Raydium (RAY) soars 28% on reports of a new meme coin launchpad

RAY, Raydium's utility and governance token, surged around 28%, rising from $1.6 to $2 on Tuesday following reports that the firm is rolling out its own meme coin launchpad that could challenge Pump.fun

Raydium's utility and governance token, RAY, saw a nearly 28% surge on Tuesday, recovering to around $2 after reports that the firm is rolling out its own meme coin launchpad that could challenge Pump.fun, the go-to platform for meme token debuts, stated a report by Blockworks.

The report, which cites an email from Raydium CEO Guillaume Stevens, mentions that the platform, named LaunchLab, will maintain a similar bonding curve as Pump.fun but differentiate by allowing third-party user interfaces to set fees.

The platform will also support multiple quote tokens and link with Raydium's liquidity provider locker for perpetual swap fee security.

The development of LaunchLab surfaces less than a month after Pump.fun tested its own AMM, a move that signaled its intention to pull away from Raydium.

This could hugely impact Raydium, which has derived substantial revenue from Pump.fun's token pools.

Rumors of Pump.fun's AMM feature triggered a 30% drop in RAY's value, CoinMarketCap data shows.

This decline intensified as the crypto market experienced a widespread correction shortly thereafter, fueled by escalating tariff tensions and a deteriorating macroeconomic environment.

In the past month, RAY has plummeted by around 60%.

Declining interest in meme coins

Pump.fun's graduation rate, which refers to the percentage of tokens that successfully transition from the incubation phase to full tradability on a Solana DEX, has been below 1% since February 17, according to Dune Analytics.

Historically, the highest graduation rate was 1.67% in November 2024, but even then, the absolute number of successful tokens was significant due to the large volume of launches.

The current low graduation rate reflects decreasing investor interest in meme coins, commonly perceived as high-risk investments.

According to CoinMarketCap data, the meme coin sector's market cap is down about 65% from its peak on December 9 last year.