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Formation
Formation is a New York City–headquartered capital-markets and onchain-finance platform formed through the merger of Solana-based decentralized finance protocols Orca and Loopscale. It combines Orca’s trading and liquidity infrastructure with Loopscale’s credit and vault products, aiming to connect asset issuance with trading, financing, and investment strategies.[1][2]
Overview
Formation brings together two platforms with different roles in onchain finance. Orca provides trading and liquidity infrastructure, while Loopscale provides credit and vault infrastructure. The companies said the combined stack is intended to let an asset move from issuance to trading in an Orca Whirlpool, serve as collateral for borrowing, and be packaged into a vault strategy.[1][2]
The merger did not change how users access Orca or Loopscale. Both applications continued operating, with existing Orca positions, fees, and rewards, as well as Loopscale loans and vault deposits, unaffected; users did not need to withdraw assets or migrate positions.[1][2]
Truitt said he and Gooneratne began building tokenized-asset and decentralized-finance infrastructure through Bridgesplit in late 2021. He described the work as developing from a focus on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to tokenized collectibles and then to assets including reinsurance, home-equity loans, and public equities. Truitt said Loopscale was designed to become a foundational credit system for the real economy.[3]
Orca’s protocols and Loopscale’s products continue as parts of Formation. Orca’s decentralized exchange has operated since 2021, and Loopscale went live publicly in 2025.[4][2]
Products and Infrastructure
Trading and Liquidity
Orca supports secondary trading through Whirlpools, where traders exchange assets against liquidity supplied by liquidity providers. Its Riptide product allows professional market makers to operate their own automated market-maker strategies, while permissioned pools restrict trading to approved participants.[1]
Formation describes liquidity as supporting asset entry and exit and enabling assets to be used as loan collateral. At the time of the merger announcement, Orca had processed more than $550 billion in trading volume since 2021, according to Formation.[1]
Credit and Lending
Loopscale matches borrowers and lenders through an order book. Lenders post terms for specific assets, enabling fixed-rate loans with lender-defined conditions rather than rates set by the utilization of a shared lending pool. The platform supports bespoke lending products and complex forms of collateral, including permissioned assets and Orca liquidity-provider positions.[1][4]
In March 2025, Loopscale announced that it would accept liquidity-provider tokens from Orca and Raydium as collateral. The integration was presented as allowing liquidity providers to borrow against their positions through Loopscale’s order-book lending, with access to more than $1 billion in liquidity.[4]
Formation says credit can create reasons to hold assets and generate trading activity, while secondary-market liquidity can support the collateral behind loans. The company presents those connections as part of a reinforcing system linking trading, lending, and investment.[1][2]
Vaults and Asset Curation
Loopscale Earn Vaults provide access to strategies across venues in yield, credit, and market-making. Loopscale Asset Curation structures strategies and connects issuers with liquidity providers and other market participants.[1]
Formation says vaults direct allocator capital into markets, while its broader platform combines vault distribution with trading and credit. Its stated work includes capital-allocation strategies and integrations for allocators, as well as new assets that can support vault strategies, trading markets, and lending products.[1]
ORCA and Protocol Governance
Orca’s protocols remain the foundation of the ORCA and xORCA token network. Orca’s documentation says the merger did not change ORCA’s supply and involved no dilution or additional minting; xORCA staking and unstaking continued unchanged. It also says Orca’s programs, upgrade authority, multisig setup, and bug bounty remained unchanged.[2]
The documentation describes ORCA as representing Formation’s combined products, partners, and development roadmap, including Loopscale’s credit and vault platform and its pipeline of real-world-asset issuers alongside Orca’s decentralized exchange.[2]
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