The Competition Between Raydium and Pump Fun: Can LaunchLab Ignite a New Wave of Wealth Creation?

In the Solana ecosystem, Raydium and Pump Fun, as leading projects in different tracks, have recently engaged in fierce competition. Raydium is the main decentralized exchange, while Pump Fun is the largest token issuance platform. Despite their different business focuses, they attack each other due to conflicting interests, trying to capture more market share.

The catalyst for this competition is the launch of PumpSwap by Pump Fun. The trading platform's recent daily trading volume has stabilized around $400 million, nearing Raydium's $600 million level. More notably, Raydium officials pointed out that Pump Fun contributed up to 41% of its automated market maker (AMM) revenue in the past month. However, with the launch of PumpSwap, Raydium's traffic has significantly declined, forcing it to launch LaunchLab to "reclaim liquidity dominance."

So, what are the main differences between LaunchLab and Pump Fun? Which projects are worth paying attention to? Let's delve into it.

LaunchLab Overview

Raydium's LaunchLab is essentially a "no-code token creation tool" combined with an "automated liquidity migration service." It offers two main usage modes:

1. JustSendIt Mode: Allows users to create tokens with one click, default fundraising of 85 SOL. After successful fundraising, the funds will be automatically transferred to Raydium's AMM, and LP tokens will be burned to lock liquidity.

2. LaunchLab Pro Mode: Offers more customization options, including total supply, minimum fundraising amount (as low as 30 SOL), price curve slope, vesting conditions, and whether to enable AMM profit sharing (up to 10% of transaction fees can be returned to the project party).

In terms of the fee structure, Raydium charges a uniform base fee of 1%. The distribution of these fees is as follows: 50% goes to the "community pool", 25% is used to buy back $RAY tokens, and 25% is allocated for infrastructure development and operational funding.

LaunchLab also allows third parties to access its backend services to build their own token issuance frontends. The most well-known of these is cook.meme, a platform focused on meme token issuance, featuring zero fees, instant transactions, and a simple interface. The positioning of cook.meme is similar to a UI replica of Pump Fun, but the underlying liquidity is bound to Raydium.

Raydium adopts this open model not only to attract traffic but also to replicate the content and ecosystem flywheel effect built by the Pump Fun community front end.

Key Project Analysis

The launch of LaunchLab has obviously benefited the $RAY token (25% of the fees are used for buybacks). After the announcement of LaunchLab, the price of $RAY rose by about 8%. If LaunchLab can maintain its popularity, the buyback strength of $RAY will continue to increase, and when demand exceeds supply, the price may continue to rise.

The lifecycle of a token issuance platform largely depends on how many "Golden Dog" projects it can generate. When the platform continuously creates a wealth effect, user assets will naturally concentrate on that platform. Once assets are concentrated, the probability of new successful projects being born will also increase, ultimately forming a positive cycle.

However, within the first 24 hours of LaunchLab going live, only the $TIME project had a market capitalization exceeding $1 million. Other tokens like $ARUA and $Gaydium experienced a surge in market capitalization initially, but ultimately market forces determined that only a single token's market capitalization was pushed higher.

Here are a few projects worth paying attention to:

1. $TIME:

   • Current Market Cap: 6 million USD
   • Highest Market Cap: $8.5 million
   • 24-hour trading volume: 30.2 million USD
   • Number of holders: 7,600

2. $ARUA: A token issued by Raydium itself, which was deployed earlier than $TIME, but launched later.

3. $Gaydium: Besides its name being a homophone of Raydium, it also attracted attention because Raydium developers once posted its contract address on the official GitHub (but quickly deleted it), an event that also led to significant fluctuations in token prices.

Summary

Although Raydium's LaunchLab may seem like a "late counterattack," its overall design has systematically responded to the advantages of Pump Fun. LaunchLab not only offers a customized token issuance model but also expands its influence through open front-end strategies represented by cook.meme. Its goal is to bring traffic, transaction fees, and market narratives back to the Raydium ecosystem.

Whether LaunchLab can truly achieve wealth creation and reignite a wave of meme token frenzy mainly depends on the following three core factors:

1. Whether it can incubate sufficiently strong trending projects;
2. Are the fees and liquidity design friendly enough for retail investors?
3. Can the ecosystem quickly gather front-end tools to create a network effect.

Currently, all three aspects still need to be strengthened. However, considering that LaunchLab has been launched for less than a month, it is still too early to deem it a failure. The cryptocurrency market is constantly changing, and perhaps the next hundredfold return meme token will be born on the LaunchLab platform. Let us wait and see how the competition between Raydium and Pump Fun will evolve and what kind of changes it will bring to the Solana ecosystem.