What is Raydium (RAY)?

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

Raydium addresses fragmented liquidity in decentralized trading by merging AMM pools with OpenBook’s order book (formerly Serum DEX). This hybrid approach allows traders to access both pooled liquidity and order-book depth simultaneously, improving price execution.

The protocol also serves as a launchpad via LaunchLab, where projects can bootstrap liquidity using bonding curves. Successful launches automatically migrate to Raydium’s AMM, with over $250M in tokenized stock volume processed as of October 2025 (Raydium).

2. Technology & Architecture

Built on Solana, Raydium offers two pool types:
- Concentrated Liquidity (CLMM): Lets liquidity providers set custom price ranges for capital efficiency
- Constant Product (CPMM): Traditional AMM model for broader price coverage

Its smart order routing scans all pools and OpenBook’s order book to find optimal prices. The DEX handles 1.6B+ annual swaps with Solana’s sub-second finality (Raydium).

3. Ecosystem Fundamentals

Raydium supports:
- Token swaps with integrated cross-chain bridging
- Yield farming via liquidity pool incentives
- Real-world assets (RWAs) like tokenized equities through partnerships (e.g., xStocks)
- Staking for protocol fee shares (0.03% of trade volume)

The RAY token governs protocol upgrades and grants access to launchpad allocations, with a capped supply of 555M tokens.

Conclusion

Raydium positions itself as Solana’s liquidity backbone, merging AMM flexibility with order-book precision while expanding into tokenized assets. As DeFi evolves, can its hybrid model maintain relevance against competing DEXs with cross-chain capabilities?