Raydium Unveils LaunchLab to Compete With Pump.fun in Solana's Token Creation Wars

Raydium, the largest DEX on Solana by cumulative volume, has launched an eagerly awaited token creation tool called LaunchLab, aimed at challenging the popular memecoin platform Pump.fun. LaunchLab allows users to create new tokens and directly integrates with Raydium’s liquidity pools, while also enabling third-party platforms to set custom transaction fees.

This marks a new chapter in the growing rivalry between two previously allied Solana-based platforms. While Pump.fun had once relied on Raydium for secondary trading, that relationship began to shift when Pump.fun unveiled PumpSwap, its own decentralized exchange, on March 20.

Prior to PumpSwap’s launch, any token created on Pump.fun would automatically be migrated to Raydium once its market cap exceeded $69,000. With PumpSwap now live, this process has changed, and Pump.fun has begun to compete directly with Raydium’s AMM infrastructure.

Within just 10 days of launching, PumpSwap hit $2.5 billion in trading volume. Less than a month later, that figure has soared past $31.7 billion, according to DefiLlama.

Initial leaks suggested LaunchLab would function similarly to Pump.fun, but with some differentiators. One of the most notable is that 25% of transaction fees from LaunchLab will be used to buy back RAY, Raydium’s native token. Following the announcement, RAY rose approximately 8%, outperforming the wider crypto market, according to price data from The Block.

Pump.fun is also reportedly preparing to launch its own native token following the rollout of its AMM, intensifying the competition for dominance in Solana’s memecoin ecosystem.