Key takeaways
How has Solana DeFi performed in 2025?
It reached a record 69.23 million SOL locked. However, its value in US dollars also fell by $4 billion.
What drives growth?
The tokenization, stable yield, and DePIN segments have been the main outliers over the past month.
Solana DeFi has seen explosive growth despite the ongoing market correction. At press time, the channel’s ecosystem had a total value locked (TVL) of $8.83 billion, down from $13.2 billion as of mid-September.
Source: DeFiLlama
However, in SOL terms, the number of SOLs locked reached an all-time high of 69.23 million tokens.
Interestingly, however, the growth drivers go beyond traditional lending and staking services.
Main Solana DeFi Drivers
The summit leading protocols in TVL were Jupiter (JUP) and Kamino (KMNO), each with a value locked in excess of $2 billion.
For those unfamiliar, Jupiter is a DeFi exchange platform that has 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, demonstrating investor confidence.
Kamino, on the other hand, is like Aave’s version of Solana (Aave), with a primary focus on on-chain lending.
However, it recently added a trading feature, allowing users to also trade the spot market directly on the platform. He has $2.5 billion in TVL.
In third place is Jito (JTO), a protocol that supports DeFi integration into the Solana ecosystem alongside a platform optimized for MEV. At the time of writing, he had $1.8 billion.
Sanctum, Marinade, Binance staked SOL and Raydium also held over $1 billion in TVL, making liquid staking and DEX key growth drivers.
The final player in the +$1 billion category is Double Zero, a new entrant focused on DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure network).
The project leverages underutilized bandwidth on contributors’ optical fiber for network layers dedicated to blockchain applications. This makes DePIN a key category in the Solana DeFi landscape.
Beyond the $1 billion TVL players, two notable platforms saw double-digit growth over the past month. The first is Solstice USX, a synthetic stablecoin that leverages basis trading, similar to Ethena’s USDe. It increased 45% to $316 million.
Another exception is Securitize, a tokenization platform, which recorded 35% monthly growth, bringing its TVL to $310 million.
Collectively, liquid staking and lending have dominated TVL. However, there was also notable performance in the tokenization and DePIN segments.
There are two factors underlying the growth of Solana DeFi: It is relatively faster and cheaper than Ethereum.
At the time of going to press, this was 99% cheaper to transact on Solana than on Ethereum. However, Ethereum enjoys greater investor confidence and planned upgrades could gradually narrow the gap these days.
Source: JetonTerminal
