Hristina Vasileva
Raydium is getting closer to Uniswap in daily spot volumes, as the inflow of meme tokens does not stop. Raydium continued its activity while other markets slowed down after the latest crypto rally.
The meme frenzy shows no signs of slowing down, as Raydium is catching up with Uniswap on weekly volumes. The Solana DEX ecosystem remains near its peak activity, and Raydium reached $20B in weekly spot volumes. Raydium remained one of the most resilient app, even as the entire crypto market slowed down and moved away from its peak activity and record valuations.
Uniswap was still first with $26B in weekly volumes, mostly due to its distribution to multiple ecosystems. According to CryptoRank data, PancakeSwap is the third-largest DEX, still retaining $10B in weekly trading volumes. Total spot volume went above $98B, though Ethereum-based trading saw some outflows due to prohibitive gas prices.
Raydium growth goes ahead of Uniswap
Raydium and Uniswap are already head to head when it comes to short-term daily volumes. The Solana DEX carried $4.5B in trades, while Uniswap had a daily turnover of $4.9B. Both of the DEX take up a close slice of the market, with around 26% for Uniswap and 23% for Raydium. The slow shift to the Solana ecosystem follows the slide in DEX activity for Ethereum-based tokens. Meme tokens on Uniswap still exist, but are more expensive to trade.
Raydium achieved a 128% growth of volumes in the past 24 hours, showing it was resilient to other market trends. Most of the activity on Raydium came from the top 10 hottest meme tokens, with Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) having the highest trading volume.
Uniswap expanded its daily volumes by 80% only, despite relying on several highly active networks. Uniswap uses Base for its growth, while Ethereum’s swaps became prohibitive due to high gas prices.
Raydium remains a single-chain DEX, dealing with older and newly launched tokens. The activity includes both trading older assets and through bot-driven sniping of new tokens. Raydium outperforms multiple other DEX, by being the main tool for tapping the booming meme market.
The DEX also lined up among top fee producers on the daily timeframe. Raydium was behind only Ethereum and Tether, generating $10.37M in the past 24 hours. The absolute fee record followed another peak day for meme tokens, but especially Solana-based memes.
Raydium surpassed even the main Solana chain in fee production, as well as Jito, the main Solana MEV block builder. At the same time, Uniswap only produced $5.11M in 24-hour fees. Following the peak activity, Raydium’s native token RAY rallied to $4.70, though still below its initial trading rally. RAY has been trading since 2021, and is yet to breakout to a new all-time high.
Top Solana meme tokens are also near their peak valuation, with a total market capitalization above $21B. Some of the memes have moved on to centralized markets, but for newer tokens, Raydium is the main source of price discovery.
Pump.fun continues to produce new tokens
Pump.fun, the main source of tokens for Raydium, continues to produce a baseline of 35K newly launched assets. Of those assets, 1-2% graduate to Raydium, while the rest never enter price discovery.
Raydium is still key to the launch of decentralized tokens due to its feature of locked liquidity. The newly launched tokens offer a guarantee of no rug pulls from the team, and no possibility to drain the liquidity.
After Raydium, even fewer tokens move on to centralized exchanges. However, the hope of finding the next winner keeps the Solana DEX busy.
The effect on Raydium was explosive growth compared to 2023, with up to 100X in terms of volumes and fees. Raydium does not only carry meme tokens, and is part of Solana’s DEX ecosystem.
Raydium will also branch into DeFi, offering stablecoin options, as well as hosting cbBTC, the wrapped form of BTC on Solana. Raydium carries cbBTC swaps and trades, using the services of Jito for guaranteed transactions.
