Orca DEX trading volume leads Solana with $324 million

The quick take

Price: Orca DEX ($ORCA) at $1.43, +0.1% ↑ in 24 hours and -16.2% ↓ over 7 days (CoinGecko).
Trigger: Orca DEX handled $324.1 million in trades in 24 hours, up 54% from the day before, per DefiLlama.
Watch: PumpSwap sits just $2.2 million behind, so the top spot is close.

Orca DEX trading volume reached $324.1 million in the 24 hours to 6:45 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to DefiLlama. That put Orca DEX ($ORCA) ahead of every other decentralized exchange on Solana ($SOL). The exchange is busy, but its token has not followed.

What happened

DefiLlama counted $210.2 million of trades on Orca in the 24 hours before that. The new reading is 54% higher, a sharp jump from one reading to the next.

The lead was thin. PumpSwap, the exchange run by Pump.fun ($PUMP), handled $321.8 million, about $2.2 million less. BisonFi came third with $257.1 million, and Raydium ($RAY) AMM came fourth with $231.1 million.

Across Solana, decentralized exchanges handled $1.88 billion in the same window, up 1.5% from the day before. Orca’s share of that total was about 17%. Volume shows how much trading an exchange attracts, while deposits show how much money sits ready for those trades.

Why it moved

DefiLlama’s totals do not show which pools drove the jump, so the cause is not confirmed. The busy stretch came as large coins traded higher. $SOL rose 2.6% to $95.67 on CoinGecko, and LiveCoinWatch showed Bitcoin ($BTC) up 3.4%.

The day also stands out against Orca’s own recent pace. The exchange handled $6.97 billion over 30 days, an average of about $232 million a day. The latest 24-hour reading was about 40% above that average.

Over the last 7 days, Orca handled $1.55 billion. The daily readings swung widely in that stretch, so one strong day does not make a trend on its own.

Who’s buying and selling

Liquidity on Orca grew a little but stays below last week’s level. DefiLlama put the money locked in its pools at $287.7 million. That is up 0.4% in a day but 4.4% lower than a week ago.

So the latest 24 hours of trading came to about 1.1 times the deposits in its pools. Each dollar of liquidity changed hands more than once, which earns fees for liquidity providers (LPs).

The token tells a different story. $ORCA traded at $1.43, almost flat over 24 hours and down 16.2% over 7 days, per CoinGecko. Jupiter showed $1.427, within 0.2% of that price. Its market value stood near $87.0 million, with $7.0 million of token trading in a day. That token figure is tiny next to the $324.1 million that moved through the exchange itself.

In the biggest ORCA/SOL pool tracked by DexScreener, buyers made 2,027 trades and sellers 1,729 over 24 hours. That pool held $614,578 in liquidity. GeckoTerminal’s largest ORCA/SOL pool, a different one, showed 209 buys and 227 sells. The two readings point in opposite directions, so pool flows give no clear signal.

What to watch next

Whether Orca keeps the top spot. PumpSwap was only $2.2 million behind in this reading.
Whether pool deposits recover from their 4.4% weekly drop. Deeper pools can handle larger trades with less price impact.
Whether $ORCA starts to track the exchange’s activity. So far the token’s 7-day loss has held even during a busy stretch for the exchange.

Bottom line: Orca DEX had the busiest 24 hours of any Solana exchange, but its token is still 16% lower than a week ago.