Raydium

Raydium is a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana. It went live in February 2021 as Solana's first automated market maker, or AMM. An AMM is a set of smart contracts that hold pools of tokens and price each trade by formula. There is no order book and no middleman. On Raydium you can swap tokens, earn fees from pools, launch a token and trade tokenized stocks. Part of every pool fee buys back the RAY token.

Many Solana swaps reach Raydium without the trader ever opening its site. Apps such as Jupiter JUP$0.254+4.7% send orders through its pools. Raydium is also the biggest Solana DEX for tokenized stocks. On 2 October 2026 it passed $6 billion in total stock volume.

How does Raydium work? Swaps, pools and fees

Raydium works by pooling two tokens in a smart contract and letting anyone trade against the pool. People who deposit tokens, called liquidity providers or LPs, earn most of the trading fee. The rest is the protocol's cut, and most of that buys back RAY.

The split depends on the pool type, per Raydium's fee docs:

Take a $1,000 swap in a 0.25% CPMM pool. You pay $2.50 in fees. LPs get $2.10, $0.30 goes to RAY buybacks, and $0.10 goes to the treasury (protocol fee docs).

The protocol's cut comes out of that fee, so it never adds to what you pay. On a thin pool, price impact usually costs you far more than the fee does.

Raydium liquidity pools: CLMM, CPMM, AMM v4 and stable pools

Raydium runs several pool programs side by side, and each suits a different kind of liquidity provider. The docs recommend CPMM for new standard pools and CLMM for ranged positions. AMM v4 still runs, but new deployments are discouraged.

CLMM concentrated liquidity pools

In a CLMM pool you choose a price range, and your deposit earns fees only while the price stays inside it. A deposit in range earns more fees per dollar than in a standard pool, but you have to manage the range. When price leaves it, your position stops earning. Each position is an NFT.

In May 2026 Raydium added limit orders, single-sided fee collection and dynamic fees to CLMM, and the auditor Sec3 reviewed that update.

Since 22 October 2026, anyone can open extra CLMM pools for the same pair and fee tier. Before that, only approved operators could (changelog entry).

CPMM standard pools

CPMM is the low-maintenance pool. You deposit both tokens and earn fees at every price. CPMM issues ordinary LP tokens and supports Token-2022, Solana's newer token standard. In September 2026 Raydium removed the hardcoded whitelist that limited which of those tokens CPMM accepted.

Since 30 October 2026, anyone who creates a CPMM pool can switch on a creator fee, paid on top of the swap fee (changelog entry). The choice is permanent. The rate comes from the fee tier, and the default rate is zero.

AMM v4 and the Stable AMM

AMM v4 is the original program from 2021. It used to place orders on the OpenBook order book as well. Raydium removed that link in July 2026, so an OpenBook outage no longer affects these swaps.

The Stable AMM is for pairs that should trade at about the same price, such as two stablecoins. It dropped its OpenBook code in June 2026.

Burn & Earn, Raydium's liquidity locker, lets a project lock its LP position for good while still claiming the trading fees. Halborn audited it in late 2024.

What is Raydium Authority V4 or Raydium Vault Authority?

"Raydium Authority V4" is the label explorers give the pool authority of Raydium's original AMM program. Raydium's glossary defines a pool authority as an account controlled by the program that signs transfers out of pool vaults. There is one per program, not one per pool. Seeing it in your wallet history means you traded against an AMM v4 pool. It does not mean someone has access to your wallet.

"Raydium Vault Authority" labels work the same way. CPMM, for example, uses a single program-derived vault authority to sign for all of its pool vaults (program addresses). When such an account shows up as a top holder of a token, it is holding the reserves of that token's Raydium pools.

Raydium LaunchLab: the token launchpad behind StonkFun

LaunchLab is Raydium's open token launchpad. A new token first trades on a bonding curve, a formula that raises the price as more is sold. When the curve hits its target, the token "graduates" and LaunchLab builds a Raydium pool from the money raised. LaunchLab went live in April 2025, after Pump.fun stopped sending its graduating tokens to Raydium and moved them to its own AMM (Decrypt).

Other launchpads can run on LaunchLab under their own brand. The biggest is StonkFun, which pairs new tokens with tokenized stocks and ETFs. StonkFun moved new launches to LaunchLab in early September 2026, with cheaper deployment, The Block reported.

Stock pairing has spread. More than 300,000 unique holders had received tokenized stocks through LaunchLab tokens by 20 October 2026, Raydium said. LaunchLab also hosts launches that have nothing to do with memecoins. machine.fun, which raises money for robotics and hardware projects, opened on 29 October 2026 built on LaunchLab.

