I'm Back on Solana — Here's What's Actually Worth Farming

I'm Back on Solana — Here's What's Actually Worth Farming

After the FTX collapse everyone wrote Solana obituaries. I took a break too. But the chain never actually died and now it's having a second wind with stuff that's genuinely interesting.

Been rotating through Solana DeFi for the past few weeks and there's signal here. Not the "next Ethereum killer" cope from 2021, just solid protocols shipping with real volume.

Why Solana's different this time

No VC theater. Most of these new protocols aren't raising $50M seeds and promising governance tokens in 2027. They're launching, iterating fast, and some are already profitable.

The memecoin boom brought users back. Whether you like it or not, Solana is where retail goes to ape into low-cap casino games. That volume creates opportunities for actual DeFi protocols to build on top of.

And honestly, using Solana is just faster. If you've been farming EVMs you forget how painful it is to wait 12 seconds for a confirmation. Solana is instant and gas is like $0.001 per tx.

What I'm farming

Jupiter is the obvious one. It's the main DEX aggregator and they already did one airdrop that was massive. Now there's JUP staking and a second airdrop planned (Jupuary 2). I'm holding JUP, staking it, and using Jupiter for every swap. Even if the airdrop is diluted, Jupiter is the Uniswap of Solana so it's not going away.

Loopscale is new and interesting. Modular lending for weird assets that don't have markets elsewhere. They're backed by real VCs but not in the annoying "we raised $100M and have no product" way. Actually works and TVL is growing. Worth depositing some SOL just to get early user status.

Perena is building stablecoin infrastructure with a novel AMM called Numéraire. Sounds abstract but basically they're trying to make stablecoin swaps cheaper and more capital-efficient. If they become the default stablecoin layer on Solana that's a strong position. I'm doing small swaps to farm activity.

Carrot Lend is peer-to-pool lending with automation. Not as flashy as the others but the UI is good and they're getting volume. Feels like early Aave before it mooned. I have a small deposit earning yield while farming whatever points they're tracking.

Project 0 is for degens who have bags spread across multiple protocols. It's a prime brokerage that lets you borrow against your whole portfolio instead of protocol-by-protocol. Niche but useful if you're farming 5+ Solana protocols at once.

Mooncake is perpetuals powered by RateX. Another perps exchange sounds boring but Solana doesn't have a dominant perps leader like Hyperliquid yet. If Mooncake gets there early that's valuable. I'm doing small trades just to be in the system.

I'm tracking everything on JeetDrops which saves me from missing deadlines and snapshot dates. There's 14 Solana projects live right now and I'm rotating between 5-6 at a time.

How to actually farm

If you haven't touched Solana in a while, it's easier than before. Phantom wallet is solid (better than MetaMask honestly). Bridge from any chain using Jupiter's bridge aggregator or just buy SOL on an exchange and withdraw directly to Solana.

Don't ape your whole stack. I'm doing:

- 35% Jupiter (DEX aggregator + staking)

- 25% Loopscale (lending)

- 20% Perena (stablecoin swaps)

- 10% Carrot Lend (lending)

- 10% Mooncake (perps)

The key is activity, not just deposits. Do a few swaps per week, open/close some positions, interact with different parts of each protocol. Most airdrops filter out wallets that deposit once and go to sleep.

Why this could pay off

Solana's airdrop history is strong. Jupiter, Jito, Pyth, Parcl — all dropped tokens to early users and most of them were 4-5 figure airdrops if you were active enough.

The ecosystem is also consolidating around a few winners. Unlike 2021 when there were 50 "Solana DEXes" that all died, now it's pretty clear which protocols have staying power. That means tokens will actually have liquidity and utility when they drop.

And Solana's DeFi TVL is back above $5B. That's still small compared to Ethereum but it's growing while a lot of other chains are flatlining. Capital is rotating back.

Not shilling bags here — I'm literally farming these right now. But if you wrote off Solana after FTX you might want to take another look. The tech works, the apps are fast, and the airdrop meta is alive.

Anyway, that's where I'm deploying liquidity this month. Do your own research obviously but these are the ones I think are worth the time.