Solana DEX Launches Token Launchpad

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The Solana DEX and automated market maker Raydium is launching a token launchpad named LaunchLab, which will initially resemble a direct fork of pump.fun, as learned exclusively by Blockworks.

The release of LaunchLab comes less than a month after it was reported that the popular Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun was developing its own AMM, effectively ending an unofficial partnership with Raydium. LaunchLab will provide linear, exponential, and logarithmic bonding curves that align demand and pricing for tokens. Additionally, third-party user interfaces will have the ability to set their own fees.

Tokens from pump.fun that achieve a market cap of $69,000 will have some liquidity added to a Raydium trading pool and will be burned. According to Blockworks Research, pump.fun memecoins accounted for 41% of Raydium’s swap fee revenue in the past 30 days. Raydium’s native token experienced a 25% crash in February as a major drawdown in Raydium revenue is anticipated once pump.fun starts migrating its tokens to its in-house AMM.

Despite the recent downturn, Raydium still holds approximately $168 million on its balance sheet. This financial cushion allows the company to act swiftly, such as in developing a fork of pump.fun, even though the rumors about pump.fun’s in-house AMM had circulated for some time before this news emerged.

An anonymous core contributor from Raydium, Infra, mentioned that the protocol began developing LaunchLab “several months ago” but kept the project on hold because they “didn’t want teams to feel Raydium was competing with them directly.” However, that generosity seems to have waned following the announcement of pump.fun’s AMM plans.