Raydium Has Bought Back Over 30% of RAY's Circulating Supply Using Protocol

Raydium RAY$2.04-6.3% announced on August 31 that its fee-funded buyback program has now accumulated more than 30% of RAY's circulating supply. The milestone moves a tangible share of the token's float into a protocol-held wallet, accumulation financed entirely by swap fees with no new token issuance.

The protocol reached approximately 25% of circulating supply by July 2025, when The Block reported cumulative buyback spending of USD 190.4 million on 69.1 million RAY tokens. As covered here on August 8, the pace accelerated through mid-2026, with roughly USD 150K in RAY acquired over three days at the highest buyback rate since early in the year. The crossing of the 30% threshold closes out August with another step in that progression.

How Raydium Routes 12% of Every Swap Fee to Open-Market RAY Purchases

Raydium's buyback mechanism routes a fixed share of trading fees to open-market RAY purchases across all three pool types. Per official documentation, the split is:

• CLMM and CPMM pools: 84% to liquidity providers, 12% to RAY buybacks, 4% to treasury
• Standard AMM v4 pools: 88% to liquidity providers, 12% to RAY buybacks

The 12% share applies to the trading fee itself, not the full swap amount. On a pool charging a 0.25% fee, the buyback share works out to 0.03% of notional, thin per trade but sufficient in aggregate given Raydium's swap volume across pool types. Protocol-side fees accumulate at three collection addresses before being converted and routed to the buyback holding wallet at DdHDoz94o2WJmD9myRobHCwtx1bESpHTd4SSPe6VEZaz. All three collection addresses and the holding wallet are publicly inspectable on Solscan, making the complete buyback flow auditable without relying on off-chain reporting.

Token Inflation Is Flat Quarter-Over-Quarter, Making Net Supply Reduction Real

The denominator matters here. New RAY issuance runs at approximately 1.9 million tokens per year, a rate low enough that the buyback program reduces float in net terms over time. @0xINFRA, a Raydium contributor who posted alongside the official announcement, framed it directly:

Bought-Back Tokens Are Held On-Chain, Disposition Still a Governance Question

Acquired RAY sits in the public holding wallet rather than being sent to a burn address. The final disposition of the accumulated supply remains a governance question. Community replies to the announcement included questions about whether the tokens would eventually be burned or returned to circulation; as of the announcement date, the protocol's stated position is to hold.

This parallels how Meteora's buyback program has operated on Solana. That protocol spent USD 14 million to acquire 37.37 million MET tokens by August 2026 using DLMM protocol fees, also without a fixed burn commitment. In both cases, the accumulated tokens are held publicly and on-chain while governance determines next steps.

Revenue Context: Fee Surface Spans Spot, CLMM, and Tokenized Stock Pools

The buyback total is a direct function of Raydium's aggregate fee revenue. In May 2024, the protocol reported USD 9.1 million in gross revenue, with USD 4.8 million routed to buybacks, an annualized pace of roughly USD 57.6 million at that rate, per The Block. The protocol's fee-generating surface has since expanded: Raydium's xStocks integration, which enables tokenized equity trading on Solana, reported USD 1.63 billion in Q2 2026 trading volume, tripled year-over-year, adding another pool category whose fees route into the same 12% buyback allocation.

RAY was priced at approximately USD 0.81 at the time of the announcement, with a market cap of approximately USD 448 million, per Compass token data. The holding wallet balance at DdHDoz94o2WJmD9myRobHCwtx1bESpHTd4SSPe6VEZaz represents the complete on-chain record of every buyback transaction since the program began, publicly inspectable on Solscan.