Solana DEX trading falls 14% in a week

Solana DEX trading fell 14% to $16.5 billion in the seven days to Saturday, Oct. 3, DefiLlama data showed at 11:45 p.m. UTC Sunday.

The quick take

Price: $SOL $121.44, +1.4% in 24 hours (CoinGecko, as of 7:39 p.m. ET, Oct. 4).
Trigger: Saturday’s $1.55 billion was Solana’s lowest daily DEX volume since Aug. 17.
Watch: whether weekday trading lifts the weekly total back toward $19 billion.

Solana DEX trading slowed sharply over the past week. Decentralized exchanges on Solana ($SOL) handled $16.5 billion in trades from Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, according to DefiLlama. That is down 14% from $19.2 billion the week before.

What happened

Saturday was the quietest day. Solana DEX volume came to $1.55 billion on Oct. 3, down 44% from $2.76 billion on Friday. DefiLlama last showed a lower day on Aug. 17, at $1.51 billion.

No day in the latest week reached $2.8 billion. In the week before, two days topped $3 billion, led by $3.43 billion on Sept. 21.

The weekly pace now sits below the monthly one. Over the past 30 days, Solana’s DEX venues processed $78.0 billion, or about $2.6 billion a day. The latest seven days averaged about $2.4 billion a day.

Prices barely reacted. $SOL traded at $121.44 at 7:39 p.m. ET Sunday, up 1.4% in 24 hours and down 1.0% over seven days, per CoinGecko. Jupiter’s price feed was within 0.12% of that figure.

Total value locked (TVL) in Solana DeFi stood at $6.7 billion on DefiLlama, so deposits stayed put even as trading slowed.

Why it moved

No exchange or project has announced a reason for the slowdown, and DefiLlama’s figures do not point to one. The cause is not confirmed. What the data do show is where the drop hit hardest.

PumpSwap, the exchange run by Pump.fun ($PUMP), handled $2.20 billion over the week, down 23%. Raydium ($RAY) saw volume on its AMM fall 32% to $1.74 billion. That was the steepest drop among the five largest venues.

Others slipped less. BisonFi fell 20% to $2.02 billion, and Meteora’s DLMM pools lost 17% to $1.25 billion. Weekends were already quiet: Sunday, Sept. 27, brought $1.93 billion, and Saturday came in lower still.

Who’s buying and selling

Not every venue lost ground. Orca DEX ($ORCA) held almost flat with $2.33 billion in weekly volume, down just 1.7%. That put it at the top of DefiLlama’s seven-day Solana ranking, about $124 million ahead of PumpSwap. Together, the two carried about 27% of the week’s Solana DEX trading.

Liquidity on Orca grew as well. Its TVL reached $321 million, up 6.3% in seven days, per DefiLlama. The $ORCA token rose 12.8% in 24 hours to $2.03, according to CoinGecko, with Jupiter’s feed within 0.11%.

The pump.fun launchpad, which DefiLlama tracks apart from PumpSwap, moved the other way. Its trading rose 26% over the week to $1.15 billion.

A single day tells a different story. PumpSwap still led on Saturday with $402 million in trades, more than double Orca’s $171 million. Raydium’s AMM handled $144 million that day.

The wider market was calm. Bitcoin ($BTC) traded at $86,485 at 11:41 p.m. UTC, up 2.0% in 24 hours, according to LiveCoinWatch.

What to watch next

Weekday volume: DefiLlama’s Monday and Tuesday figures will show whether Saturday was a weekend dip or part of a longer slowdown.
The top spot: Orca’s lead over PumpSwap is only about $124 million. A busier memecoin week could flip the ranking.
Fees for LPs: liquidity providers earn a cut of every swap, so lower volume means lower fee income for their pools.

Bottom line: Solana DEX trading cooled 14% in a week, but Orca DEX kept its volume and $SOL held steady near $121.