How Orca So works

Orca is the easiest place to exchange cryptocurrencies on the Solana network. On Orca, you can exchange tokens cheaper, faster and safer (thanks to our fair price indicator) than any DEX on Ethereum. In addition, you can provide liquidity to an exchange group to earn commissions from every exchange that takes place.

Orca is currently only on the Solana network, and is one of the decentralized exchanges with the lowest commissions to exchange any cryptocurrency. The main differences you can find with respect to raydium, the main decentralized exchange of Solana, are the low commissions in the swap, the liquidity of some pairs that you can not exchange in Raydium, and very interesting options of farming with LP Tokens and good returns.

Orca has cryptocurrency pairs that use bridges such as Allbridge, and that you will not be able to exchange in Raydium. Therefore, Orca is a fundamental pillar to be able to move tokens from one network to another, and have liquidity to change to another pair of the same network. Orca together with Saber, currently have the liquidity and the platform to be able to migrate tokens from one network to another and have liquidity to use them. For example, if you want to use BUSD in Solana, you can send BUSD from the BSC to the Solana network and use it, thanks to the liquidity pairs with USDC or USDT that these two platforms have.

How to get started

To get started, if you are totally new, you will need a wallet, I recommend using Phantom and withdraw Solana from a centralized Exchange to your wallet to be able to pay for transactions and use your SOLs to exchange them for the cryptocurrency you want. Here is a more detailed guide if you are new and want to start using Orca, how to withdraw Solana to your wallet.

Exchange

The exchange is the main part of Orca, and the first thing we must do is click on connect at the top right, and connect our wallet to the platform.

With this, and Solana in your wallet, in trade we will indicate the cryptocurrency we want to use, and in for, the cryptocurrency we want to get. We indicate the amount and below you will see an arrow in fair Price, where you can see more in detail all the information of the exchange you are going to make, such as the rate or ratio, the impact of the price and the commissions. If you are satisfied, click on Exchange, and confirm in your wallet. In this simple way, you will already have your cryptocurrencies exchanged.

To search for the cryptocurrency you want, click on the arrow, and you can search by name or in the list. For the moment, you will not find other cryptocurrencies that are not in the list, since you cannot add liquidity to the protocol with new cryptocurrencies without going through Orca.

Next to the Exchange, in stableswap, you can exchange directly between USDT to USDC or vice versa in an easier and faster way. Quite useful if you want to switch from one stablecoin to another quickly and without complications.

Pools

In Pools you can find the liquidity part, where you can farm different LP Tokens from the Solana network in exchange for an annual %. If you are new to DEFI, and do not know what are the LP Tokens, the risks and the impermament loss, I leave you a guide here.

At the top, you can see things like the TVL, or total value locked inside LP Tokens, currently over $1 trillion in value (American), and a 24 hour volume of $100 million. You will also see the price of orca and the weekly issuance of orca tokens as a reward for liquidity providers.

Further down we find the filters, an interesting aspect is that you can see the annual % it gives in 7 days, 30 days and in 24 hours. As the APR is quite changeable, using the 24 hours filter is not very useful, as you will see a % that later will vary quite a lot. Therefore, I recommend using the 7 days or 30 days for more accuracy on the % you can receive for each LP Token.

To provide liquidity, simply click on deposit, and indicate the same amount for each token. A very interesting part that Orca has, is that you can only have one token, for example in SOL/USDC, imagine that you only have USDC, and to avoid having to go to the swap and change half of your USDC to SOL, you can click on the tab auto-swap uneven amount, and it will directly create your LP Token with only the USDC you have. It automatically switches half of them to SOL and creates the LP Token for you.

Below, before creating the LP token, you will see information such as annual %, estimated earnings with annual % in $ each month. Accept the box below, click on deposit, confirm in your wallet and that’s it, you will have your LP Token generated an interest.

On each LP, you will see the amount of Orca you receive per day per $1,000 for reference. Note that you will receive Orca, and no more LP Tokens.

Double Dip

You will see some LP Tokens with the name double dip. These, apart from receiving Orca’s reward for providing liquidity, you are going to receive a % also of the native token you are providing liquidity. If we go to the top in double dip, you will see the % you are going to get from the native cryptocurrency of the LP. For example, in ATLAS/USDC, you will receive Orca and also ATLAS and you can see the annual % received.

It’s a way to accumulate more tokens of that LP, with really interesting % on many pairs.

In Orca you can find a lot of different LP Tokens, being one of the platforms with more variety in the Solana network. If you are interested in farming LP Tokens in Solana, without a doubt, I recommend you to look at Orca because you will be able to find many pairs, and a very competitive annual interest rate.

Staking

In staking, there is currently no cryptocurrency available, but when it is enabled, you will be able to place a single cryptocurrency, without the risk of impermanent loss, and receive Orca in return for staking that cryptocurrency here.

A very similar format to what you can do with CAKE on pancakeswap, although at the moment no token is enabled for it.

Risks

One of the great advantages that Orca has and reduces its risk, is the audit that it has and that has been developed with the Solana team, which ensures that it will not disappear and be a rugpull, being developed with the Solana team. One aspect that may seem irrelevant, but really has its importance, is that the founder of FTX, one of the big investors behind Solana follows Orca’s twitter account. So it is very unlikely that the platform will disappear overnight with your funds.

In aspects of possible hacks, being audited and supervised by Solana’s team, this is also very unlikely to happen. In addition to having more than a billion or a trillion in American dollars within its platform, a fairly high LTV and that gives more confidence.

The main risk that can be found in Orca, is the risk of impermament loss in your LPs that you bring liquidity, and the fact that the token you receive is Orca, thus being a very inflationary token and with a tendency to go down in price. So if you accumulate Orca and it drops in price, actually the % you are receiving is less than what it indicates. Therefore, I recommend that if you have no interest in accumulating the Orca token, every so often exchange it for another cryptocurrency or more LP Tokens.

I hope it has helped you to learn more in detail how Orca So works and the advantages it has over other platforms. Remember that if you don’t have an account with binance, you can create one just below.