Kamino Joins Solana Aggregator Race: Who’s Giving Solana DeFi’s Best Rates?

Kamino Meta Swap, the Solana DeFi heavyweight’s newest product, has blessed the protocol with newfound momentum on its quest to become Solana’s DeFi superapp.

Amidst stagnating confidence in Jupiter, the market leader, Kamino’s swap aggregator promises Solana DeFi’s best and ‘most realistic’ swaps, giving Kamino a considerable edge over fierce competition.

What makes Kamino Swap different from rival aggregators, and does it really offer better rates than Jupiter and Titan Exchange?

Kamino Meta-Swap Goes Live

On April 2, Kamino brought a fresh layer of utility to Kamino Swap, introducing its Meta-Swap aggregator. Pulling together the very best of Solana DeFi, Kamino Meta-Swap claims to offer traders the network’s most efficient, accurate, and reliable trading experience.

Combating the inaccurate price quotes and failed swap transactions that often plague Solana DeFi, Kamino has developed what it calls an ‘Active Simulation Mechanism’. 

Kamino ASM continually performs real-time simulation for each proposed swap route, helping provide the most accurate possible price.

ASM serves as a direct countermeasure to what Kamino considers the current industry standard of promising the most optimistic rate, without accounting for slippage or market conditions.

Additionally, Kamino Meta Swap introduces a novel RFQ (Request For Quote) system powered by the Pyth Express Relay. An intent-based protocol, Kamino Swap RFQ broadcasts each swap to a network of searchers, who compete to offer the best possible price on all trades and execute it on their behalf. This method enables Kamino Meta Swap to offer optimized rates with zero fees and zero slippage.

Initial user response to the Kamino Meta Swap has been overwhelmingly positive, with Solana DeFi users asserting Kamino has made good on its promise to offer the network’s most accurate rates.

Comparing Swap Rates

While Jupiter was largely unchallenged for many years, Solana’s aggregator wars are becoming fiercely competitive. With Jupiter, Titan Exchange, and now Kamino Swap vying for market share, traders are spoilt for choice.

In practice, there’s very little separating Solana’s leading swap aggregators. Based on quoted prices alone, Jupiter maintains a slight edge over the competition. However, as Kamino so astutely puts it, aggregators default to giving the most optimistic price, as opposed to what a trader would realistically receive.

Similarly to Kamino, Titan Exchange also runs live simulations to ensure the quoted price represents what traders can realistically expect to receive. In a statement to SolanaFloor, Titan Exchange CEO and co-founder Chris Chung asserted that the platform "does live simulations and slippage protection at extremely fast rates." According to Chung, Titan's average slippage on swaps is 0.015%.

Titan actually does live simulations and slippage protection as well at extremely fast rates. Average slippage was 0.015%

Additionally, Jupiter’s default ‘Ultra’ setting charges a 0.1% fee on all swaps, excluding trades between $SOL, $JUP, $jupSOL, and stablecoins. Comparatively, Kamino, Titan Exchange, and Jupiter’s manual mode are fee-free.

Currently, both Kamino Swap and Titan Exchange run a live comparison against Jupiter. While these comparisons often indicate that Jupiter is giving an inferior price, Jupiter co-founder Siong Ong has suggested that these comparisons don’t represent the best price the platform offers.

Ong reiterated that Jupiter will be integrating the Pyth Express Relay in the near future and asserted that Jupiter remains committed to benchmarking new liquidity sources to ensure they are not passing on deceptive pricing quotes to users.

With Kamino and Titan Exchange rising to challenge Jupiter’s monopoly, Solana DeFi has welcomed renewed competition between aggregators. Protocols now need to ensure they are consistently offering the best possible rates, or risk losing users to their rivals.

Read More on SolanaFloor

Confidence in Jupiter DAO hits rock bottom

$JUP Slumps to All-Time Low as Budget Votes Plague DAO Governance

Level Up Your Solana DeFi Knowledge