Orca (ORCA) is a decentralized token on Solana that powers Orca, a Solana-native automated market maker (AMM) and decentralized exchange (DEX) built around liquidity pools known as Whirlpools.
ORCA functions as the protocol's governance and utility token, with its contract deployed on Solana on 2021-08-03. A separate liquid-staking derivative, Staked Orca (XORCA), also exists but is distinct from the base ORCA token.
Orca differentiates itself through Whirlpools, its core AMM engine, and a fee-funded buyback mechanism that ties trading activity directly to ORCA's value capture.
As of 2026-09-02, the protocol reports roughly $256.66 million in total value locked across Solana and Eclipse, with annualized fees near $70.57 million and annualized revenue near $8.49 million. A portion of protocol fees funds ORCA buybacks feeding the staking rewards vault. In 2026, Orca extended into permissioned pools for regulated, KYC-verified real-world-asset trading, expanding its scope beyond permissionless DEX activity.
ORCA is primarily a governance token: holders (and stakers of its derivative, xORCA) vote on proposals covering fee structures, treasury allocation, and protocol upgrades.
Holders may delegate voting power, submit proposals, and elect members of the Orca DAO Council. A share of trading fees funds ORCA buybacks that feed a staking rewards vault, giving token holders an economic stake tied to protocol usage in addition to their governance rights.
ORCA has a fixed maximum supply of 75,000,000 tokens with no scheduled inflation.
Net supply is deflationary: in 2025 Orca DAO burned 25,000,000 ORCA — 25% of total supply — from the community treasury, and a 24-month ORCA buyback program funded by protocol fees began in August 2025, continuing to reduce supply over time.
ORCA launched via airdrop on August 9, 2021, distributed to early liquidity providers and users based on protocol contribution. Initial circulating supply was 5.25 million ORCA, entirely airdropped, including 4 million ORCA distributed retroactively to liquidity providers weighted by USD value of liquidity provided.
Before the token existed, initial development was funded by a Solana Foundation grant. Orca then raised an $18 million Series A round, announced around September 22, 2021, with investors including Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, DeFiance Capital, and Jump Capital.
ORCA runs on Solana, a blockchain that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism combined with a proof-of-history technique for ordering transactions, supporting high throughput and low transaction costs.
ORCA is an SPL token, and Orca's protocol activity is also tracked on the Eclipse network. Orca does not operate its own blockchain or validator set; it functions as a smart-contract protocol built on Solana's existing infrastructure.
Orca was co-founded in 2021 by Yutaro Mori and Grace Kwan (also known as "Ori"), reportedly working out of Tokyo, Japan.
Mori has been active in crypto since 2017 and previously worked at the Ethereum Foundation on the Eth2 Go client and Layer 2 solutions before moving to Solana. Kwan previously worked as a designer and engineer at IDEO, Coursera, and Stanford.
Orca is developed and operated by a private, for-profit company founded by co-founders Grace Kwan and Yutaro Mori, rather than a nonprofit foundation.
Initial development was funded by a Solana Foundation grant before the ORCA token existed; the company subsequently raised an $18 million Series A round. The project's website is orca.so, with code published at github.com/orca-so.
Orca is governed on-chain by Orca DAO, launched in April 2022, in which ORCA and xORCA holders vote on proposals covering fee structures, treasury allocation, and protocol upgrades.
Proposals move through a minimum four-day discussion period, a five-day voting period requiring four Council votes, and a two-day veto window that can be triggered by 1,000,000 ORCA in veto votes. In 2025, Orca DAO approved transferring Whirlpools governance to the development team, directing 20% of Whirlpools fees to ORCA buybacks, and granting the team roughly $32 million in USDC from the treasury.
Orca's most recent expansion is permissioned pools, launched May 27, 2026, a marketplace for KYC-verified, accredited investors trading regulated tokenized real-world assets through Orca's AMM engine. Streamex's gold-linked token GLDY was the first asset listed on this marketplace.
On March 27, 2026, Orca announced a partnership with Kamino to offer automated vault strategies within its app. Robinhood listed ORCA on April 7, 2026. An Orca DAO-approved 24-month ORCA buyback program and a SOL-staking initiative via an Orca validator began in August 2025.
Orca has been audited by at least four firms, with six audits reported in total and no reported hacks over more than four years of operation.
On-chain liquidity is relatively thin at $1.6 million. Holder concentration is flagged as high — the top 20% of addresses have historically held roughly 72% of supply — though that reading dates to December 2024 and is not recently updated.