Key Insights
Raydium has reported an impressive average daily trading volume of $3.6 billion in the first quarter of 2025, marking a 12.7% increase quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). This growth was significantly bolstered by a record-breaking total volume of $195.8 billion in January alone, which translates to an average daily volume of $6.3 billion. On April 16, Raydium introduced LaunchLab, its new token launchpad that allows for free token launches. Creators can opt for a standard JustSendit mode or customize settings through the LaunchLab mode. In January, the platform also launched a public beta for trading perpetual futures, offering zero fees on maker trades and a nominal fee of 2.5 basis points on taker trades. During the beta, Raydium Perps averaged $21.7 million in daily volume, providing gas-free trading and leverage of up to 50x across more than 110 trading pairs. In Q1, Raydium also achieved a milestone by utilizing a record $76.2 million in USDC—an increase of 38% QoQ—from protocol fees to repurchase 15.4 million RAY tokens, representing 2.8% of its total supply. This quarter marked Raydium’s fourth consecutive period as the top decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana in terms of daily trading volume.
Primer
Raydium (RAY) stands as the foremost automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) by trading volume on the Solana network. Launched in 2021, Raydium enables users to create new liquidity pools freely, contribute to existing ones, launch tokens, swap tokens, and trade perpetual futures. Liquidity providers earn fees from each trade executed in a pool and can also earn RAY, the platform’s native token, or other tokens if incentivized. Additionally, RAY can be staked to accrue more RAY tokens. In May 2024, Raydium unveiled its V3 application, which included enhanced Constant Product Market Maker (CPMM) pools supporting the Token-2022 program and featuring an integrated price oracle. The platform also provides Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) pools, allowing users to focus liquidity at specific price points, ultimately reducing slippage for trades and increasing earnings for liquidity providers, although it comes with a heightened risk of impermanent loss. Raydium also offers trading and routing via its API. Recent developments include the introduction of the Raydium Perps platform for perpetual futures trading on January 9, 2025, and the LaunchLab token launch platform on April 16, 2025.
Key Metrics Performance Analysis
As the leading DEX in terms of trading volume on the Solana network, Raydium’s trading figures serve as a vital barometer for the overall activity on the network. In the first quarter of 2025, the average daily trading volume rose by 12.7% QoQ to reach $3.6 billion, driven by an unprecedented total volume of $195.8 billion in January. The daily trading volume peaked at $16 billion on January 19, coinciding with the launch of the TRUMP memecoin on January 17. Trading activity across the broader cryptocurrency market also saw a surge during this period. However, by the end of March, daily trading volume on Raydium had steadily decreased to $709.6 million, reflecting a broader downturn in the cryptocurrency market. To provide context, Raydium’s daily trading volume averaged $6.3 billion in January, contrasting sharply with just $1.1 billion in March, which is a 66% decrease from the $3.2 billion average seen in Q4 2024.
Q1 2025 marked Raydium’s fourth consecutive quarter as the leading DEX on Solana, capturing 46.9% of daily volume, though this was a decline from 56.0% in the previous quarter. With this drop, Raydium did not command the majority of Solana’s DEX volume for the first time since Q3 2024. Meteora surpassed Orca to become the second-largest DEX on Solana by volume in Q1, largely due to several high-profile token launches, including TRUMP, MELANIA, and LIBRA. Meteora’s daily volume share peaked at 31.8% on February 14, following LIBRA’s launch, but subsequently faced a decline as the token’s price collapsed amidst allegations of insider trading and market manipulation, leading to the resignation of co-founder Ben Chow on February 17. From that day to the end of the quarter, Meteora averaged 11.8% of Solana’s DEX volume share.
Understanding the volume share by token type is crucial for identifying trending tokens on Raydium. Year-over-year, the share of meme token volume on Raydium saw an increase from 14.3% in Q1 2024 to 20.0% in Q1 2025, although it decreased from 27.9% in Q4 2024. Other token categories experienced growth in volume share during Q1, particularly AI tokens, which surged by 130% QoQ, increasing from 1.2% in Q4 to 2.9% in Q1. This disparity in volume share growth between popular categories like AI and other tokens underscores the prevailing belief that market attention significantly influences trading activity in the crypto space, especially on Solana. Noteworthy tokens that launched liquidity pools on Raydium during Q1 include SONIC from Sonic, FDUSD from First Digital Labs, PORTAL from Portal, and zBTC from APOLLO.
Raydium’s overall share of global DEX volume decreased from 17.4% in Q4 to 15.1% in Q1, while PancakeSwap’s volume share rose from 11.5% to 17.2%, allowing it to reclaim its position as the second largest DEX by volume. Despite these fluctuations, Raydium maintained its lead in global DEX volume share in January, surpassing Uniswap, and recorded a year-over-year increase of 149%, up from 6.1% in Q1 2024. This long-term growth in volume share reflects Raydium’s relative strength compared to other DEXs on Solana, as well as the record DEX volumes on the Solana network in January. While Solana led weekly DEX volumes across all networks in January, it fell behind Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain in February and March, which marked a decline from its dominance in Q4 2024.
