The Showdown between Raydium and Pump Fun: Can LaunchLab Spark a New Wave of Wealth Creation?

In the Solana ecosystem, Raydium is a leading decentralized exchange, while Pump Fun is the largest project incubation platform. Despite their different business areas, the two are engaged in fierce competition, trying to capture more market share and profits.

Recently, Pump Fun's PumpSwap has maintained a daily trading volume of around $400 million, approaching Raydium's $600 million. Raydium pointed out that Pump Fun once contributed up to 41% of its automated market maker (AMM) revenue. However, with the launch of PumpSwap, Raydium's traffic has decreased significantly, forcing it to launch LaunchLab to "regain liquidity dominance."

So, what are the main differences between LaunchLab and Pump Fun? What projects are worth paying attention to? Let's explore together.

LaunchLab Overview

Raydium's LaunchLab is essentially a "no-code token launch tool with automated liquidity migration services", mainly featuring two usage modes:

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

2. LaunchLab Pro Mode: Users can customize the total issuance amount, with a minimum fundraising amount of 30 SOL. They can also set the 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%. Of this, 50% goes into the "community fund pool," 25% is used to repurchase $RAY, and the remaining 25% is allocated for infrastructure development and operational funds.

LaunchLab also allows third parties to access its backend services to build their own token issuance front-end. The most well-known of these is cook.meme, which is a "meme coin issuance platform" that focuses on zero fees, instant transactions, and a simple interface. Its positioning is similar to a copy of the Pump Fun interface, but the underlying liquidity is tied to Raydium.

Raydium adopts this open model not only to attract traffic but also to replicate the content and ecological flywheel effect that Pump Fun built through community front-end in its early days.

Key Project Analysis

The launch of LaunchLab directly benefited $RAY (as 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 increase, and when demand exceeds supply, there is a possibility of price increase.

The lifecycle of LaunchPad depends on how many "golden dog" projects can be generated. As the platform continuously creates a wealth effect, user assets will naturally concentrate on that platform. Once assets are concentrated, the probability of giving birth to "golden dogs" will also increase, ultimately forming a positive flywheel effect.

However, within 24 hours of LaunchLab going live, only the market capitalization of $TIME surpassed 1 million USD. Other tokens like $ARUA and $Gaydium saw their market caps soar in the early stages of launch, but ultimately market forces determined that only the market cap of a single token was elevated.

Here are a few projects worth paying attention to:

1. $TIME

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

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

3. $Gaydium: In addition to the pun, the developers of Raydium briefly placed its contract address on Raydium's GitHub, but quickly deleted it, causing the token price to plummet.

Conclusion

Although Raydium's LaunchLab appears to be a "late counterattack", its overall design has systematically responded to the advantages of Pump Fun. It not only provides a customizable token issuance model but also expands open frontend strategies represented by cook.meme, aiming to bring traffic, fees, and narrative back to the Raydium ecosystem.

Whether LaunchLab can truly create wealth and reignite a wave of meme coin frenzy still depends on three core factors:

1. Can it produce sufficiently strong viral projects?
2. Are the fees and liquidity design friendly to retail investors?
3. Can the ecosystem quickly gather front-end tools to create network effects.

Currently, these three aspects still need improvement, but LaunchLab has only been open for less than a month, so it is too early to conclude that the platform has failed. The cryptocurrency market is ever-changing, and perhaps the next hundred-fold meme coin will emerge from LaunchLab. Let's wait and see.