Solana decentralized exchange Raydium announces LaunchLab
Raydium says it’s going live in the next week with its “flexible” token launchpad, which will address what have become user pain points on its soon-to-be competitor Pump.fun.
The new platform, LaunchLab, will allow users to adjust a token’s bonding curve and tokenomics, while still offering a user-friendly cookie cutter option.
Previously, Raydium had simply operated as an automated market maker and decentralized exchange on Solana; while Pump.fun rapidly grew to become the most popular token launchpad due to its quick and easy experience.
When tokens reached a certain market cap on Pump.fun, they used to “graduate” to Raydium. Doing so allowed for tokens to be more freely and widely traded. However, last week, Pump.fun split off from Raydium and began graduating tokens to PumpSwap, its own decentralized exchange.
Tom, the pseudonymous team lead at Raydium, told Decrypt that he had a “gut feeling” Pump.fun was going to make a move like this and had been preparing for it for “a couple of months,” by creating a rival launchpad in LaunchLab.
“The program that we have right now offers a lot of flexibility for token creators,” Tom explained. “The vast majority of asset issuance in the future is going to happen on Solana, and we want Raydium to play a central role in that.”
LaunchLab is set to offer a wide range of parameters that users can adjust for their token launch. These include the total token supply, vesting schedules, which liquidity pool to utilize, as well as various ways to manipulate the “bonding curve”—which is used to generate liquidity for a token before it launches for wider distribution.
In fact, Raydium is even toying with the idea of being able to manually drag the bonding curve on its X and Y access, in turn impacting several factors relating to the token. Tom says this would display the power of the tool the team is creating, but he is unsure if the feature will ship straight away.
This is a stark difference to Pump.fun which only allows users to make aesthetic changes to tokens, giving everything the same tokenomics and bonding curve. And, in many ways, this simplicity has been to the benefit of the platform as traders know exactly what they’re getting into when buying a Pump.fun token.
However, Raydium thinks it’s time to evolve.
“We’ve talked to hundreds of teams this year, especially on the AI token side, where they initially launched their token on Pump.fun, and then they realized they didn’t have the amount of funding that they needed to deliver on their goals,” Tom explained. “So I think that people will view the optionality of [LaunchLab] as being a net benefit, but it might take some time to play out.”
Pump.fun has seen a wave of AI projects either endorse or create a token on the launchpad as a way to fund development. However, a common pain point is the lack of control the team has over the token.
This can result in “tremendous energy” that is “difficult to sustain” due to a lack of capital, Ooli, the creator of AI With Daddy Issues, previously told Decrypt.
Tom said that despite Pump.fun’s surge in popularity, there is still “considerable friction” for projects looking to create bespoke tokens. Over the past year, the Raydium team has been troubleshooting for a number of projects that wanted to launch tokens that didn’t suit Pump.fun’s simplified approach, in part prompting the creation of a more complex launchpad to address this.
Although there is optional flexibility with LaunchLab’s token creation process, it will still aim to provide a retail and user-friendly experience. The user interface itself will “look and feel” similar to Pump.fun and provide a cookie cutter token option—if the user isn’t keen on adjusting its parameters.
“I would like to see teams benefit from the flexibility of the program, I think a couple of strong launches does a lot to really show this,” Tom told Decrypt. “I would like to see users make money and tokens increase in price in a way that is sustainable, [which will] lead to more migrations and trading throughout Solana.”
LaunchLab is set to be part of a broader suite of products by Raydium, with the first tool being the aforementioned token launchpad. Currently, the team is considering which features to go live with and which to hold back. Tom also said Raydium is talking to third parties about implementing LaunchLab into their products, as well as creating a “liquidity bootstrapping” feature somewhat akin to the pre-sale model.
“I think all products have a phase one which is: You get it out there, you throw something at the wall and you see what sticks.” he said. “And if you’re not seeing a lot of stuff stick, you pick it back up, you re-bundle it, and you throw it again.”
Tom told Decrypt that he’s ready to push LaunchLab as early as Wednesday, but is holding back to think through how the product can make the biggest splash. Adding that it will definitely be shipped “within the next week.”
“But I can say that fees will be less and the idea is to have [LaunchLab] be positive long-term for the space,” he added.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.