LaunchLab's rules changed several times in August and September 2026, per Raydium's changelog:

• From 17 August, new launches graduate into a CPMM pool, not AMM v4. We covered the change in Raydium LaunchLab mandates CPMM-only graduation.
• For tokens that graduate after that upgrade, the creator's share of locked LP is merged into the launch platform's Fee Key, the NFT that collects locked-LP fees. Creators no longer get a separate Fee Key, though creator trading fees still apply (creator fee docs).
• Token-2022 quote tokens were enabled on 24 August.
• The cap on what a launch platform can charge rose from 2.5% to 5% on 26 August.
• From 19 September, Raydium can keep part of the creator fees earned in CPMM pools, including graduated LaunchLab pools.

If you launch through another platform, check its fee settings first. Since August those platforms control more of the money than they used to.

LaunchLab drove Raydium's growth in 2025. In Q3 2025 it earned more than half of Raydium's revenue, per Blockworks' Raydium token holder report.

How much does it cost to launch a token on Raydium?

Launching on Raydium costs a fraction of a SOL in fees, plus the liquidity you choose to add. The bill depends on the route. Creating a CPMM pool yourself costs a 0.15 SOL creation fee plus account rent. A CLMM pool has no Raydium creation fee, only rent (protocol fee docs).

A LaunchLab token works differently. Traders pay a 1% fee on each buy and sell while the token is on the bonding curve, per the same fee docs. The bonding curve docs give an example where most of that fee goes to the pool, with smaller shares for the creator and the protocol. A curve usually fills once 80% of the supply is sold. The rest seeds the graduated pool.

If you launch through a branded platform built on LaunchLab, add its fee, which can now be as high as 5%. The fees are the small part, though. Thin starting liquidity is what costs new tokens the most, because every trade moves the price.

Tokenized stocks and permissioned pools on Raydium

Raydium is the biggest Solana DEX for tokenized stocks. In October 2026 it traded more tokenized assets than Orca, Meteora and Manifest put together, according to tokens.xyz. You can trade xStocks AAPLx$333.17+0.7% tokens such as TSLAx and SPYx in its pools at any hour. The same goes for stocks listed by Backpack Securities and Sunrise. We track the trend in our reports on Raydium's September 2026 share of stock trading and its Q3 2026 stock volume.

In July 2026 Raydium added permissioned pools for regulated assets. In these pools the issuer decides which wallets may trade. A stock token that needs ID checks can use Raydium's pools without building its own exchange. Superstate was the first partner (CoinMarketCal via TradingView; our coverage: Raydium and Uniswap launch KYC-gated pools).

The ID checks live in the token itself. A regulated token can make every new holder account start frozen. The issuer's allowlist decides who gets unfrozen. Raydium lets such a token into its CPMM and CLMM pools by adding it to a list of approved mints, which Raydium's admin keys control (Token-2022 docs).

Since 17 August 2026, a new CLMM position that holds a restricted issuer's token is locked to your wallet. You keep control and can close it, but you can't move the position NFT to another wallet. So if you provide liquidity for a regulated token, the issuer's rules reach your position too.

A tokenized stock gives you the price of a share, and the issuer's terms decide what else you get. xStocks, for example, carry no voting rights. Read the issuer's terms before you treat one like a share held at a broker.

Raydium Perps: perpetual futures powered by Orderly

Raydium Perps lets you trade perpetual futures. These are contracts that track an asset's price, with leverage and no expiry date. Perps launched in January 2025 on Orderly Network ORDER$0.035+0.2%'s order book (announcement). Orderly runs that order book and matches the trades.

Leverage goes up to 100x, depending on the market. Margin is cross-margin only: all your collateral backs every open position, so one bad trade can drag down the rest. You can deposit USDC, SOL, USDT, ETH, BNB, WBTC and some stablecoins. Profit and loss settle in USDC, and maker fees are zero (Perps docs).

Raydium Perps is closed to US residents and to users in a list of sanctioned regions.

RAY token: supply, buybacks and how to stake Raydium

RAY is Raydium's token. Its supply is fixed at 555 million and mint authority is disabled, so no new RAY can be created (RAY docs). Its main source of demand is the buyback: 12% of pool trading fees buys RAY on the open market.

By 31 August 2026, buybacks had bought more than 30% of RAY in circulation, Raydium said (our coverage). The pace rises and falls with trading.

In the third quarter of 2026, buyback spending roughly tripled from the quarter before, Raydium reported. Tokenized stocks and LaunchLab drove the rise, as we covered in Raydium's third-quarter revenue report.

The supply was allocated as follows:

Team and seed vesting ended on 21 February 2024. The mining reserve pays out about 1.9 million RAY a year in rewards.

