Solana guide library
Solana DeFi guides
Begin with the action you intend to take. A swap trades assets, a liquidity position earns fees under pool rules, and a loan creates debt against collateral. Each guide follows the resulting position through its costs and exit.
Trade and inspect execution
- Centralised exchanges
Understand exchange custody, order books and fees, then follow a Solana deposit and withdrawal from the service ledger to the blockchain.
- Swaps and DEXs
Follow a token swap from liquidity and quote to signed conditions and actual receipt. Understand the different jobs of a trading program and a route aggregator.
- Wrapped SOL
Understand why applications use wSOL, how lamports and token amounts relate, and what SyncNative and account closure do during a swap.
- Slippage and price impact
Separate the price effect already in a quote from movement before execution. Work through reference, quoted and actual output and interpret tolerance correctly.
- Minimum received
Calculate a swap bound, translate it into token base units and understand its fee semantics. Learn what a successful or failed limit actually establishes.
- Limit orders and DCA
Understand price triggers, recurring swaps, custody and cancellation. Compare the instruction you create with the execution that later takes place.
- Inspect a memecoin
Check a token’s mint, authorities, holder distribution and executable exit. Understand why a large market cap or locked LP does not prove a safe trade.
Provide liquidity and measure return
- Liquidity pools
Derive a pool swap from its reserves, follow a provider’s changing assets and understand what a concentrated price range does to a position.
- LP fees and net return
Reconcile an LP position’s asset value, fees, incentives and costs. Compare it with holding and handle deposits, withdrawals and rebalancing correctly.
- APR, APY and realised return
Calculate a simple compounding example, read variable-rate assumptions and separate token income from market-price performance and product charges.
- TVL and double counting
Calculate value locked under a stated method, distinguish deposits from price gains and trace receipt tokens through layered DeFi positions.
Borrow and manage debt
- Lending and borrowing
Follow funds through a lending pool and a collateralised loan. Understand utilisation, changing rates, repayment and the actual withdrawal path.
- Lending vaults explained
Understand how a lending vault allocates deposits, values shares, charges fees and returns funds. Read curator protection and liquidity claims in context.
- LTV and health factor
Calculate debt-to-collateral ratios, distinguish borrowing limits from liquidation conditions and see how price and interest change a loan.
- Price oracles and freshness
Follow a market price into a program, decode fixed-point values and timestamps, and understand freshness, confidence and protocol-specific valuation.
- Liquidation mechanics
Follow a complete liquidation with chosen parameters. Understand close factors, bonuses, remaining debt and why the actual market configuration matters.
- Perpetual futures explained
Follow the economics of a perpetual position. Calculate illustrative profit and loss, distinguish funding from borrowing costs and inspect an exit request.
Inspect the whole position
- Understand a DeFi position
Build a useful product specification from the actual asset flow, source of income, controlling programs and exit. Includes a filled lending-vault review example.
- Withdrawal liquidity
Understand why a position’s value can differ from immediately available funds. Compare protocol redemption, delayed withdrawal and selling a claim.