What Is Raydium and Why Meme Coins Graduate There
By Alphacino Editorial Team ·
Quick Take
Raydium is the Solana AMM that turned meme coin launches into a liquid market — and it is still fighting pump.fun for where tokens go after the curve.
If you have ever aped a Solana meme coin that made it past the launchpad, there is a strong chance Raydium was somewhere in the trade. It is one of the oldest and deepest automated market makers on Solana, and for most of the meme coin boom it was the default destination for tokens that graduated off pump.fun.
Raydium works like any AMM: instead of matching buyers and sellers in an order book, traders swap against a pool holding two assets — usually SOL and the meme token. The pool's ratio sets the price, and liquidity providers earn a cut of every swap. That model is perfect for meme coins, because a brand-new token with no market makers can still be traded instantly the moment a pool exists.
That is why graduation used to mean Raydium. When a pump.fun bonding curve filled, the collected SOL and remaining tokens were migrated into a Raydium pool and the LP tokens were burned, effectively locking that liquidity forever. For traders, a Raydium pool was the stamp that a coin had made it out of the launchpad trenches and onto every aggregator, screener, and trading bot on the chain.
The map has shifted. pump.fun launched its own AMM, PumpSwap, and now routes its graduates there, keeping the trading fees in-house. Raydium answered with LaunchLab, its own launchpad with bonding curves that migrate straight into Raydium pools. The result is a turf war over where the next generation of Solana memes is born and where they trade once they grow up.
For traders, the lesson is simple: always check which pool a token actually trades in, how deep the liquidity is, and whether the LP is locked or burned. Thin, unlocked liquidity is how rugs happen, regardless of which DEX logo sits on the chart.
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