Open this lesson in your favourite AI. It'll walk you through the why, explain the demo, and quiz you on the try-it list.
Most Solana DeFi protocols don't reinvent the wheel — they compose. Token-2022 for tokens, Pyth for prices, Wormhole/CCTP for bridges, Switchboard for fallback oracles, Marinade/Jito for staking, Squads for treasury multisig. Understanding the standard stack and where to plug in saves months of work.
The standard composition.
Use these three in order. Each builds on the one before.
In one paragraph, explain the standard Solana DeFi stack a new protocol would compose.
Walk me through what Jupiter's swap API actually does behind the scenes when you call /quote.
If Circle revoked CCTP support for Solana, which DeFi categories break, and which adapt?
Layer Standard choice When to deviate
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Token SPL Token (or Token-2022) Confidential transfers, metadata
Price oracle Pyth (pull, fastest) Switchboard for redundancy/fallback
Stable peg USDC (Circle, native CCTP) USDT for some pairs (more volume but
less compliance-friendly)
Bridge Wormhole / Circle CCTP deBridge or Allbridge for niche routes
Multisig Squads v3 Realms for DAO-style on-chain voting
Staking Marinade (mSOL), Jito (jSOL) bSOL for permissionless / nodeless
Aggregator Jupiter (swap API) Self-built routing only for in-house
pairs no aggregator covers
Indexing Helius, Triton Self-hosted Geyser plugin if needed
Wallet adapter @solana/wallet-adapter Privy, MagicLink for embedded UX
Typical Solana DeFi stack composition: 80% off-the-shelf, 20% custom logic.
Custom logic is where you differentiate; everything else is plumbing.