A token launch that costs 0.03 SOL just handed Raydium its strongest week in over a year.
That’s about 90% cheaper than it was before, and the cheaper price is one reason the volume showed up.
Raydium, the largest DEX on Solana, has reported its highest weekly revenue since July 2025. DefiLlama’s dashboard shows $4.43 million in holders revenue over the past 30 days. I’ve followed this protocol for a while, and revenue spent much of 2026 in a slump. Quarterly gross protocol revenue on DefiLlama’s Raydium dashboard fell to $16.99 million in Q2 2026, well below the $114.34 million it recorded in Q3 2025. A record week, then, is a change of tone.
The market noticed. Reports at the time pointed to nearly $440,000 in protocol revenue in a single day on September 6, the best single day since July 2025. RAY, the protocol’s token, hit an 11-month high after a weekly rally of roughly 90%.
What The $4.43 Million Number Actually Measures
The figure is holders revenue, and that distinction matters. DefiLlama tracks fees, revenue and holders revenue separately. Fees are what traders pay. Revenue is the slice Raydium keeps. Holders revenue is the part allocated to RAY token buybacks. On the AMM that is 12% of fees across all pool types. On LaunchLab it is 25% of the protocol fee, used to buy back and burn RAY.
Here is how the pieces fit together on the live dashboard:
- Holders revenue: $4.43 million over 30 days, and $1.19 million over the past 7 days.
- Protocol revenue: $6.94 million over 30 days.
- Fees: $41.68 million over 30 days.
- Volume and TVL: DEX volume of $8.992 billion over 30 days, and TVL of $1.332 billion.
I’d treat all of these as a snapshot. The dashboard updates constantly, so check the live numbers before quoting them.
StonkFun Flips The Switch On LaunchLab
The biggest driver, in my view, was StonkFun. It’s a launchpad focused on tokens tied to stocks and commodities. On September 5 it began routing new token launches through Raydium’s LaunchLab, so every trade linked to those tokens settles through Raydium’s pools and generates fees.
The effect was immediate. STONK, StonkFun’s own token, jumped more than 250% on the day and reached a market cap of roughly $140 million. Before the integration, StonkFun had already generated over $1.21 million in revenue and pushed about $219 million in volume through Raydium. Now every launch flows there by default.
The cost cut helped too. Deploying a token on LaunchLab dropped from 0.29 SOL to 0.03 SOL, so launching is cheap and more people try it. Each bonding-curve trade pays a fee, and LaunchLab already has a track record. In Q3 2025 it generated $12.8 million in revenue and accounted for over half of Raydium’s total.
Tokenized Stocks Add A Second Fuel Source
StonkFun wasn’t the only catalyst that week. More than 15 tokenized US stocks went live through Backpack and Sunrise, including Boeing, Costco, Lululemon, Reddit and Roblox. Grindr’s GRND token listed on Backpack on September 10 and saw about $11 million in trading volume within an hour.
I think this matters more than it sounds. Tokenized equities pull in traders who wouldn’t otherwise touch Solana memecoins, and they trade around the clock. A week where meme flow and stock-token flow overlap is exactly the kind of week that breaks a revenue drought.
Buybacks Turn Revenue Into A Price Story
The holders revenue feeds straight back into RAY, which is why the $4.43 million figure matters most for the token. When fees jump, buybacks jump with them. Raydium bought back $640,788 of RAY in one day, the largest daily purchase since February 2025.
That helps explain the price move. RAY sits around $2.01 with a market cap of $542.86 million, and DefiLlama shows it up 160.7% over 30 days. Buybacks were flat and unremarkable for most of 2026. They began picking up in August and accelerated in the first week of September, right as revenue climbed.
Can Raydium Hold The Momentum
This is where I’d stay cautious. The surge leans on a narrow set of drivers, and speculative launch activity tends to cool quickly. Messari flagged the same weakness in 2025, when LaunchLab’s growth depended heavily on a single platform. StonkFun could play that role now. Raydium also took a $1.34 million exploit on its AMM on June 10, 2026, a reminder that fast growth doesn’t remove smart-contract risk.
The upside case is straightforward. If tokenized stocks keep pulling in new traders and LaunchLab stays cheap to use, this could be the start of a real recovery. If the speculative burst fades, revenue will likely drift back toward its Q2 levels. I’ll be watching the weekly revenue line and the daily buyback figures over the next few weeks, because those two will show whether this was a peak or a reset.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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