despite being highly efficient, Orca's pool size is significantly smaller than Raydium, resulting in higher slippage for large trades.
• Market positioning issue: Jupiter's routing mechanism prioritizes trading platforms with deeper Liquidity, making emerging low Liquidity decentralized exchanges and Liquidity pools unattractive.
• The emergence of Meteora as a Liquidity aggregator further restricts the competitive survival ability of non-dominant decentralized exchanges in the routing framework, because routing only occurs when the slippage cost is lower than the cost premium of Meteora, which is extremely rare outside of the surge in market demand.
• Limited Liquidity provider incentives: Orca lacks strong Liquidity mining strategies, leading to a low long-term Liquidity provider retention rate.
• Inefficient capital allocation: Unlike Meteora, Orca has not implemented automated yield optimization, requiring manual management of LP, resulting in a more cumbersome user experience.
• The not optimistic Liquidity trend: the upcoming Meteora token may completely attract Liquidity providers from Orca, making their situation even more difficult.
• Insufficient integration: Failure to cooperate with Pump.fun at the beginning of 2024, and missing out on cooperation with Virtuals recently, highlights its competitive disadvantage in acquiring orders for emerging retail-driven applications. If there are no upcoming catalysts to reverse this trend, Liquidity migration may continue.
• The above factors have led to Orca's inability to retain the additional user volume obtained during peak network demand.

Key Catalysts and Risks

Catalysts to Watch

• Comparison of RAY Repurchase and Holdings on Centralized Exchanges: RAY's repurchase speed has now exceeded the total amount of RAY held by centralized exchanges, reinforcing the scarcity of the token.
• The overall trend of the total lock-up value: The continued dominance of Raydium, Jupiter, and Meteora indicates the long-term sustainability of Liquidity. In high-pressure market conditions, the stickiness of emerging protocols is worth paying attention to and cannot be ignored.
• Partnership: Just as Pumpfun's integration brings significant Liquidity to Raydium, Meteora's integration with Virtuals may have a similar effect. Given the impact of such partnerships on Liquidity and total locked value, collaborations with lesser-known participants are closely watched.
• Token issuance of Meteora: This event may mark a turning point in the distribution of Liquidity for Solana decentralized exchange.
• Fee-to-market value ratio: Orca demonstrated extreme efficiency during the months of high demand, but its lack of liquidity retention hindered long-term competitiveness. JUP, on the other hand, faces the opposite, constrained by its business model. Compared to the latest "hot item", Hyperliquid, Raydium incurs tenfold fees at a fully diluted valuation of one-eighth.

![Raydium, Jupiter, Orca and Meteora, who can dominate the Solana DEX market? ]###https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-8e87457b186f395a2cca61ea63106df7(

)# Risk

• Inflation pressure on JUP: Although Jupiter's aggregator position is solid, its large token supply may cause short-term price pressure.
• Decline in Orca market share: If the trend of Liquidity providers' migration continues, Orca may face sustained Liquidity outflow.
• Meteora airdrops and tokenomic execution risks: Despite the strong early total locked value growth, its token economy and incentive structure have yet to be tested.

Conclusion and Investment Outlook

The landscape of decentralized exchanges on Solana is shifting towards greater efficiency and deeper Liquidity concentration. Raydium's outstanding Liquidity positioning, proactive buyback mechanism, and market leadership make it a highly confident decentralized exchange. Jupiter's aggregator role remains crucial, providing a competitive barrier, but token dilution poses a short-term resistance. Orca once was a competitive player but faces daunting challenges in retaining Liquidity and capital efficiency, becoming an increasingly fragile asset, indicating a missed key integration and a dilemma of competing head-on with mature players. Meteora is expected to rise after successfully launching the upcoming token. Based on our current theory, investment positions in decentralized exchanges should focus on leading decentralized exchanges, decentralized exchange aggregators, and Liquidity aggregators within a given ecosystem, with emerging players meeting catalyst criteria also holding a small position.