Introduction and methods

In Solana, smart contracts are called programs. A program is just an account that has been marked as executable. Once a program has been implemented on the chain, it can be read and interacted with through instructions, which is called to execute a function of a program.

Solana contains a small handful of native programs, which are required to run validator nodes. Unlike third-party programs, the native programs are part of the validator implementation and can be upgraded as part of cluster upgrades. On the other hand, Solana also have Third-party programs that can be integrated on the ecosystem.

These programs are useful to be able to integrate new tokens and ita functionalities to Solana. For each program the program id and description each supported instruction is provided. Program ID is the public key of the program. In this dashboard, we will compute the number of unique programs used every day from the beggining of the year. And we will se which are the most common type programs used. Finally we will compare the popularism change of the main programs used. To do that, we will take into account the programId to identify which program is being used.

Results

Regarding the most common type of programs used since the beginning of 2022, we can se in the donut situated on the left that the most common type of programs has been those related to DEX applications. It represents more than 75% of the total transactions.

Another important type of program have been chadmin with more than 20% of the transactions followed by DeFi applications program. Dapp and layer 2 program types are practically neglegible.

Since 2022, there have been a clear uptrend on the daily amount of unique programs used. Since January 2022, the daily number of unique programs used on Solana increased from 400 to more than 1000, jumping more than 100% over the year.

Finally, looking at the change in popular programs, we can see how from the starting of 2021 to current days, the most important growth have been done by DEX applications like Serum dex V3 or Mango Markets, as well as Jupiter Aggregator. It is logic following the previous results found in terms of common type of programs used.

Conclusions and insights

In this dashboard it has been analyzed the Solana Unique Programs. It has been analyzed the evolution of the daily unique programs used as well as the most common type of programs used. The main insights extracted have been the following:

• Since 2022, there have been a clear uptrend on the daily amount of unique programs used.
• The most common type of programs has been those related to DEX applications. It represents more than 75% of the total transactions.
• The most important growth have been done by DEX applications like Serum dex V3 or Mango Markets, as well as Jupiter Aggregator.