Purpose of wrapping SOL

Question

The Solana documentation describes how to wrap SOL into a custom token. Is that the same procedure used by wSOL? What would be other use cases for doing this?

Token Program | Solana Program Library Docs

Edit, To clarify my question:

I am aware about what wrapped SOL/ETH/whatever is for and why we have them.

SOL docs say:

When you want to wrap SOL, you can send SOL to an associated token account on the native mint and call syncNative. syncNative updates the amount field on the token account to match the amount of wrapped SOL available. That SOL is only retrievable by closing the token account and choosing the desired address to send the token account's lamports.

Questions are:

• Is wrapped SOL implemented by using this method?
• Are there other tokens having SOL wrapped?
• Why would I do that / What are other use cases (except having wSOL for the obvious reasons)?

Answer 1

It helps to remove the annoyances that would come with dealing with a "special" asset by making SOL the same as any other spl token.

Imagine you are writing a defi app that has a process like:

1. Derive/get the user ATA for X token

2. Transfer X to some account

3. Close the ATA for X

It becomes annoying when X is SOL, since SOL becomes a special case where you don't do steps 1 and 3, as it would have no ATA and you can't close the user's wallet.

Wsol allows you to do the same steps for SOL as you would do for any other spl token. On the front end, it is slightly annoying, as you must create a "temporary" ATA and transfer some of the user's SOL to it, but it is better to have these annoyances on the front end than in the protocol.

Answer 2

Wrapped SOL (wSOL) is essentially the SPL token equivalent of native SOL, and can be freely converted between the two. A common case use for wSOL is in Defi platforms, where it enables convenient swaps/transfers with other SPL tokens.

How can I wrap Native Sol in JS?