Raydium /RAY

What is Raydium(RAY)?

Raydium is a state-of-the-art layer-2 decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Solana blockchain, which helps provide speedy and seamless trading using the Automated Market Maker (AMM) protocol. Utilizing its native token, RAY coin, Raydium enables its users to trade assets, stake liquidity, and earn rewards within the Solana ecosystem. Raydium is one of the powerhouses in the DeFi space as it has been built to integrate with Serum Solana DEX, helping bring deep liquidity and low fees for traders. Raydium gains substantial support in itself, as trading optimally on the platform leads to its popularity, hence making Raydium coin (RAY) relevant for many traders. The current RAY price is a reflection of the growing interest and activity booming within the platform, upgrading it into a key subcontractor in Solana-based decentralized trading​.

What Makes Raydium(RAY) Unique from Other DEXs on Solana?

One of the major ways it separates itself from other decentralized exchanges (DEXs) is through its connection with Serum, the central order book for the Solana blockchain. This essentially allows Raydium centralized liquidity without sacrificing the DEX's core principles. No, Raydium is not like your typical AMM, where liquidity pools are used for trades. Liquid providers on Raydium supply liquidity through the order book of Serum. This does much more than trade within the DEX; LPs on Raydium enhance liquidity across the entire Solana ecosystem.

Raydium offers more: It provides liquidity farming. Here, users can place their Liquidity-providing tokens into staking pools for rewards. More than 88 percent of transaction fees go to liquidity providers. This makes an exciting environment for DeFi participants with Raydium.

Raydium DEX History

Evolution of Solana's Leading Decentralized Exchange and Liquidity Solutions

Raydium is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Solana blockchain and developed in late 2020, going live in February 2021. The exchange initially used Serum's centralized order book for liquidity, thereby making trading faster and more efficient. In March 2021, Raydium launched Fusion Pools, enabling LPs (liquidity providers) to receive tokens for their contribution in pools. A month later, it introduced the AcceleRaytor launches pads to help launch projects into the Solana ecosystem-to-be for token sales.

Raydium completed its expansion in May 2021 with the Permissionless Pools, whereby anyone could create a liquidity pool for any token. By September 2021, it introduced an NFT launchpad, and in November 2021, Raydium partnered with Wormhole to support non-Solana tokens.

In March 2022, the company launched Raydium V2, which came with improvements such as a new user interface and Ecosystem Farms where users are able to create permissions-less liquidity pools. In 2023, Raydium launched support for Solana’s Token-2022 programs and CLMM pools.

The latest V3, launched in March 2024, revamped AMM pools, improved mobile optimization, and introduced a new price oracle, further enhancing the user experience.

As of 2024, the approximate number of RAY in circulation currently is about 290.9 million, with the maximum number of RAY not exceeding 555 million. The conditions under which the token has been traded show that it was recorded to have achieved an all-time high price of $16.83 on September 13th, 2021, and its lowest price of $0.1344 was recorded on December 30th, 2022.

Raydium(RAY) Coin Supported Wallets?

Raydium users require a Solana program Library (SPL) wallet to interact with the platform to store funds on the Solana blockchain. Ensure your wallet has SOL before starting because it is necessary for transaction fees. A minimum of 0.05 SOL is recommended to avoid transaction failures

Web wallets: An extension installed to a browser or the web interface for Solana assets to transact with decentralized applications. Common examples include those that provide users with easy and secure access to the Solana blockchain.

Mobile wallets: These wallets are used to access Raydium on mobile platforms. Both iOS and Android have mobile wallets that users can utilize in managing their assets. Users can import their wallet seed phrases from browser extensions.

Phantom, Solfare, Backpack, and some others are wallets that  supports RAY coins.

How to Trade/ Swap Tokens on Raydium?

The process of swapping tokens on Raydium is fast. It is a simple way to perform token transfers, and it also takes care of costs. Here is a step-by-step guide:

Set up your wallet: Start first by clicking on the Swap app navigation section, then click Connect Wallet.

Select the Tokens: Snag from the drop-down to select your two desired tokens to swap with each other or paste the mint address of the token, and swap from SOL to RAY.

Input Amount: Input several tokens for you to exchange or how much you want to be gotten. 

Confirm Swap: After you're ready, click on the "Swap" button, and soon, you will see your new balance; however, updating may take a few seconds.

Be on the lookout for Price Impact when performing a trade. Remember also to check the Minimum Received, especially in larger trades or low liquidity. 

If a transaction gets a TimeOut error, that means your transaction hasn't been able to connect with the blockchain. Certainly, adjusting the fees to add priority will allow the transaction to have a higher chance of succeeding. But be careful because increased fees don't mean that the processing will be quicker.

What are the Types of Liquid Pools On Raydium?

Concentrated Liquidity Pools (CLMM): The model of CLMM at Raydium allows LPs to concentrate their liquidity in specific price ranges. It means that LPs can allocate their funds precisely to where the action is, thus being able to spend less and capture much more from the trades. They have an increase in capital efficiency, thereby maximizing income from fees. This is a rather advanced model for it creates better netting for LPs via fee generation while ensuring deeper liquidity at specific price points.

Constant Product Pools: Raydium employs the Constant Product Market Maker (CPMM) model for its liquidity pools in pure AMM lines. Constant with all traditional AMMs like Uniswap v2, liquidity spread over all price ranges. Using the constant product formula, 𝑥×𝑦=𝑘 ensures that there's always liquidity available for trades. It might not be as capital-efficient as the CLMM approach since liquidity is available across the entire price curve, even in less frequently traded ranges.\

Thus, those offer the flexibility between liquidity providers and traders brought by deeper liquidity. The CLMM model is well-suited for optimizing liquidity provision targeted to the most active price ranges, while the constant product model guarantees liquidity is always available for users.

What is AcceleRaytor by Raydium(RAY) and How Does it Benefit the Solana Blockchain?

AcceleRaytor is an innovative program of Raydium that will harness the potential of new projects to strengthen the growth of the Solana ecosystem. It allows projects to raise money and gain liquidity in an open decentralized mechanism. AcceleRaytor operates a platform for projects to execute token offerings with the Raydium community: fully transparent participation in the controlled vetted token sales.

What is Raydium(RAY) Ecosystem Farm?

Ecosystem farms on Raydium allow project teams to efficiently bootstrap liquidity through token emissions that incentivize liquidity providers. By developing a farm, teams can crowdsource liquidity, leading to better prices and deeper liquidity on the Serum DEX. It is very important to have enough initial liquidity in the target pool to prevent volatility and impermanent loss before creating a farm. Another link is the AMM ID furthers the farms to the liquidity pool, and rewards emissions and APR should carefully be calculated based on target TVL, reward token price, and liquidity. For example, one can obtain APR by dividing the value of rewards by the liquidity in the pool and annualizing it. Remember that, rewards cannot be withdrawn from the farms and changes can only be made at and around the end of the farming period. So, these are some of the important factors for developing a good farm to maximize liquidity.