RAY sees double-digit gains as Raydium unveils new Pumpfun competitor

• Solana DEX Raydium announced the launch of LaunchLab, a new token launchpad that would compete with Pump.fun.
• Pump.fun recently launched its own DEX PumpSwap, which functions similarly to Raydium.
• RAY is up 10% following the announcement, stretching its weekly gains to over 30%.

RAY surged 10% on Wednesday as Raydium revealed its new meme coin launchpad, LaunchLab, a potential competitor to Pump.fun — which also recently unveiled its decentralized exchange (DEX) PumpSwap.

RAY jumps 10% as Raydium's LaunchLab goes live

Raydium, Solana's largest DEX, unveiled the launch of LaunchLab, a new meme coin launchpad similar to Pump.fun — nearly one month after its initial announcement.

Raydium claims that LaunchLab will enable users to freely create tokens with reward opportunities for creators. It stated that creators can receive up to 10% of the fees generated from trades after their tokens complete the bonding curve and graduate to the automated market maker (AMM) pool. The platform links directly to Raydium's liquidity pools. Once a token acquires up to 85 Solana — approximately $11,000 — the liquidity is automatically migrated to Raydium's AMM.

Raydiumn also plans to use 25% of the fees on LaunchLab to conduct a token buyback program for RAY.

LaunchLab could threaten Pump.fun's dominance in meme coin generation and trading. Its unveiling comes approximately a month after Pump.fun rolled out PumpSwap, an alternative DEX to Raydium.

Pump.fun previously played a significant role in Raydium's revenue growth as it was the major secondary market for trading tokens that passed their bonding curve. Tokens launched on Pump.fun were automatically transitioned to Raydium once they surpassed a market cap of $69,000.

RAY surged 10% as LaunchLab went live. The token has also seen over a 30% price growth in the past week and month, outperforming several top cryptocurrencies amid the lingering effect of global economic factors on the crypto market.

Raydium's 24-hour trading volume also surged nearly 60% to $668 million following the announcement, according to Defillama's data. However, this is still far below its peak of $13.19 billion on January 18 after the launch of the TRUMP meme coin.