Trader FAQs
Orca is the easiest place to trade cryptocurrency on the Solana blockchain. On Orca, you can trade tokens cheaply, quickly, and confidently (thanks to the Fair Price Indicator). Additionally, you can provide liquidity to a liquidity pools, including concentrated liquidity pools (Whirlpools) to earn trading fees and token emissions.
There are two major ways to trade cryptocurrencies: traditional orderbook exchanges and automated market maker (AMM) protocols. In the former, the orderbook matches users looking to buy with users looking to sell similar amounts of tokens. In the latter, users trade with a pool of tokens, rather than directly with other users. For blockchain applications, Orca believes that AMM-based trading protocols are the superior approach because of their simplicity and composability.
Of the solutions competing to scale the blockchain ecosystem, Solana's performance stands out: 50,000 transactions per second, 400ms block times, and $0.01 average transaction fees. What’s more, Orca has been continually impressed by the value, vision, and engineering chops of the Solana team. For these reasons, Orca believes that Solana is the best choice to support the next generation of DeFi apps.
The ORCA governance token was launched on 9th August 2021. See the Tokenomics page for more details. For details of Orca's governance process please see the Governance User Guide.
ORCA is available on many exchanges globally, including, amongst others, Coinbase, FTX, Kraken, MEXC, and Gate. A more complete and up-to-date list is available on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. Orca does not solicit exchange listings of the ORCA token. However, from time-to-time, centralized exchanges may choose to list ORCA, based on their market analyses or community feedback. When exchanges list ORCA, they will generally make announcements of such listings, and they will be added to the list of ORCA markets on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.
To connect to Orca you will need a compatible wallet, Orca currently supports:
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Orca plans to integrate other wallets that support Solana program execution, as they are released.
Orca uses the Solana team's token-swap program. Orca's Constant Product pools use a version which was audited by crypto security firm Kudelski. The deployment uses the commit hash: f4c5fd.
You can use Orca on the phone with Phantom, Solflare, Coin98, SafePal, Bitkeep, Math Wallet or Slope.
SOL is required to pay network fees. The actual fees are likely to be lower, but for simplicity, a small minimum balance of SOL is required to transact on Orca.
Liquidity provider fee: When trading, you pay a percentage of the trade value as a fee. These fees vary depending on the route the AMM uses, see below for details of the fees.
The below table shows the fee paid when trading across the various pool types found on Orca. The remaining columns show how the total fee is split between earnings for liquidity providers, Orca Treasury, and Impact Fund.
Whirlpool Fee Rate: When creating a new Whirlpool users can select the fee rate paid by traders.
Pool Type | Total Fee | LP Fee | Treasury | Impact Fund |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pool | 0.3% | 0.25% | 0.04% | 0.01% |
Stable Pool | 0.07% | 0.06% | 0.008% | 0.002% |
1% Whirlpool | 1% | 0.97% | - | 0.03% |
0.3% Whirlpool | 0.3% | 0.291% | - | 0.009% |
0.05% Whirlpool | 0.05% | 0.0485% | - | 0.0015% |
0.01% Whirlpool | 0.01% | 0.097% | - | 0.0003% |
A double-hop trade such as SOL -> USDT -> ETH would pay a fee to trade SOL -> USDT and a further fee to trade USDT -> ETH.
Network fee: when trading a nominal amount of SOL is also paid in the form of Solana network fees. The exact amount varies depending on the parameters of the trade; when trading a token for the first time, more SOL is required to add that token to your wallet. In the past, typically trades cost between 0.0001 — 0.001 SOL.
Orca does not charge any additional fees.
When you enter a trade, there are two factors that determine whether a Fair price label is displayed:
- 1.Is the price per token within 1% of the rate quoted by CoinGecko?
- 2.Is the price impact caused by this trade less than 1%?
If either of these two conditions is not met, you'll see either the "Rate Warning!" or "Great Price!" alert in the UI. When a Rate Warning label is displayed you can still trade after acknowledging the warning.
The price you get on Orca depends on the size of the order. As the amount of tokens you buy from the pool increases, the price of the token increases as well. This increase in price is called price impact.
The trade will fail if the price of the underlying pools moves past your Slippage Tolerance setting. Increasing the tolerance in your local settings will raise the chances of your trade succeeding, but also increase the probability of another party front-running your trade.
Due to current limitations of the smart contract, trades that route through multiple pools have a higher likelihood of failing due to slippage. The transaction may succeed if sent again. Orca recognizes that this could be frustrating, so plans are in the works to improve the logic for trades that use multiple pools.
During periods of Solana network congestion there is an increased likelihood of transaction failure.
Orca will list tokens based on information provided by the project and demonstrated community demand (e.g., volume or interest). Orca is a decentralized protocol that facilitates trades and and will aim to support every asset that is tradable on Solana.
Some tokens on Orca are wrapped, including BTC, ETH, AVAX, LUNA, LidoDAO, Celo, FTM and UST. There are several source protocols for wrapped tokens, please ensure to Do Your Own Research.
To trade ERC-20s on Orca, you’ll need to convert them to SPL tokens by transferring them from MetaMask to your native SPL wallet. For a step-by-step guide, see How to Trade Tokens.
Fear not—the Orca trade experience you know and love is not going away! As a trader, there is nothing you need to do to take advantage of the deeper liquidity provided by Whirlpools; all the magic happens behind the scenes.
Of course! You can interact with pools using the token-swap Javascript client from the Solana engineering team. You can also view the deployed program on the Solana Explorer.