Solana DEX Raydium Token Jumps Despite Emergence of Rival PumpSwap

Raydium’s native token, Ray, rose sharply on Monday, driven by the decentralized exchange’s “deep liquidity,” even as it faces stiff competition from the recently launched rival PumpSwap, according to one core contributor.

As the 133rd largest crypto by market capitalization, Ray is trading at about $1.95, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko.

It is up 25% over the past 14 days, recovering ground lost earlier this year as Pump.fun grew more popular.

Ray had dropped 7.6% over a five-minute period following last Friday’s launch of Pump.fun’s competing decentralized exchange. The token previously fell 22% as rumors of the emerging Pump.fun competitor emerged last month.

However, Raydium’s numbers have held up relatively well.

On Sunday, the Solana-based exchange and automated market maker processed some $321.31 million worth of trading volume, a 4% decrease from the week prior, according to DefiLlama.

And on Monday, it surpassed last Monday’s trading volume for the same day a week ago.

Raydium’s popularity endures; Pump.fun rises

Throughout 2024, Raydium established itself as the most popular DEX on Solana, generating $124 billion worth of trading volume by January this year amid a meme-coin-fueled market upturn. 

Yet Pump.fun later solidified itself as the biggest token launchpad across all chains, becoming the fastest-growing app in crypto history toward the end of 2024, Recently surpassing $600 million in revenue, according to Dune data.

Previously, when Pump.fun tokens completed their bonding curve and “graduated” from the platform, which currently happens at a $100,000 market cap, they would become tradable on Raydium. 

At its January peak, according to Dune, Pump.fun created over 70,500 tokens with 1,168 of them graduating to Raydium. Plus, the launchpad accounts for up to 70% of all tokens created on Solana or 55% as of March 23. 

Pseudonymous core contributor for Raydium Stendhal told Decrypt that they aren’t surprised because all of Pump.fun’s previously migrated tokens have their liquidity locked on Raydium.

They also mentioned that Raydium has “deep liquidity” in tokens from “all asset classes” outside of the Solana launchpad.

“I believe the reliance from Pump.fun has been overblown,” Stendhal said, adding that Raydium’s technical capabilities are being overlooked.

“We have been hearing for a while that it is easy to launch a ‘vanilla’ [automated market maker]. I don’t think that most people understand how critical distribution is to volume,” he added.

As for PumpSwap, its figures are smaller, with $669,120 and $3.26 million daily trading volume on Saturday and Sunday, DefiLlama data shows.

‘Great success’

Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen told Decrypt these figures are “reasonably accurate” and that its launch has been a “great success.” He points to the emergence of the Morning Routine (ROUTINE) meme over the weekend as an example of the exchange at play.

Still, PumpSwap remains some distance from surpassing Raydium as the largest decentralized exchange on Solana.

Over the past 24 hours, Raydium has accounted for 32.7% of all volume on Solana with Meteora close in second at 31.56% and Orca in third at 20.41%. 

Pump.fun’s competitor, however, sits in fifth with just 5.74% of daily volume on Solana. 

“It’s too early to assess the impact of a new player with a lot of mindshare joining the spot market landscape,” Stendhal added. “It is nonetheless interesting to see that the big disruption anticipated by the market didn’t happen.”

That said, we will likely see this gap close if the launchpad is able to foster another major meme like Fartcoin (FARTCOIN), which peaked at over a $2 billion market cap. 

And, with ROUTINE soaring to $19 million over the weekend, some traders are starting to believe in meme coins again.

“Volumes on PumpSwap have been increasing day-by-day, and I expect this trend to continue as more coins migrate and continue to generate trading volume,” Cohen said.

Edited by James Rubin and Sebastian Sinclair