Raydium Launches LaunchLab: A New Battleground in the Solana Ecosystem

In the Solana ecosystem, Raydium serves as the main decentralized exchange, while Pump Fun is the largest token launch platform. Although their business directions are different, they have engaged in fierce competition, trying to capture more market share and revenue.

Recently, the daily trading volume of PumpSwap launched by Pump Fun has stabilized around $400 million, nearing Raydium's $600 million. Raydium's official stated that Pump Fun contributed up to 41% of its automated market maker (AMM) revenue over the past month. However, with the launch of PumpSwap, Raydium's traffic has significantly decreased, forcing it to introduce LaunchLab to "regain liquidity dominance."

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

LaunchLab Overview

Raydium's LaunchLab is essentially a "no-code token issuance tool combined with automatic liquidity migration service," offering two main usage modes:

1. JustSendIt mode: Users can create tokens with one click, preset to raise 85 SOL. After successful fundraising, the tokens are automatically migrated to Raydium's AMM, and the LP tokens are burned to achieve liquidity locking.

2. LaunchLab Pro Mode: Allows for custom total supply, with a minimum fundraising of 30 SOL to issue, adjustable price curve slope, vesting conditions, and whether to enable AMM revenue sharing (up to 10% of transaction fees can be returned to the project team).

In terms of the fee structure, Raydium charges a unified base fee of 1%, of which 50% goes into the "community pool", 25% is used to buy back RAY tokens, and 25% is allocated for infrastructure and operational funds.

LaunchLab also allows third parties to access its backend services to create their own token issuance front-end. The most well-known of these is cook.meme, which is the first "meme token issuance platform" to use the LaunchLab contract while building its own user experience front-end, featuring zero fees, instant transactions, and a simple interface.

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

Key Projects

The launch of LaunchLab directly benefited RAY token holders (25% of the fees are used for buybacks). The price of RAY rose by about 8% after the announcement of LaunchLab. If LaunchLab can maintain its popularity, the buyback strength of RAY will continue to increase, and when demand exceeds supply, there will be opportunities for price increases.

The lifecycle of the launch platform depends on how many "hit tokens" it can produce. When the platform continuously creates wealth effects, user assets will naturally concentrate on that platform. Once assets are concentrated, the probability of generating hit tokens will also increase, ultimately forming a positive cycle.

However, within 24 hours of LaunchLab going live, only the TIME token's market capitalization exceeded 1 million USD. Other tokens like ARUA and Gaydium saw their market caps soar in the early stages after launch, but ultimately market forces determined that only a single token could maintain a high market cap.

Here are a few projects worth paying attention to:

1. TIME

   • Current Market Value: 6 million USD
   • Highest Market Cap: $8.5 million
   • 24-hour trading volume: $30.2 million
   • 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 had previously placed the contract address of Gaydium in Raydium's GitHub, but it was deleted less than an hour later, leading to a crash in the token price.

Conclusion

Although Raydium's LaunchLab seems like a "late comeback", its overall design has systematically responded to the advantages of Pump Fun. It not only offers a customizable token issuance model but also expands into open front-end 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 the meme craze still depends on three core factors:

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

Currently, all three elements need improvement, but it's too early to declare LaunchLab a failure since it has only been open for less than a month. The cryptocurrency world changes rapidly, and perhaps the next hundredfold meme token will be born on LaunchLab. Let's wait and see.