Raydium passes Uniswap to rise as the busiest DEX on meme token frenzy

Raydium broke up the order of DEX, displacing Uniswap from its top position. In the last few days, Raydium also rose as the busiest decentralized exchange, driven by meme tokens.

Raydium broke out as the leading DEX, leaving Uniswap second. The ranking arrived after record weeks of meme token activity, both for new inflows from Pump.fun, and for established Solana meme tokens.

Raydium rose to the top based on the cumulative 30-day user number, based on CryptoDiffer data and methods. During other reporting periods, Raydium may lag or move ahead, with past performance not indicative of future results.

In the past 30-day period, Raydium drew in 90M active wallets, while Uniswap drew in 13.9M. Raydium handles more than 60% of all Solana activity on DEX, surpassing even multi-chain exchanges and the formerly hot PancakeSwap on BNB Chain.

The Raydium trend follows a shift from Ethereum to Solana-based activity. Solana turned into the most visited DEX platform after growing its share in September and October. After the expansion of meme token activity, Solana claims between 43% and 48% of all DEX activity in terms of daily visitors.

Solana started displacing Ethereum as the most active DEX platform. | Source: Dune Analytics

Raydium also continues to post near-record daily fees, with a growth trend in October. The DEX produces $3.14M in fees, with more than $200K revenues retained. The Raydium DEX also locks in $1.4B in value, down from a recent peak above $1.7B.

The Raydium DEX also lags in terms of trading volumes, where Uniswap V3 still takes the lead. Additionally, Raydium lags behind perpetual swap DEX and high-liquidity pairs on Aerodrome. The reason for this is that Raydium is the key hub for meme token activity, where small trades of risky tokens are the rule.

On certain days, even Orca has higher trading volume metrics, due to being more sustainable and listing slightly more established assets.

Raydium retains new inflow of meme tokens

One of the reasons for the inflow of users is that Raydium retained more new meme tokens in October. The DEX brought more than 1,500 new meme assets each week in early October, though the inflow may slow down soon.

The Raydium DEX is now feeling the effects of AI-generated tokens and the new hype for existing assets like WIF and POPCAT.

Most of the volume on Raydium is native, though Jupiter DEX aggregator also plays a role in bringing a part of the transactions. The popularity of Jupiter DEX and its community are also a source of traffic and liquidity for Raydium.

The heightened activity in 2024 brought the RAY token price to a one-year peak above $3. In the past month, RAY expanded from the $1.66 range up to a peak of $3.49, before returning to $3.02. However, RAY remains under its 2021 peak at over $14.50.

The activity on Raydium also translates into trading activity for its native token. RAY is active on Binance, reacting quickly to positive news. RAY open interest expanded from under $2M to $5.69M in the past week. The talk of a meme super cycle is further boosting RAY as reflecting the success of the entire Solana meme space.

DEX landscape is shifting to new chains

Decentralized trading is already a staple in meme space, as more volume shifts to a new selection of markets.

One of the notable shifts is the higher activity on ston_fi and DeDust, the two most active exchanges on Toncoin. Ston_fi had more than 430K users in the past month, while DeDust logged 171K users.

Both markets carry Toncoins meme tokens and tap-to-earn tokens, benefitting from the growing supply of USDT and more interest in bot-driven trading. Toncoin only recently moved into the top 15 of DEX, having a niche presence before that.

Despite this, Solana remains the biggest growth factor for DEX activity, with other chains having a niche presence and only copies of the hottest tokens.