Raydium

An automated market maker (AMM) and decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Solana blockchain, enabling fast, low-cost trading and liquidity provision for digital assets with integrated order book functionality.

What is Raydium?

Raydium is a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol on the Solana blockchain, launched in February 2021, that operates as an automated market maker (AMM) and decentralized exchange (DEX) with a hybrid model integrating a central limit order book (CLOB) via Serum’s infrastructure. It facilitates trading, liquidity provision, and token launches for SPL tokens, leveraging Solana’s high throughput (up to 65,000 TPS) and low transaction fees (~$0.00025). Raydium’s core features include swap pools, liquidity farming, and the AcceleRaytor launchpad for initial DEX offerings (IDOs), with over $2 billion in total value locked (TVL) and $100 billion in cumulative trading volume as of September 2025, per DeFiLlama data.

Raydium’s AMM uses constant product pools (e.g., SOL-USDC) for instant swaps, while its Serum integration allows tighter spreads and deeper liquidity, benefiting traders with prices often within 0.1% of centralized exchanges. Liquidity providers earn fees (0.25% per trade) and RAY token rewards (market cap ~$1.2 billion, price ~$4.50 as of September 2025), with staking yields averaging 5-10% APY. The AcceleRaytor has launched over 50 projects, including Star Atlas, with recent integrations like Pump.fun’s memecoin migrations adding 1.5 SOL liquidity per token at $90,000 market cap. Raydium’s program ID (675kPX9MHTjS2zt1qfr1NYHuzeLXfQM9H24wFSUt1Mp8) governs its onchain operations, consuming ~20,000 Compute Units per swap.

Security challenges include past exploits, like the 2022 Serum hack impacting Raydium’s order book, mitigated by community-driven upgrades to Serum’s fork, OpenBook. Raydium’s role in Solana’s ecosystem is bolstered by partnerships, such as Franklin Templeton’s tokenized fund explorations, but users face risks from impermanent loss and rug pulls in IDOs. Its mobile-friendly interface via wallets like Phantom and Solflare, combined with Solana’s speed, supports high-volume trading, with 7 million monthly transactions recorded in Q3 2025, per Solana Explorer.