Exchange Raydium (RAY)

Raydium is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol built on the Solana blockchain. It aims to provide liquidity to the Solana ecosystem by enabling users to swap, lend, borrow, and yield farm various digital assets. 

Raydium utilizes an automated market maker (AMM) model similar to platforms like Uniswap and SushiSwap, allowing users to trade assets directly from their wallets without the need for traditional order books. It uses liquidity pools to facilitate token swaps without the need for traditional order books. Users can trade assets directly from their wallets, and liquidity providers earn fees for providing liquidity to these pools.

Leveraging Solana's scalability and performance, Raydium offers fast transaction processing and minimal fees compared to other blockchain platforms.

Raydium incentivizes liquidity providers through yield farming rewards. Users who stake their assets in liquidity pools can earn additional tokens as rewards, encouraging participation in the ecosystem and providing liquidity to the platform.

Raydium was founded by a team led by AlphaRay, who oversees the overall strategy, operations, product direction, and business development of the project. With a background in algorithmic trading in commodities, Alpha transitioned into market-making and liquidity-providing for cryptocurrencies in 2017. Embracing the burgeoning field of decentralized finance (DeFi), Alpha identified a market need for an order book automated market maker (AMM) to aggregate liquidity, particularly with the release of Serum on the Solana blockchain. To address this need, Alpha assembled a team of experienced trading developers to tackle the challenge head-on.

XRay serves as Raydium's Chief of Technology and Dev Team leader, bringing with them 8 years of experience as a trading and low-latency systems architect for both traditional and crypto markets. XRay is responsible for designing all of Raydium's systems and infrastructure as needed, ensuring optimal performance and reliability.

GammaRay leads marketing and communications efforts at Raydium, while also contributing to strategy and product direction. With a background in a leading data analytics and market research firm, Gamma brings valuable experience in client engagements and corporate marketing. Before Raydium, Gamma focused on technical analysis and discretionary trading within the cryptocurrency space.

Raydium's automated market maker (AMM) stands out due to a unique feature: liquidity provided on Raydium simultaneously establishes a market on OpenBook, which is tradable on any OpenBook decentralized exchange (DEX) graphical user interface (GUI). By directly integrating Raydium's liquidity providers (LPs) into the OpenBook central limit order book, trading participants on OpenBook gain seamless access to this liquidity. This sets Raydium apart from the majority of AMM protocols, where liquidity is typically isolated within their platforms, and inaccessible to other trading venues.

Each time a user executes a swap within the pool, specifically between $RAY and $USDC, a 0.25% fee is applied. From this fee, 0.22% is allocated back to the liquidity provider (LP) pool, while the remaining 0.03% is designated for RAY token buybacks.

One notable feature of Raydium is its integration with the Serum decentralized exchange (DEX), which is also built on Solana. This integration enables Raydium to offer high-speed, low-cost transactions and access to a wide range of trading pairs. Additionally, Raydium provides liquidity incentives to users who provide liquidity to its pools, encouraging participation in the ecosystem.

Raydium introduces its Best Price Swaps functionality, which evaluates whether executing a swap within a liquidity pool or utilizing the OpenBook order book yields the most favorable price for users.

Raydium's AcceleRaytor initiative is designed to bolster the expansion of the Solana Ecosystem. Acting as a launchpad, it empowers innovative projects to secure funding and establish initial liquidity, thereby fostering growth and development within the ecosystem

In addition to RAY-incentivized pools, Raydium introduces Fusion pools. These pools extend beyond RAY incentives, enabling liquidity providers to earn tokens from supported projects as well as trading fees. Fusion pools play a pivotal role in facilitating liquidity bootstrapping for tokens on both Raydium and OpenBook.

Moreover, certain pools feature Dual Yield functionality, allowing users to earn RAY tokens alongside project tokens. For comprehensive instructions on participating, you can follow the provided link.

Creating a liquidity pool on Raydium for any token pair is open to anyone. Projects or users can leverage Raydium's AMM to drive liquidity by establishing Permissionless pools.

To engage with Raydium, it's essential to have an SPL wallet for connectivity.

Raydium provides developer-friendly infrastructure and tools for building on its platform. This includes APIs, SDKs, and documentation to facilitate the development of decentralized applications (dApps) and integrations with Raydium's ecosystem.

RAY is the native token of the Raydium protocol. RAY tokens can be used within the Raydium ecosystem for various purposes, such as providing liquidity to pools, earning rewards through yield farming, or participating in other platform features and services.

RAY token holders have the right to participate in governance decisions concerning the Raydium protocol. This could involve voting on proposals related to protocol upgrades, changes to parameters, or the allocation of funds from the treasury.

At the genesis, a total of 550,000,000 RAY tokens have been minted, which will gradually become accessible over 3 years. The initial allocation plan for these tokens is outlined as follows:

• 34% of the total supply is designated for airdrops to liquidity providers for 3 years.
• 30% is allocated for partnerships aimed at expanding the Raydium ecosystem, with provisions for lockups of up to 3 years.
• 20% is reserved for team members and future employees, subject to a 1-year lockup period followed by a 2-year unlocking schedule thereafter.
• 8% is earmarked for liquidity provisioning, including initiatives such as bootstrapping initial pools liquidity and providing liquidity on other decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and centralized exchanges (CEXs).
• 6% is set aside for seed funding and community pool, with lockup periods ranging from 1 to 3 years.

As of March 19, 2024, the circulating supply of the RAY token is 259,208,085.

The Average Fees on the Raydium protocol

Raydium charges a standard fee of 0.25% for each swap transaction within its liquidity pools. This fee is consistent with many other decentralized exchanges and automated market maker (AMM) platforms in the DeFi space. Specific fees can vary depending on the assets being traded and any additional features or services provided by Raydium. 

The RAY Token Wallets

The RAY token operates on the Solana blockchain, which means it can be stored in any wallet that supports Solana-based tokens, such as Sollet.io, Solflare, Ledger, Coin98, Trust Wallet, Atomic Wallet, Exodus, etc.