Solana DEX Wars Escalate: Pump.fun’s $2.5B Rocket Ride Stiffs Raydium and Orca—Legal Drama Be Damned
Solana’s decentralized exchange arena just got hotter than a memecoin presale. Pump.fun—the upstart that turned ’degenerate gambling’ into a business model—has surged past $2.5B in volume, eating Raydium and Orca’s lunch despite an ongoing lawsuit hanging over its head.
Who needs regulatory compliance when you’ve got vibes and a 100x button? The platform’s meme-launchpad mechanics and borderline-parasitic fee structure are vacuuming up liquidity, proving once again that in crypto, the house always wins—even when it’s technically not a house.
Raydium and Orca now face a brutal choice: innovate or become the MySpace of DeFi. Meanwhile, VC-backed ’institutional DEXs’ are sweating through their polos—nothing disrupts like a product people actually want to use.
Just remember: every dollar flowing into these platforms is one less dollar propping up your local bank CEO’s third yacht. The revolution will be tokenized.
Source: Blockworks
The origins of this rivalry date back to March, when Pump.fun severed ties with Raydium to launch its own decentralized exchange (DEX), PumpSwap.
Until then, Raydium was the default liquidity hub for tokens graduating from Pump.fun. In response, Raydium launched its own meme coin infrastructure, LaunchLab.
Now, as PumpSwap sees soaring volumes and LaunchLab boasts thousands of new token creations, both platforms are racing for users and narrative dominance.
A Feature-Packed Response Facing Growing Pains
When Raydium announced LaunchLab on April 16, it marked a bold pivot from being just a backend AMM to becoming a full-fledged meme coin launchpad.
Introducing LaunchLab, Raydium’s all-in-one token launchpad.
Built for Creators, Developers, and the Community
https://t.co/yZVzShVZSJ
More info
pic.twitter.com/r6s1DAegWf
Only weeks earlier, Pump.fun had disrupted the status quo by launching PumpSwap, effectively removing Raydium from the meme coin pipeline.
LaunchLab was designed with flexibility in mind, offering two token creation pathways.
The “JustSendIt” mode allows creators to launch a token with zero code, initiating a bonding curve that requires raising 85 SOL before liquidity is automatically transferred into a Raydium pool.
The more customizable mode lets developers define everything from tokenomics to vesting schedules, offering advanced features for more sophisticated projects.
Raydium also added strong creator and community incentives. A 1% trading fee is split to benefit $RAY buybacks, operations, and a community pool.
Creators receive 10% of trading fees, and a referral program gives 10 basis points of swap volume in SOL to those who onboard new users.
Despite this robust structure, LaunchLab’s real-world performance has been mixed. In less than a week, the platform facilitated the creation of over 3,800 tokens.
@RaydiumProtocol LaunchLab sparks 3.7K token launches with a 1.12% success rate, as @pumpdotfun retains dominance with 60% of Solana’s daily token launches.#Solana #MemeCoinshttps://t.co/q7q1XuirCV
Yet only 44 of them have successfully transitioned to active trading on Raydium’s AMM, a graduation rate of just 1.12%.
Nevertheless, LaunchLab helped spark a short-term rally for Solana. SOL surged nearly 6% after the platform’s debut, breaking technical resistance.
From Meme Coin Factory to DEX Powerhouse
PumpSwap, launched on March 21, removed the need for tokens to migrate to Raydium, eliminating the 6 SOL fee and simplifying the process. The results were immediate and explosive.
Within a week, PumpSwap processed over $2.5 billion in trades and recorded $417.8 million in daily volume at its peak. Over 264,000 wallets were active during this frenzy, showing the sheer scale of adoption.
Introducing PumpSwap, Pump’s new native DEX
beginning NOW all coins that complete their bonding curve will migrate directly to PumpSwap
PumpSwap enables
– instant migrations
– 0 migration fees (down from 6 SOL)
– more liquidity
– creator revenue sharing (coming soon)
& more
pic.twitter.com/T9BkmmaVVS
PumpSwap’s fee model is equally competitive, with a 0.25% per-trade fee, of which 0.20% is allocated to liquidity providers and the protocol retains 0.05%.
Plans for a creator revenue-sharing scheme are already underway. Its model mirrors that of Raydium V4 and Uniswap V2, allowing for seamless, permissionless liquidity pool creation with minimal overhead.
Yet not everything is rosy. Pump.fun is currently battling legal troubles. A class-action lawsuit filed by Burwick Law alleges the sale of unregistered securities, with a particular focus on the PNUT token.
https://t.co/BB5leCKHRh allegedly sold unregistered securities disguised as meme tokens.#Pump.fun #memecoins #UnregisteredSecuritieshttps://t.co/gNnyRynRWx
The lawsuit accuses the platform of allowing Ponzi-like schemes without providing adequate investor protections.
Though the outcome is still unclear, this cloud looms over PumpSwap’s otherwise Stellar debut.
As Raydium and Pump.fun fight for liquidity and market share, the biggest winner might be Solana itself.
With Orca now also entering the fray, increased trading activity, lively meme coin creation, and enhanced user engagement are pushing the blockchain to new heights.
