Is This the End of Raydium (RAY)?

With out  Pump.enjoyable and meme cash, Solana would doubtless be lagging behind Ethereum and Tron. Then got here meme cash like Bonk and BOME, and SOL costs turned the nook, rising from 2022 lows of round $8 to breaking all-time highs in January 2025.

Pump.enjoyable and Rise Of Meme Cash On Solana

Pump.enjoyable singlehandedly made Solana the go-to blockchain for launching meme cash. To launch an SPL token that may be swapped for SOL, for instance, all it’s a must to do is go to the Pump.enjoyable homepage and select a ticker identify, an emblem, and an image.

Within the subsequent few steps, your meme coin will likely be stay, and if fortunate sufficient to realize traction—say Elon Musk mentions your meme coin or it will get the eye of a developer—you’ll be set, even “graduate” and get listed on Raydium.

As extra customers launched meme cash on Solana through Pump.enjoyable, the launchpad turned essentially the most worthwhile protocol on Solana.

Nevertheless, there was one other impact: since tokens with over $69,000 in market cap graduated and listed on Raydium, the DEX additionally turned one of many top-performing protocols, using the wave and churning out tens of millions of {dollars} in income as merchants swapped, trying to find the subsequent best Solana meme coins to buy.

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Pump.enjoyable Says PumpSwap Is Reside

This era of excessive efficiency might be over for Raydium now that Pump.enjoyable has introduced they’re launching their very own DEX, dubbed PumpSwap.

In a put up on X, Pump.enjoyable stated PumpSwap will likely be a token-swapping portal powered by its personal liquidity swimming pools, inserting it in direct competitors with different DEXes, primarily Raydium, which has lengthy been a hub for meme coin buying and selling, benefiting from the Pump.enjoyable growth.

Introducing PumpSwap, Pump’s new native DEX

starting NOW all cash that full their bonding curve will migrate on to PumpSwap

PumpSwap permits
– on the spot migrations
– 0 migration charges (down from 6 SOL)
– extra liquidity
– creator income sharing (coming quickly)

& extra pic.twitter.com/T9BkmmaVVS

— pump.enjoyable (@pumpdotfun) March 20, 2025

In line with Pump.enjoyable builders, the objective is to reinforce consumer expertise, and a method of doing so is to get rid of pointless friction.

Due to this fact, as a substitute of tokens with at the least $69,000 in market cap migrating and itemizing on Raydium, they are going to immediately checklist on PumpSwap with none extra price. Beforehand, migrating protocols needed to pay a 6 SOL price. All migrations can even be on the spot.

As a manner of incentivizing meme coin merchants to change to PumpSwap, builders stated a proportion of their income will, within the coming days, be shared with coin creators. Swap charges will likely be set at 0.25%, with 0.20% distributed to liquidity suppliers and the remaining 0.05% going to the DEX.

On X, the co-founder of Pump.enjoyable stated they wanted to “get to the subsequent stage” and at the moment are “ruthlessly lowering boundaries and factors of friction.”

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A Blow For Raydium?

Whether or not Raydium was a barrier to their success stays to be seen. What’s clear is that the transfer is an enormous blow for the favored Solana DEX.

For months, Raydium has been synonymous with meme coin buying and selling on Solana. Within the course of, RAY, the native governance token, turned one of many best cryptos to buy. 

It’s estimated that, on common, they received 36% of their buying and selling quantity from Pump.enjoyable each month.

By the shut of 2024, Raydium made about $154 million in income, of which practically half was from Pump.enjoyable. Now that tokens gained’t be buying and selling on its rails however on PumpSwap, it means Raydium will lose a giant chunk of its buying and selling quantity and income.

Hours after the announcement, RAY slid, losing 11%, per Coingecko information.

Will Raydium Stand Tall?

All hope is, nonetheless, not misplaced.

This week, Raydium launched LaunchLab, a launchpad that rivals Pump.enjoyable however their intention is to not “steal Pump.enjoyable customers.”

It options additions equivalent to a versatile bonding curve and multi-token help, that means it helps tokens past Solana.

The launchpad additionally affords seamless liquidity integration that ensures the DEX stays aggressive, even staving off rivals.

In line with Raydium, LaunchLab is “way more versatile” and can combine the DEX’s LP locker for Price Key NFTs. What this implies is that it locks liquidity to safe swap charges eternally.

Past the launchpad, it could take time earlier than PumpSwap picks up momentum. Already, Raydium is widespread and has a broader consumer base. Per DeFiLlama, it manages over $1.1 billion as of late March 2025.

Raydium additionally serves different sectors, together with DeFi, not simply meme cash, which Pump.enjoyable goals to capitalize on after launching PumpSwap.

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