How Orca works

Orca is an automated market maker (AMM) like Uniswap that launched in 2021 on Solana. AMMs rely on liquidity pools rather than traditional order books to execute decentralized trades. The liquidity pools are funded by users who deposit two tokens in equal proportion in exchange for a liquidity provider (LP) token that represents their claims to their share of the total pool, plus a portion of trading fees. Orca also launched Whirlpools (similar to Uniswap V3) that offers users the ability to select the lower and upper price ranges where they wish to provide liquidity on a specific pool (a.k.a. concentrated liquidity). Orca makes it easier by suggesting preset price ranges with different risk-reward profiles. Users can further stake their LP tokens to earn additional yield paid in native protocol rewards through the Orca's Double Dip feature.

How Orca makes money

Orca charges a 0.3% fee on all trades within a liquidity pool. Of this amount, 0.25% is paid to LPs as a reward for providing liquidity, 0.04% goes to the Orca treasury, and 0.01% goes to the Orca Impact Fund. For Whirlpools, the protocol charges 0.26% swap fees per trade and does not currently distribute fees to its treasury. For stablecoins, the trading fees are 0.07% per swap, with 0.06% going to LPs, 0.008% to the treasury and 0.002% for the Orca Impact Fund. The accumulated fees in the Orca treasury may be used to fund development, manage the token supply through buybacks, or other initiatives that support the long-term health of the Orca protocol.

How you make money on Orca

You can earn 0.25% of all trades on Orca by providing liquidity on the exchange. The protocol also earns 0.04% for every trade that is distributed to its treasury. This serves to accrue value to ORCA holders over the long term through potential fee distribution or token buybacks.