To stake RAY, open the staking page in the Raydium app, deposit RAY and claim rewards as they build up. Staking is optional; you don't need RAY to swap or add liquidity. Staking one token alone carries no impermanent loss, the loss LPs take when pool prices move. Our RAY token page tracks price and holders. Coinbase listed RAY on 14 January 2026.

Is Raydium safe? Audits, admin keys and past hacks

Raydium is mature and heavily audited, but it is not risk-free. It has been hacked twice, in 2022 and 2026. Its code can still be changed. Your funds stay in your own wallet until you trade or deposit. Once deposited, they sit in Raydium's programs. Those are only as safe as their code and the keys that control it.

Who can upgrade Raydium's programs?

A Squads multisig can upgrade every Raydium program. It needs three of its four signers, and a 24-hour timelock delays each upgrade. A separate treasury multisig needs three of five signers and has no timelock. It can pause pools on the original AMM, change their fees and create new CPMM fee tiers (admin docs).

No Raydium program is immutable. A timelock gives watchers a day to spot a bad upgrade, but you are still trusting the signers.

Raydium audits by program

Each audit covers a specific program and version (audit list):

The upgrades from July to October 2026 came after the latest listed audit. They include the OpenBook removal, the permissioned pools, the LaunchLab rule changes and the CPMM creator fee.

Raydium's Immunefi bug bounty pays up to $505,000 for a critical bug.

Raydium hacks in December 2022 and June 2026

On 16 December 2022 an attacker obtained the private key of an admin account that controlled pools on Raydium's original AMM. The attacker drained about $4.4 million (The Block).

Raydium's audit page puts the cause down to key management in its operations. Afterwards Raydium moved that program's upgrade authority from a single key to the multisig.

On 10 June 2026 an attacker drained $1.34 million from five pools on AMM v3, a legacy program, by faking LP tokens (The Block). Raydium said it had retired the program in 2021 and that current pools were safe. Its treasury would cover the losses. Old code that is still deployed is still attack surface.

Fake tokens and wash trading in Raydium pools

Anyone can create a pool, so copycat tokens use real names, including fake "RAY" tokens. Bitquery traced a wash-trading operation running fake versions of coins such as XRP and LTC through hundreds of CLMM pools.

In the month to 20 October 2026, that operation made up nearly a quarter of all Raydium CLMM volume, Bitquery found (our coverage). Check the mint address before you buy, and treat a pool's volume and liquidity figures with care.

Since 22 October 2026 anyone can also open a second CLMM pool for the same pair. Raydium's changelog warns that a pool's listed owner is no proof of who made it. Don't treat it as a sign of trust.

Who should use Raydium?

Raydium suits you best if you provide liquidity on Solana and want every pool type in one place. It also fits teams launching a token that want a bonding curve that moves into a real pool on its own. And it is the main place to trade tokenized stocks on-chain when Wall Street is closed.

It suits you less if you only swap now and then; an aggregator such as Jupiter will route your swap through Raydium anyway when its price is best. CLMM is a poor fit if you can't check your positions often. A CPMM pool or plain RAY staking needs less care.

Is Raydium available in the USA?

Raydium Perps bars US residents outright. For spot trading on raydium.io, reviews such as CryptoSlate's describe limits for US users too. Read the site's terms before you connect. People in the US can still buy RAY on Coinbase.

Raydium vs Jupiter, Orca, Meteora, Pump.fun and PumpSwap

Raydium holds the pools; Jupiter finds the best route through them. For a plain swap, Jupiter usually gets you the same price or better, because it compares Raydium with most other Solana DEXs. To add liquidity, launch a token or trade gated stock tokens, you go to Raydium itself.

Raydium LaunchLab vs Pump.fun and PumpSwap

Choosing between Raydium and Pump.fun is mostly a launchpad choice. Pump.fun has its own audience and graduates tokens into PumpSwap. LaunchLab lets a launch platform set its own fees and quote token, which is why StonkFun and machine.fun built on it.

Skipping the bonding curve: a plain token plus a CPMM pool

If you need an SPL token with metadata but no bonding curve, Solana Compass runs a tool that mints one with its metadata in a single step. Disclosure: that tool's fees are paid into compassSOL, our liquid staking token. You can then seed a CPMM pool on Raydium yourself.

Raydium history: from Serum hybrid AMM to tokenized stocks

Raydium went live in February 2021. It was an AMM that also placed orders on the Serum order book, and that design made it the hub of early Solana DeFi. Concentrated pools came next, then standard CPMM pools, then Perps and LaunchLab in 2025.

After Serum lost its maintainers in late 2022, Raydium moved its order-book link to OpenBook. It cut that link in July 2026, ending the hybrid design it was known for. Since then Raydium has leaned into tokenized stocks and launchpad tools, and fee-funded RAY buybacks tie both back to the token.