Orca — The DEX for people, not programs.
Blazing-fast speed, nearly-zero fees, and human-centered design. All in one DEX.
Orca is the easiest place to exchange cryptocurrency on the Solana blockchain. On Orca, you can exchange tokens more cheaply, quickly, and confidently (thanks to their Fair Price Indicator) than any DEX on Ethereum. Additionally, you can provide liquidity to a trading pool to earn trading fees.
A human-centered DEX
- Fair Price Indicator
Current DEXes often feel like a choice between two evils: Blind trust that the DEX offers market rates, or time-consuming comparison with trackers or other exchanges. With Orca, the problem is sought to be solved with the Fair Price Indicator.
When users input a trade on Orca, two conditions are checked whether they are true:
1. The rate is within 1% of the listed market rate on CoinGecko
2. Slippage is less than or equal to your tolerance setting (defaults to 1%)
If so, a trader can confidently proceed with the trade transaction. If not, a Rate Warning or Slippage Warning will be displayed so one can make an informed decision on whether to trade.
2. Token Balances
In most AMMs on Ethereum, there’s no way to check balances without having to open a browser extension. This feels like an obvious gap when it comes to UX, which is why Orca has a Tokens panel directly into the Orca interface. There, a user‘s balance for all tokens can be seen listed on Orca, including live updates when the user make a trade or provide liquidity.
Why Orca chooses Solana?
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 have been continually impressed by the value, vision, and engineering chops of the Solana team. For these reasons, Solana is the best choice to support the next generation of DeFi apps.
Tokenomics
ORCA governance token issuance date: Aug 9, 2021
SPL Token Address: orcaEKTdK7LKz57vaAYr9QeNsVEPfiu6QeMU1kektZE
The initial circulating supply of ORCA is 5.25 million.
The total supply of ORCA is 100 million.
Fee Structure
Upon token issuance, we will deprecate the existing liquidity pools, which pay a flat 0.3% to liquidity providers, and launch new pools with the following fee structure (scaled proportionally for pools with lower fees):
0.25% — LPs
0.04% — Orca Treasury
0.01% — Orca Impact Fund
The Orca Treasury is a DAO that ties the value of the ORCA token to Orca itself. The accumulated fees may be used to fund development, manage the token supply through buy-backs, or other initiatives that support the long-term health of the Orca protocol.
The Orca Impact Fund represents the team’s commitment to real-world positive impact. The accumulated fees will be donated on a quarterly basis to fight climate change.
Token Distribution
Initial Circulating Supply
The ORCA governance token has an initial circulating supply of 5.25 million.
The initial supply is composed entirely of airdrops to existing liquidity providers and traders.
- 4,000,000 ORCA to Liquidity Providers: Distributed retroactively to existing liquidity providers, weighted by total USD value of liquidity provided since launch by Aug 2, 00:00 UTC (a leaderboard is visible at orca.so/stats)
- 500,000 ORCA to average traders: Distributed evenly to addresses with a total USD trade value between $1,000 and $10,000 by Aug 2, 00:00 UTC
- 500,000 ORCA to heavy traders: Distributed evenly to addresses with a total USD trade value ≥ $10,000 by Aug 2, 00:00 UTC
- 250,000 ORCA to advisors: These tokens were allocated to our advisors, e^{i} ventures, in exchange for sourcing early liquidity for the Orca protocol.
Team and Advisors
- 20% to team
- 0.9% to advisors
All team members, advisors, and future investors will receive ORCA with a 3-year vesting schedule and 1-year cliff or lockup.
Proposed Future Distribution
The following targets are not set in stone.
We have created the following target distribution as a starting point for Orca’s tokenomics over the protocol’s gradual decentralization. The exact numbers are likely to shift over time based on the pace of yield farming emissions, overall liquidity health, and incentivization of new features, among other factors.
Liquidity Providers (Aquafarms)
Distributing ORCA to liquidity providers through yield farming serves two primary purposes:
Gradually decentralizing the protocol
Directing liquidity to pools that need it most, by adjusting the emissions rates for each farm
The selection of Aquafarms and their emissions rates will be adjusted every two weeks.
The initial emissions across all Aquafarms will be approximately 200,000 tokens per week for the first two weeks.
Initial emissions weights:
ORCA Pools
- ORCA/SOL: 3x
- ORCA/USDC: 3x
Normal Orca Pairs
- SOL/USDC: 1.5x
- SOL/USDT: 1.5x
- ETH/USDC: 1x
- SOL/ETH: 1x
- RAY/SOL: 1x
- USDC/USDT: 1x
Community Fund
14.25% of the total supply is tentatively allocated to incentivizing community engagement. These tokens may be used for development, marketing, or growth into new regions, among other use cases.
The ORCA governance token is designed to support the long-term health of the Orca protocol. If changes are made to our tokenomics, we will update this page with an explanation of the changes and why they were made.
Investors
Orca raised $18 Million in Series A funding from big capital investors led by:
- Polychain
- Placeholder
- Three Arrows
along with other investors including:
- Jump Capital
- Sino Global Capital
- Collab & Currency
- DeFiance
- Zee Prime
- Coinbase Ventures
- Solana Capital
and a number of angel investors.
Roadmap
