Raydium

Raydium is a decentralized exchange and automated market maker built on the Solana blockchain, designed to let anyone trade tokens or provide liquidity without relying on a traditional intermediary. It claims to address the fragmentation of liquidity in decentralized finance by connecting its liquidity pools directly to a central limit order book, originally through the Serum DEX. The RAY token is the native asset of this protocol and is used within its governance and yield-farming systems.

Raydium operates as an AMM on Solana, meaning it uses liquidity deposited by users in pooled pairs to price and settle trades algorithmically rather than through matched orders between individuals. Unlike many AMMs that keep liquidity isolated within their own pools, Raydium routes that liquidity into Serum's on-chain order book, so liquidity providers are exposed to order flow from across that broader ecosystem. The RAY token can be staked within the protocol, entitling holders to a share of fees the protocol retains.

Raydium generates fees from trading activity on its platform; traders pay these fees, which are then split between liquidity providers and the protocol itself. Over the trailing 30 days, total fees reached 33,882,635 USD, of which the protocol retained 5,622,180 USD as revenue and distributed 28,260,455 USD to liquidity providers, reflecting a take rate of approximately 16.59 percent over that period. Holders of staked RAY received 3,347,148 USD of that protocol revenue over the same 30-day window. Fee generation fell 74.01 percent over the last 30 days, a notable shift in the scale of activity the protocol was processing.