What Is Orca? The Solana DEX Built on Whirlpools

Founding. Grace "Ori" Kwan and Yutaro Mori founded Orca. It launched on Solana in February 2021. Orca's first outside funding was an $18 million Series A, structured as a sale of ORCA tokens from its treasury, in September 2021. Three Arrows Capital, Polychain and Placeholder co-led the round ¹¹.

Governance. The terms describe the protocol as managed by ORCA holders. ORCA holders can submit and vote on proposals, and approved proposals are carried out by the team or a DAO Council ⁶⁹. The orca.so Terms of Use name only "Orca" as the site provider. They apply Cayman Islands law with individual arbitration ⁹.

Formation merger. On October 7, 2026, Orca and Loopscale announced they were combining as Formation ⁸. The leadership team ⁷:

• CEO: Luke Truitt, Loopscale co-founder;
• COO: Mary Gooneratne;
• Chief Strategy & Legal Officer: Christopher Montagano, previously Orca's Chief Legal Officer.

What Orca says changes and stays the same ⁷⁸:

• No supply change: no new ORCA is minted and supply is not diluted.
• No migration: Whirlpool positions need no action.
• Same controls: programs, upgrade authority, multisig and bug bounty are unchanged.
• Loopscale token plans: Loopscale will not issue its own token, and its points convert later in 2026.

In a classic AMM, liquidity is spread across every possible price. In a Whirlpool, each LP picks a price range. The position earns fees only while the market price is inside that range ²³. Capital is used more efficiently, but the position needs more attention. If the price leaves your range, the position stops earning and sits entirely in one of the two tokens.

Orca offers two kinds of pool ³:

• Concentrated-liquidity (CLMM) pools for active LPs, with a chosen range.
• Splash Pools, aimed at token launches and passive LPs, which span the full price range.

Swapping:

1. Connect a Solana wallet such as Phantom.
2. Pick the two tokens.
3. Check the quoted output and fee, which are shown before you submit, then sign ¹.

Orca can route a trade through several pools, for example SOL → USDT → ETH. Each pool on the route charges its own fee ¹.

Providing liquidity: choose a pool and price range, then deposit both tokens. Pool creators can also lock liquidity, which is common for new token launches ³. Developers can build on Orca through TypeScript and Rust SDKs and a REST API ³.

Each pool has a fee tier chosen by its creator, from 0.01% for pegged stablecoin pairs up to 2% for volatile pairs ¹³. The fee is taken from the token you sell ¹. In Adaptive Fee pools the tier is a floor, and the fee can rise when the market is volatile ¹.

Every fee is split as follows ¹:

The Treasury's 12% is divided again:

• 50% goes to the development team;
• 10% goes to the DAO fee treasury;
• 40% buys ORCA for the xORCA staking pool ¹.

Solana network fees are separate and small, around 0.000005–0.00001 SOL per standard transaction ³. On a 0.3% pool, for example, a $1,000 swap pays about $3 in pool fees: about $2.61 to LPs, $0.36 to the Treasury and $0.03 to the Climate Fund ¹.

ORCA is used for governance ⁶. Staking ORCA at orca.so/stake gives you xORCA. Orca uses 40% of protocol fees to buy ORCA and adds it to the staking vault, so each xORCA redeems for more ORCA over time. The amount of xORCA you hold stays the same, and xORCA can be traded ⁵. These rewards depend on trading volume and are not fixed. After the merger, Orca says ORCA represents the combined Formation products ⁷.

You need only a Solana wallet; there is no account or KYC. Users must be 18 or older and not on a sanctions list ⁹.

The orca.so interface is blocked in a published list of countries, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Belarus. It is also blocked in the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions ⁴. The United States is not on the list as of October 23, 2026 ⁴. Orca also screens wallet addresses. If your region becomes blocked, you can still close positions and withdraw ⁴.

Whirlpools has been audited several times ¹⁰:

The program is open source and its on-chain build can be checked against that code ³¹⁰. Orca runs a bug bounty ⁷. DefiLlama's hacks database lists no Orca exploit ¹².

Audits reduce but do not remove smart-contract risk. The program remains upgradeable under a multisig, and Orca says that setup did not change with the merger ⁷. Other risks to understand:

• Out-of-range positions: concentrated positions can stop earning and become entirely one token.
• Impermanent loss: LPs can end up worse off than if they had just held the two tokens.
• Scam tokens: anyone can create a pool, so fake tokens can appear. Check mint addresses.
• Fake sites: use only orca.so and watch for look-alike domains (crypto phishing).

For comparison with other DEX designs, see Raydium on Solana and Uniswap on Ethereum, or the DEX ratings.