What is Raydium (RAY)?

By CMC AI
08 November 2025 08:49PM (UTC+0)

TLDR

Raydium (RAY) is a leading decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana that combines automated market-making with centralized order book liquidity to optimize trading efficiency.

  1. Hybrid liquidity model – Integrates AMM pools with OpenBook’s order book for deeper liquidity.

  2. Multi-product ecosystem – Offers swaps, staking, perpetuals, and token launches via LaunchLab.

  3. Solana-native infrastructure – Leverages high-speed, low-cost transactions for DeFi users.

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

Raydium addresses fragmented liquidity in decentralized trading by merging its own liquidity pools with OpenBook’s order book (formerly Serum). This hybrid approach allows traders to access both AMM-driven pricing and order book depth, reducing slippage for large orders. It serves as a liquidity backbone for Solana’s DeFi ecosystem, powering 76.5% of the network’s tokenized asset volume (Blockworks).

2. Technology & Architecture

Built on Solana, Raydium supports two pool types:
- Concentrated Liquidity (CLMM): Lets liquidity providers set custom price ranges for capital efficiency.
- Constant Product (CPMM): Traditional AMM model used for token launches.
Its smart routing aggregates liquidity from multiple sources, including external DEXs like Jupiter, to ensure best pricing (Docs).

3. Ecosystem Fundamentals

Raydium’s LaunchLab enables permissionless token launches with instant liquidity migration. Projects raising ≥85 SOL automatically deploy to Raydium’s AMM, streamlining token distribution. The platform also hosts xStocks, tokenized equities like Tesla and SPY, which generated $250M in volume by October 2025 (xStocks).

Conclusion

Raydium is a cornerstone of Solana’s DeFi landscape, blending AMM flexibility with order book efficiency to serve traders, liquidity providers, and token issuers. How will its LaunchLab adapt as Solana’s Firedancer upgrade boosts network capacity in late 2025?

CMC AI can make mistakes. Not financial advice.