What is Raydium and how does the Solana DEX work?

Raydium is a decentralized exchange on Solana where people swap tokens, add liquidity to earn fees and launch new tokens. There is no sign-up, and Raydium's docs note that your Solana wallet is your identity. Its first product, AMM v4, went live on Solana mainnet in February 2021.

What is the Raydium exchange used for?

Most people use Raydium to swap one Solana token for another. Others deposit pairs of tokens into pools and earn a share of trading fees. As of October 2026, Raydium's docs list a trading fee of 0.25% on most pools, with some pools at 0.01%, 0.05% or 1%, split between liquidity providers and the protocol. Solana network fees are charged separately and are still paid when a transaction fails. Raydium also offers farms, staking and perpetual futures powered by Orderly Network.

What is the difference between Raydium CPMM and CLMM?

CPMM, also called the Standard AMM, is a constant-product pool. Liquidity is spread across every possible price, so positions need little upkeep. Raydium announced it in 2024 as the long-term replacement for AMM v4, and it supports newer Token-2022 tokens. Liquidity providers receive fungible LP tokens.

CLMM is a concentrated liquidity pool, launched in August 2022. Providers choose a price range and earn fees only while the price stays inside it. The docs say this captures more fees per dollar but needs active management and carries more impermanent loss risk. A CLMM position is held as an NFT rather than a standard LP token.

The older AMM v4 still runs as a pure constant-product AMM after its original order book link with OpenBook was switched off.

What is Raydium LaunchLab?

LaunchLab is Raydium's token launch tool. A new token trades on a bonding curve, where price rises as people buy, until it hits a funding target. It then graduates into a full Raydium pool. Cointelegraph reported that LaunchLab went live on April 16, 2025, with a threshold of 85 SOL at the time, a 1% trading fee and an option for creators to earn a share of fees after graduation. It arrived about a month after Pump.fun moved its token migrations to its own exchange instead of Raydium.

What is Raydium Authority V4?

Many Solana users see "Raydium Authority V4" as the sender in their transaction history after a swap. Raydium's docs explain that AMM v4 uses a single program-derived address, a key controlled by the program's code rather than by a person, called the amm authority. It owns the token vaults of every AMM v4 pool and signs every transfer out of them. So when you swap through an AMM v4 pool, the tokens you receive arrive from this address. Seeing it is normal and does not mean someone else has access to your wallet. Raydium's history page notes that in December 2022 an AMM v4 pool authority key was compromised and several pools were drained, after which authority roles moved to a multisig.