Orca, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Solana blockchain, has announced the completion of an $18 million Series A financing round. The round was co-led by Polychain Capital, Placeholder, and Three Arrows Capital, with participation from Defiance, Zee Prime, Coinbase Ventures, Solana Capital, Jump Capital, Sino Global Capital, and Collab+Currency. The funds will be used to accelerate Orca's mission of becoming the premier swapping platform within the Solana ecosystem.
From Zero External Capital to $300M TVL
Founded in February 2021 by Yutaro Mori and Grace “Ori” Kwan, Orca initially bootstrapped without any outside funding. Since then, the core team has expanded to eight members spanning three continents. As of today, the protocol’s total value locked (TVL) stands at over $300 million, making it one of the largest automated market makers (AMMs) on Solana.
Orca’s native token, ORCA, is used to pay trading fees and incentivize liquidity provision in its “Aquafarms” pools. Placeholder partner Chris Burniske commented: “Not only is Orca responsive and affordable, but it is finance made fun, with a cheery experience, community, and broader values-based mission. It’s teams like Orca that will bring crypto to the mainstream and redefine how we think of finance in our everyday lives.”
Solana Ecosystem Boom Drives AMM Demand
Solana (SOL) has surged approximately 5,184% over the past 12 months, becoming the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Its high-throughput blockchain has attracted a flood of DeFi projects including Serum, Solaris, Parrot, Solrise, Dexlab, Senswap, Spiderswap, Solend, Port, Sypool, Solanax, and Hydraswap. Orca positions itself as the go-to AMM for swapping tokens on Solana, competing directly with other decentralized exchanges.
Kyle Davies, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, stated: “Orca’s AMM is a critical addition to the Solana ecosystem. We are excited by the strength of the team, performance, and their community-focused mission.”
Solana Network Outage in Focus
The announcement comes shortly after Solana experienced a network outage on September 14, 2021, which frustrated many users. The Solana team published a detailed post-mortem explaining the incident. Despite the temporary setback, investor confidence in the Solana ecosystem remains robust. Orca’s successful fundraising underscores the market’s appetite for efficient AMMs that can handle high transaction volumes with low fees.
As DeFi competition intensifies, Orca’s unique user experience and fresh capital injection position it well to capture a significant share of Solana’s growing DeFi activity.