Orca

Orca is an automated market maker on Solana: instead of matching buyers with sellers in an order book, it lets traders swap against pools of two tokens that other users have deposited. Liquidity providers earn most of the trading fees in return. Orca's docs say it launched in 2021, built by two developers in Tokyo with no venture funding, starting with a simple constant-product pool, and introduced its concentrated liquidity design, Whirlpools, in 2022.

Orca is governed as a DAO. ORCA holders vote on proposals, and an elected DAO Council carries out approved decisions and handles routine operations within limits set by token holders. Orca's Terms of Use, last updated 19 November 2023, describe the site's provider only as "Orca" and provide for arbitration under the Cayman Islands Arbitration Act. The Formation FAQ refers to the Orca Foundation, which it says has no equity holders.

By October 2026 Orca and Loopscale, a Solana credit protocol formerly known as Bridgesplit, had announced a merger. The combined team operates as Formation, headquartered in New York and led by Loopscale co-founder Luke Truitt as CEO, with Mary Gooneratne as chief operating officer and Christopher Montagano, previously Orca's chief legal officer, as chief strategy and legal officer. Orca's FAQ says both brands continue as products under Formation, that the Orca app and positions are unaffected, and that no new ORCA will be minted. The announcement on formation.so is undated.

In a Whirlpool, a liquidity provider chooses a price range, and their tokens are used for trades only while the price stays inside it. A narrower range earns more fees per dollar while in range but stops earning and ends up entirely in one token once the price leaves it. Each position is held as a token in the provider's wallet. Orca also offers vaults, automated strategies that manage ranges for depositors, a position simulator, range orders, and adaptive-fee pools whose fee rises with volatility.

Traders can route swaps through Orca's own pools or through aggregators such as Titan, DFlow and Jupiter, which pull in liquidity from other Solana venues like Raydium. Orca also runs a launch service for token issuers; its homepage lists pools for PayPal's PYUSD, Coinbase's cbBTC and Jito's JTO, and some regulated assets trade in permissioned pools where only accounts approved by the asset's servicer can hold the token. Formation's announcement also mentions Riptide, which lets professional market makers run their own AMM strategies on Orca.

Orca also ran on Eclipse, a separate network, but switched off trading there on 6 March 2026; remaining positions can be closed through a withdrawal-only tool at close-position.orca.so. For how Orca's depth and fees look next to other DEXs, see how Orca compares with other decentralized exchanges.

Swappers pay a fee set by the pool, deducted from the token they sell. The pool creator picks the tier. For adaptive-fee pools the tier is the base fee and the actual fee can be higher. A swap routed through two pools pays both.

Other tiers exist at 0.02%, 0.08%, 0.16% and 0.65%. The 12% protocol share is split again: half goes to the initial development team for operations and development, 10% to the Orca DAO fee treasury, and 40% buys ORCA for xORCA stakers. Orca charges nothing to open a position, but Solana rent of about 0.0088 SOL is paid when a position is created and refunded when it is closed, and an uncommon tick-array account can cost about 0.07 SOL that is not refunded. DefiLlama recorded about $7.94 million in fees on Orca over the 30 days to 25 October 2026.

ORCA has a fixed supply of 75 million and was issued on 9 August 2021. It is used to vote on proposals, to elect the DAO Council and to stake. Staking ORCA returns xORCA, which grows in ORCA terms as the protocol's buybacks are added to the staking vault; Orca's own example is 0.3% of trade volume generating 0.0144% in buybacks. Unstaking takes seven days, during which you hold a non-transferable claim ticket and your redemption rate is locked. Orca's Formation FAQ says ORCA now represents the combined Orca and Loopscale business, while noting that the Orca Foundation has no equity holders.

Orca's interface is blocked in Afghanistan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Congo, Cuba, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. The United States and United Kingdom are not on that list. Orca also screens wallet addresses and blocks those flagged as linked to illicit activity. Users in a newly blocked country can still close positions and withdraw.

There is no account or identity check to swap or provide liquidity; you connect a Solana wallet. Regulated assets in permissioned pools are the exception, since their servicers can require KYC before you hold them.

Orca says it has had no protocol-level smart contract exploit since launch, and no Orca exploit appears in DefiLlama's hack database. The Whirlpools program was audited by Kudelski in January 2022 and Neodyme in May 2022, by OtterSec in August 2024, and repeatedly by Sec3 from February 2025 to September 2026; Sec3 also reviewed the Wavebreak launch program in July 2025. Orca runs a bug bounty on Immunefi. An audit lowers the chance of a bug but does not remove it.

The programs can be changed. Orca's staking docs say the staking program is upgradeable only by a 3-of-5 multisig, the same arrangement as Whirlpools, and the Formation FAQ says the upgrade authority and multisig setup did not change with the merger. Orca does not publish who the five signers are or whether upgrades are time-delayed. The staking program also has a pause capability, which Orca says leaves withdrawals available.

Orca's docs advise checking a token's mint address before trading and using the position simulator to see expected impermanent loss before depositing.

• Impermanent loss: when prices move, a liquidity provider can end up with less value than if they had simply held the two tokens.
• Out of range: a concentrated position stops earning fees once the price leaves its range and ends up fully in the weaker token.
• Token risk: anyone can create a pool, so scam tokens that copy well-known names can appear; Orca shows warnings but cannot vet every mint.
• Upgrade risk: a 3-of-5 multisig can change the programs.
• Slippage on thin pools, and price impact on large swaps.

To swap, connect a Solana wallet at orca.so, pick the tokens, review the quoted output, route, price impact and slippage setting, and sign. To provide liquidity, choose a pool, set a full or custom range, and deposit both tokens; the position appears in your portfolio, where fees and rewards can be harvested.

Leaving is immediate: closing a position returns your tokens and accrued fees in one transaction and refunds the position rent. Vault withdrawals return a share of the vault's assets. Unstaking xORCA is the only step with a wait, seven days. Positions on the retired Eclipse deployment can be closed at close-position.orca.so.

Orca recommends its in-app support widget for wallet-specific problems, because it verifies wallet ownership with a signed message and keeps the conversation private. General questions go to Discord, and Telegram connects to a support bot. Never share a seed phrase, and be wary of anyone asking you to send or burn position NFTs, a scam Orca's docs warn about. Official links on orca.so are X (@orca_so), Discord, GitHub, LinkedIn, the governance forum at forums.orca.so and the blog.

Formation says it plans to operate a tokenized securities venue under the SEC's innovation exemption and to seek the licences that would require, citing Orca's nearly two years of engagement with US securities and commodities regulators.

• 2021: Orca launches on Solana with a constant-product AMM.
• 9 August 2021: ORCA token issued.
• 2021: Orca's first community vote picks Ocean Conservancy for a $550,000 Climate Fund donation.
• 2022: Whirlpools concentrated liquidity launches.
• 2024: redesigned Orca app.
• 6 March 2026: trading on the Eclipse deployment ends.
• By October 2026: merger with Loopscale; the combined team operates as Formation.