Key Takeaways
How has Solana DeFi fared in 2025?
It hit a record of 69.23 million in locked SOL. However, it also fell down by $4 billion in U.S dollar value.
What’s driving the growth?
Tokenization, stablecoin yield, and DePIN segments have been key outliers over the past month.
Solana DeFi has seen explosive growth despite the ongoing market correction. At press time, the chain’s ecosystem had a total value locked (TVL) of $8.83 billion, down from $13.2 billion recorded in mid-September.
Source: DeFiLlama
However, in SOL terms, the number of locked SOL did reach a record level of 69.23 million tokens.
Interestingly though, the growth drivers have extended beyond the typical lending and staking services.
Key Solana DeFi drivers
The top leading protocols in TVL were Jupiter [JUP] and Kamino [KMNO], each with over $2 billion worth of value locked up.
For the unfamiliar, Jupiter is a DeFi exchange platform that evolved into an ‘everything system.’ It now offers spot swaps, lending, staking and prediction markets. The platform now controls over $2.75 billion in user funds, underscoring investors’ trust.
Kamino, on the other hand, is like Solana’s version of Aave [Aave], with a primary focus on on-chain lending.
However, it recently added a swap feature, allowing users to trade the spot market directly on the platform as well. It has $2.5 billion in TVL.
In the third position is Jito [JTO], a protocol that supports DeFi integration across the Solana ecosystem alongside a MEV-optimised platform. At time of writing, it had $1.8 billion.
Sanctum, Marinade, Binance staked SOL, and Raydium also had over $1 billion in TVL, bringing liquid staking and DEX as key growth drivers.
The final player in the +$1 billion category is Double Zero, a new entrant focusing on the DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure network).
The project leverages underutilised bandwidth on fibre optics from contributors for dedicated network layers for blockchain applications. This makes DePIN a key category driving the Solana DeFi landscape.
Beyond the $1B TVL players, there are two notable platforms that posted double-digit growth over the past month. The first one is Solstice USX, a synthetic stablecoin that leverages basis trading, similar to Ethena’s USDe. It grew 45% to $316 million.
Another outlier is Securitize, a tokenisation platform, which posted a 35% monthly growth – Bringing its TVL to $310 million.
Collectively, liquid staking and lending dominated the TVL. However, there have been notable performers in the tokenisation and DePIN segments too.
There are two underlying factors behind Solana DeFi growth – It’s relatively faster and cheaper than Ethereum.
At press time, it was about 99% cheaper to transact on Solana than on Ethereum. However, Ethereum has higher investor trust, and planned upgrades may be steadily closing the gap these days.
Source: TokenTerminal