Pump.fun’s DEX Drama: Solana’s Memecoin Mayhem!

In a move that could only be described as audacious, Pump.fun has unveiled its very own decentralized exchange, christened PumpSwap, thereby giving Raydium the old heave-ho. 🎭

Come March 20, memecoins that manage to bootstrap liquidity on Pump.fun will waltz directly over to PumpSwap, as per an X post by the company. Previously, these tokens would have made a pitstop at Raydium, which had become the belle of the ball in Solana’s DEX scene, largely thanks to the memecoin frenzy. 🕺

Pump.fun claims that PumpSwap operates much like Raydium V4 and Uniswap V2, aiming to create a trading environment so smooth, it’s practically frictionless. “Migrations were a major headache,” Pump.fun stated. “Now, they happen instantly and for free.” 🚀

The timing of this launch is nothing short of serendipitous, coming hot on the heels of Raydium’s announcement of its own memecoin launchpad, LaunchLab, designed to go toe-to-toe with Pump.fun. 🥊

This shift from partners to rivals is set to shake up Solana’s DeFi ecosystem, especially as memecoin trading volumes have taken a nosedive since their January peak. “We welcome competition,” said Alon, one of Pump.fun’s co-founders, with the air of a man who’s just been handed a lemon and is determined to make lemonade. 🍋

Other contenders like Daos.fun, GoFundMeme, and Pumpkin are also jostling for a piece of the Solana memecoin pie. PumpSwap plans to adopt GoFundMeme’s popular revenue-sharing feature, promising to share a percentage of protocol revenue with memecoin creators. “If it succeeds, millions of dollars will go towards aligning creators with their communities,” Pump.fun declared. 💰

On February 27, CryptoMoon reported that successful memecoin launches on Pump.fun had plummeted by 80% from January highs, following a series of scandals that left retail traders feeling rather frosty. ❄️

As a result, Pump.fun’s average daily fee revenue has taken a hit, dropping from over $4 million in January to just over $100,000 by mid-March, according to Dune Analytics. Memecoins were the driving force behind Solana’s explosive growth in 2024, with the chain’s total value locked (TVL) skyrocketing from $1.4 billion to over $9 billion, per DefiLlama. 📉

Raydium, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this growth, saw its daily volumes soar from $245 million to over $2 billion in 2024. In January, Raydium launched a leveraged perpetual futures trading platform in a bid to challenge Jupiter, another top Solana DeFi protocol. 🚀

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2025-03-20 23:00