Introduction

One way to track developer growth in an ecosystem is through the number of unique contracts used. This dashboard focuses on unique programs and their popularity. First, the trend of use of new programs will be investigated by visualizing the number of unique programs used per day since the beginning of January. Then, the 5 most commonly used programs over that timeframe will be presented. Finally, why the identified top programs are so popular will be discussed.

Results

The below chart shows how many unique programs have been used daily on Solana blockchain since January 2022.

As can be seen from the chart, the number of unique programs used in that timeframe is growing.

At aggregated level the below donut chart shows the share of programs categorized in 6 types. We can see that DEX related programs were most popular in 2022.

The table below shows the top most popular (used) program address with their labels and number of used in transactions since the beginning of 2022.

Summary of findings

In this dashboard, firstly, the growth of unique programs use was shown. The data showed that the number of daily unique programs used is constantly growing. We can conclude that the Solana ecosystem is expanding. However, the slope of growth is slightly decreasing.

Secondly, the top 5 most popular programs were identified. Here is the list and brief descriptions (descriptions were extracted from the programs official websites):

• Serum Dex Program v3: "Serum is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and ecosystem that brings unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance."
• Mango Program v3: "Mango is built on Solana blockchain and utilizes Serum DEX for spot margin trading while perpetual futures are traded on Mango's own orderbook."
• System program : "program can create new accounts, allocate account data, assign accounts to owning programs, transfer lamports from System Program owned accounts and pay transaction fees."
• Raydium Liquidity Pool V4 program: “Raydium is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) and liquidity provider built on the Solana blockchain for the Serum Decentralized Exchange (DEX).” The LP program allow anyone to provide liquidity by adding their assets to a pool.
• Token program: This program defines a common implementation for Fungible and Non Fungible tokens.

As can be seen from the list and description above, the top popular unique programs has diverse use case. Two are used for DEXes, one is used for trading and finally one is used for system and the other for tokens.

The below charts depicts change in the absolute and relative number of top 5 program use over time.

As can be seen the first two top popular programs kept their dominance over the timeframe.

The below donut chart compare the share of top programs.

Considering transactions which involves unique programs, we can identify number of usage of each program during the given timeframe.

Broken down programs into protocols, the graph below shows how the popularity of programs have changed over time. We can see the recent increase the popularity of Serum protocols. Also Mango has continued its growth over time.

Note: the graph includes only programs that have been labeled by Flipside.