Prop AMMs: Changing Solana’s Market Structure

Below, we see that prop AMMs on Solana have consistently registered >$5B in weekly volume since mid-June. A new market entrant (HumidiFi) has overtaken SolFi in trading volume in the past three weeks. 

Although prop AMMs remain closed-source, aggregators like Jupiter and Titan can still interact with their contracts and execute transactions through their pools. This feature has been key to their success, particularly for highly liquid assets like SOL-stablecoin or stable-to-stable pairs. The chart below shows that prop AMMs like SolFi, ZeroFi and Obric have a higher percentage of their volume (>85%) coming from DEX aggregators. In contrast, the opposite happens with traditional DEXs that are more reliant on memecoin volumes. Raydium and PumpSwap, which derive >80% of their volume from memecoins, have the lowest percentage of volume coming from aggregators. These DEXs originate most of their volume from trading platforms like Axiom, or bots hitting their programs directly.

In this regard, market share per asset type and volume composition across Solana DEXs point toward increased specialization. The chart below shows monthly SOL-stablecoin volumes by type of DEX. We observe that prop AMMs have gradually taken over SOL-stablecoin volumes since their emergence in October 2024, now accounting for ~58% market share. Another fascinating insight from this chart is that Solana’s microstructure has been more favorable to prop AMM + routers than onchain orderbooks (e.g., Phoenix), which are insignificant on the L1 today.

In contrast to the trend above, traditional AMMs like Raydium and PumpSwap remain more efficient in handling liquidity for long-tail assets like memecoins. Prop AMMs are virtually absent from this vertical because it’s too risky for them to actively manage liquidity for new assets, many of which don’t even have live oracle price feeds.