Orca: decentralised exchanges rating breakdown
Solana
The cheap, clean way to trade on Solana: 0.0659% realised, 20.6× capital turnover, and $5.42bn of thirty-day volume from a $263m pool base. Against Raydium — the other Solana venue most people name — it is roughly a quarter of the cost on our measurement, at similar depth for major pairs.
The cheap, clean way to trade on Solana: 0.0659% realised, 20.6× capital turnover, and $5.42bn of thirty-day volume from a $263m pool base. Against Raydium — the other Solana venue most people name — it is roughly a quarter of the cost on our measurement, at similar depth for major pairs.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back? | — | 30% | 7 | 5 | 2 of 9 | +0.60 |
| What traders actually paid | 0.0659 what traders actually paid · computed · 2026-08-27 · source | 25% | 8 | 7 | 2 of 9 | +0.25 |
| Depth and volume | $5.42bn 30-day volume · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source$263m total value locked · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 25% | 7 | 7 | 4 of 9 | 0.00 |
| Chains and assets | — | 12% | 2 | 6 | 6 of 9 | -0.48 |
| How hard the capital works | 20.6× per 30 days capital turnover · computed · 2026-08-27 | 8% | 9 | 7 | 2 of 9 | +0.16 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?, worth +0.60 points against the median
Has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?: 7/10
Contract exploits with dates, amounts and — the question every other comparison skips — whether users were actually made whole. A DEX is a set of contracts holding pooled money, so this is the first question, not the fifth. Audit count is recorded but never scored on its own: Balancer V2 was among the most audited contract systems in DeFi and lost $128m to a rounding error in November 2025.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 2nd of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 30% weight that is 0.60 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.
What traders actually paid: 8/10
Computed by us, not read off a fee-tier page: thirty days of protocol fees divided by thirty days of volume, per venue, from public data. That single division exposes what routing, tier mix and pool design really cost, and it disagrees with the advertised tiers everywhere. It is not the whole cost of a trade — slippage and gas sit on top — but it is the part every comparison misstates.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 2nd of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 25% weight that is 0.25 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.
Depth and volume: 7/10
Total value locked and thirty-day volume, both from public data at a stated timestamp. Depth is what decides slippage on a real trade, and volume is what proves the depth is usable rather than parked.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 4th of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 25% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 2.
Chains and assets: 2/10
The number of chains where the venue is actually deployed, weighted by whether volume genuinely flows there. A deployment on forty chains that trades on two is coverage on paper.
Scored 2 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 6th of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 12% weight that is 0.48 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 2.
How hard the capital works: 9/10
Thirty-day volume divided by total value locked — how many times each dollar of liquidity turned over. Nobody publishes this, and it separates a venue whose pools are genuinely used from one sitting on idle incentive-farmed capital. It also predicts fee income per dollar of risk taken by liquidity providers.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 2nd of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.16 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 3.
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
| # | Entry | Has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back? | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | PancakeSwap | 7 | Level on has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?; the gap is elsewhere. |
| 3 | Aerodrome | 6 | Behind by 1 on has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?. |
| 5 | Curve | 4 | Behind by 3 on has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?. |
| 6 | Meteora | 5 | Behind by 2 on has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?. |
Questions about this score
Orca or Raydium — which is cheaper?
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Orca, by roughly four times. Our measurement puts Orca at 0.0659% of volume paid in fees over thirty days against Raydium's 0.2340%, for pairs that overlap substantially. On a $5,000 swap that is a difference of about $8 — small in absolute terms, and a large multiple if you trade often.
Why does Orca's TVL look small relative to its volume?
+
Concentrated liquidity. Positions are placed in price ranges rather than spread across the whole curve, so a given dollar of capital does far more work — 20.6 times a month here — and the headline TVL number understates the depth available at the current price while overstating it further away. It is the same reason its capital efficiency looks strong next to venues using older pool designs.
What is the main risk of trading on Orca?
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The chain, not the contracts. Orca exists only on Solana, and Solana's history includes full network outages during which no transaction settles — a different order of problem on a leveraged venue than a spot one, but still a liveness dependency you take on. The protocol itself has no exploit on record.