On January 9, 2025, Raydium launched its public beta for perpetual futures trading, enabling traders to speculate on asset prices without expiration dates. Raydium Perps is supported by the liquidity layer of Orderly Network, offering gas-free trading with leverage up to 50x across 110 trading pairs. During the beta phase, maker trades incur no fees, while taker trades are charged a minimal fee of 0.0025% (2.5bps) by Orderly Network. Users must connect a Solana wallet, register, generate an API key, and deposit USDC, the only form of collateral accepted. Plans for a feature that allows users to deposit various assets converted into USDC collateral are in development. Additionally, throughout the beta, participants can submit UI/UX bugs for a chance to earn RAY, with weekly rewards for select participants.
In Q1 2025, Raydium Perps saw an average daily trading volume of $21.7 million, peaking at $116.0 million on February 3 before declining to $11.8 million by the end of March. The platform featured notable perpetual futures contracts, including the TRUMP and MELANIA tokens, Zeus Network’s ZEUS, and KAITO from the Web3 information platform Kaito. Meanwhile, the Tezos network activated the Quebec upgrade to enhance its core protocol’s performance, offering faster block times and refined incentives, while Layer 2 Etherlink supported scalability and application activity.
In January 2025, Raydium achieved a record $402.8 million in monthly fees, resulting in a 6.4% QoQ increase in daily average fees to $7.5 million for Q1, despite a decline in daily volume and fees later in the quarter. Year-over-year, daily average fees surged more than fivefold from $1.4 million in Q1 2024. Remarkably, after the TRUMP token launch, Raydium outperformed Tether in daily fees generated on January 18. The following day, daily fees peaked at a record $29.7 million. On January 23, RAY’s circulating market cap reached an all-time high of $2.4 billion, which was 28% higher than its peak of $1.8 billion in Q4 2024. However, RAY’s circulating market cap fell by 65% QoQ, dropping from $1.4 billion at the end of Q4 2024 to $495.1 million at the close of Q1 2025. Year-over-year, this marked a 23% decrease from the $640.4 million circulating market cap at the end of Q1 2024.
The RAY token on Raydium serves multiple purposes: holders can stake RAY to earn additional RAY tokens at an approximate annual percentage rate (APR) of 5%. Liquidity providers can also earn RAY through incentives allocated by the project team to reward those contributing to incentivized pools. The protocol may offer additional opportunities for users to earn RAY at its discretion, such as through a public beta phase where participants can report UI/UX bugs for rewards. Moreover, a bug bounty program offers rewards in RAY, SOL, or USDC on Solana.
Governance on Raydium is facilitated off-chain through Realms, requiring participants to deposit RAY to engage. A minimum of 1 million RAY is necessary to propose an initiative, and each token equates to one vote on active proposals. By the end of Q1, two proposals had been submitted. Out of RAY’s total supply of 555 million, approximately 188.7 million RAY (34%) is allocated to a mining reserve, with an annual emission of around 1.9 million tokens. At the end of Q1, 290.3 million RAY (52.3% of the maximum supply) were in circulation. According to the project’s documentation, the “Team” and “Seed” allocations, which total 25.9% of the maximum supply, fully vested in February 2024. The majority of the locked supply remains allocated to the Mining Reserve, Partnership & Ecosystem, and Advisors, collectively representing 66% of the maximum supply (366.3 million RAY), as noted in Messari Token Unlocks.
During Q1, a historic $76.2 million in USDC (+38% QoQ) generated from protocol fees was utilized to repurchase RAY from the market. This resulted in a record buyback of 15.4 million RAY (2.8% of the maximum supply), although the price of RAY fell 65% QoQ from $4.87 to $1.70 by the end of Q1. Notably, on January 20, over 1.68 million RAY (0.3% of the maximum supply) was bought back using $11.3 million USDC, following a record daily trading volume of $16 billion the previous day. The price of RAY on January 20 opened at $6.29 and closed at $7.35. By the end of Q1, a total of 63.8 million RAY (11.5% of the maximum supply) had been repurchased at an average buyback price of $2.78, utilizing $177.6 million in USDC.
On Raydium, pool creators have the flexibility to set the trading fee for their pools based on various fee tiers depending on the type of pool: Standard AMM (AMM V4) charges 0.25%, while Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) pools can charge anywhere from 0.01% to 2%, and Constant Product (CPMM) pools range from 0.25% to 4%. For all pool types, 12% of the trading fee is allocated for RAY buybacks. These fees are automatically claimed once they reach a value of $10 and are transferred to intermediary wallets for programmatic RAY buybacks. In AMM V4, 88% of the fee is distributed to liquidity providers, while CLMM and CPMM pools distribute 84%, reserving 4% for the treasury. In Q1, Raydium deposited a record $7.3 million USDC to its treasury, a 46% increase from the $5.0 million deposited in Q4 2024 and 31 times the $233,000 deposited in Q1 2024.
