Prop AMMs Capture 50% of Solana DEX Volume: Why You Should Care

HumidiFi has been growing its trading volume dominance among Solana DEXes since mid-August, stressing the success of proprietary automated market makers (prop AMMs) in its infrastructure.

HumidiFi captured 19.6% of Solana DEX volumes between August 11 and 17, according to Blockworks’ Solana dashboard.

The platform maintained its dominance since then, with only one week dropping below first place when Orca edged ahead, 22.92% to 22.44%, between August 25 and 31.

Starting October 13, HumidiFi’s market share topped 30% for three consecutive weeks. Additionally, the platform recorded $2.2 billion in daily trading volume as of November 6, significantly ahead of Meteora’s second-place $572.7 million.

Galaxy Research reported in a publication on October 30 that prop AMMs accounted for more than 50% of Solana’s total DEX volume.

The shift represented a fundamental change in how liquidity operated on the network compared to traditional automated market maker models.

Solana News: What Prop AMMs Are and How They Work

A prop AMM on Solana operates as an on-chain market maker running like a professional prop desk rather than a public liquidity pool.

Traditional automated market makers (AMMs), such as Uniswap, Orca, and Raydium, allow anyone to deposit tokens, utilize public pricing formulas, and display transparent quotes with crowdsourced liquidity.

Solana prop AMMs flipped that model entirely. One shop or a small set provides all liquidity, controls the strategy, and exposes only a thin on-chain interface.

The real logic lived off-chain through a quoting engine that tracked CEX prices and other venues, continuously recalculated quotes, and pushed updated prices on-chain at high frequency.

The capital was proprietary, the algorithm was proprietary rather than a public curve, and these platforms plugged directly into routers like Jupiter, rather than courting retail liquidity providers.

From a user’s perspective, Jupiter aggregated all venues, including classic AMMs, order books, and prop AMMs, routing orders to the one that offered the best execution.

Prop AMMs often lacked a standalone frontend, an “add liquidity” button, and visibility into inventory management.

Users received tighter spreads and deeper books on key pairs, such as SOL/USDC, majors, and popular memecoins. The settlement was on-chain and auditable, but the strategy and access remained gated.

This is the reason why some users compare the prop AMMs to dark pools found in traditional finance.

Solana’s speed and low fees made the prop AMM model viable. Professional shops updated quotes and rebalanced positions frequently without prohibitive gas costs.

Additionally, Jupiter’s aggregation of most Solana flow meant a single integration was enough to capture massive volume.

The result delivered CEX-like pricing inside DeFi through a more centralized, less transparent liquidity model that leaned heavily on one router and a handful of professional firms.

Users gained CEX-level spreads and slippage, but the tradeoff involved more concentrated liquidity and opacity compared to classic permissionless LP pools.

Ethereum’s PMM Model Operates Differently

Despite its success on Solana, the prop AMM concept is not a new one.

Ethereum had its own version through Private Market Makers, which facilitated $13.6 billion in volume alone in September, according to an October 28 analysis by Barter.

Unlike Solana’s prop AMMs, Ethereum’s PMMs operated entirely off-chain and executed only presigned quotes on-chain to minimize gas fees.

Four players accounted for 95% of Ethereum PMM volume: Wintermute, Symbolic Capital Partners, Native, and the wallet 0xbee…000, with Wintermute strongly dominating.

The order flow came through RFQ platforms, limit order protocols, and direct integrations with Orderflow Auctions, where PMMs acted as solvers.

Intent-based DEXs on Ethereum relied heavily on PMM liquidity, filling 40% to 77% of volume directly via market maker solvers. Vanilla DEX routers directed less than 10% of volume through PMMs.

Large swaps over $100,000 dominated PMM activity, with average trade volumes nearly four times larger than AMM trades.

The key difference was infrastructure constraints. Ethereum’s higher gas costs pushed professional market making off-chain, while Solana’s throughput allowed similar strategies to operate with on-chain settlement and quote updates.

Prop AMMs on Solana updated pricing continuously without cost prohibitions, creating a hybrid model between traditional AMMs and fully off-chain professional trading desks.

Solana prop AMMs now capture the majority of the DEX market share. Although the model concentrates liquidity control among professional firms, it delivers institutional-grade execution to retail users through aggregator integration.