On January 1, 2024, Raydium implemented a trial pool creation fee of 0.68 SOL for standard AMM pools to deter spamming. This fee was adjusted to 0.15 SOL on January 13, 2025, while a 0.15 SOL fee was established for CPMM pools (CLMM pools do not require a creation fee). Fees collected are held in accounts overseen by the protocol’s multisig and are reserved for infrastructure costs. In Q1, Raydium generated 37,210 SOL in pool creation fees, which is a 12.5% decrease QoQ, while over 241,280 SOL has been generated since the inception of pool creation fees.
Qualitative Analysis LaunchLab
On April 16, Raydium launched LaunchLab, its own token launchpad. Tokens launched through LaunchLab incur no fees, and creators can choose between a standard JustSendit mode or customize settings through LaunchLab mode. When a token’s bonding curve hits the specified amount of SOL (85 SOL for JustSendit mode), the SOL and its equivalent in token liquidity are transferred to a Raydium AMM pool. LP tokens are subsequently burned, enabling trading to continue in the Raydium pool.
Prior to the launch of LaunchLab, Pump.fun, another prominent Solana token launchpad, introduced its AMM called PumpSwap on March 20. Like LaunchLab, Pump.fun simplifies the token launch process for deployers, who only need to set a name, ticker, and image to start trading without any fees. Previously, when tokens launched via Pump.fun reached a market cap of $69,000, $12,000 was added to a standard AMM pool on Raydium, allowing for asset pricing between zero and infinity. However, since the introduction of PumpSwap, Pump.fun has begun migrating liquidity to PumpSwap instead of Raydium.
With LaunchLab mode, users can modify the percentage of supply sold on the bonding curve, ranging from a minimum of 20% to a maximum of 80%, with the remainder transitioning to the AMM pool upon completion. Additionally, users have the option to lock and vest a portion of the token supply and specify cliff and vesting periods. Creators utilizing LaunchLab mode can also enable post-migration fee sharing, allowing them to claim 10% of LP trading fees from the AMM pool the token has moved to. This feature employs Raydium’s “Burn & Earn” mechanism, permitting creators to claim fees through a “Fee key” on Raydium’s portfolio page.
Moreover, LaunchLab incorporates a referral program, enabling each token page to have a “Share” button that provides a unique referral link associated with each Solana address. Referrers earn 0.1% (10 bps) of trades made using their links, with rewards distributed in SOL or the quote token used in the respective AMM pool. LaunchLab further supports third-party integration through a flexible Platform PDA (Program Derived Address) system, allowing external teams and platforms to create and manage their own launch environments. By registering a Platform PDA, third parties maintain a distinct brand and platform powered by LaunchLab’s infrastructure and Raydium’s AMM for liquidity. On April 25, Bonk launched Letsbonk.Fun, a highly successful third-party token launchpad utilizing LaunchLab’s capabilities. Additionally, LaunchLab features an SDK that offers tools and functions to interact with its bonding curves.
Integrations, Partnerships, and Upgrades
Raydium has made noteworthy advancements in expanding its ecosystem and enhancing its functionality through a series of strategic integrations, partnerships, and upgrades:
– *Opinions.fun Integration (Jan. 28)*: The launch of an opinion marketplace by Opinions.fun, where opinion coins that achieve a market cap of $69,000 transition to a Raydium liquidity pool with locked liquidity and burned LP tokens.
– *Printr Integration (Feb. 16)*: Printr, a forthcoming token launchpad, announced that all meme tokens launched on Solana via its platform will have their liquidity deployed to Raydium.
– *Symbiosis Integration (Feb. 19)*: Symbiosis, a cross-chain AMM DEX, integrated on-chain routes on Solana through Raydium.
– *Daos.fun Integration (Feb. 25)*: Daos.fun introduced a DAO fundraising platform allowing creators or founders to launch a token with liquidity moved to Raydium post-public sale.
– *Zypto App Integration (Feb. 26)*: Zypto, a mobile crypto wallet and payment application, integrated Raydium for trading on Solana.
– *Pumpkin Integration (March 14)*: Pumpkin launched a token launchpad, creating a CLMM pool on Raydium for each token that reaches 85 SOL.
– *Dripster.fun Integration (March 19)*: Dripster.fun launched its token launchpad, where $8,000 of liquidity is deposited and locked on Raydium for each token that achieves a bonding curve of $40,000.
– *CUBE Integration (April 9)*: CUBE, a digital asset marketplace, integrated Raydium as its first on-chain route.
– *GREED Academy Contribution (April 18)*: Raydium contributed 8,500 RAY to GREED Academy, a Web3 educational initiative, to enhance its reward pool for participant prizes.
– *FluxBot Integration (April 21)*: FluxBot, a Telegram trading bot, integrated Raydium’s LaunchLab, facilitating trading of tokens launched via the platform.
– *Maestro Integration (April 23)*: Maestro, another Telegram trading bot, upgraded to enable trading of pre and post-bonded LaunchLab tokens.
– *Letsbonk.Fun Integration (April 25)*: Bonk launched Letsbonk.Fun, a token launchpad powered by Raydium’s LaunchLab.
Closing Summary
In Q1 2025, Raydium achieved an average daily trading volume of $3.6 billion, representing a 12.7% increase Qo
