Pump.fun said to be ditching Raydium, launching own AMM

Wait 5 sec.

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.Crypto’s most lucrative tech marriage appears headed for a divorce.Presently, the Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun migrates tokens with sufficient liquidity to trade on Raydium, a Solana-based automated market maker. The so-called graduation mechanism has proven very profitable for Raydium: Pump.fun pools accounted for 36% of the DEX’s $154 million in 2024 swap revenue.That looks set to change, as an amm.pump.fun URL recently went online, and an onchain sleuth posted evidence that pump.fun was testing liquidity pools for its own AMM. Raydium’s token is down some 40% since Sunday as investors respond to a looming dent in the protocol’s revenue.AMMs are easy enough to spin up in the open-source world of crypto, and pump.fun’s aspirations to create its own had been spinning around the Solana rumor mill for some time. By graduating memecoins to its own AMM, pump.fun would vertically integrate the token launch process — and potentially push its already-gaudy revenue figures even higher. Pump.fun had at least one other potential suitor for its AMM needs. Ellipsis Labs contacted the launchpad about implementing Plasma, an AMM designed to limit sandwich attacks, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Blockworks. Pump.fun declined the offer. Regardless, the in-house AMM launch feels like a pretty obvious move. Pump.fun apparently plans to launch a token, and having its own fee-collecting AMM could provide value accrual to that token. That likely may depend on whether hardcore memecoin traders deem the pump.fun AMM liquid enough to be worth their time.On X yesterday, anonymous Raydium core contributor Infra warned that pump.fun would be making a “strategic miscalculation” launching its own AMM since Raydium provided the “liquidity that helped Pump tokens thrive.”It’s unclear how good of a look the world would get into any future pump.fun AMM. The memecoin launchpad is closed-source, so it would be a slight change in direction if it releases a fully open-source AMM.Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.Empire: Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross.Forward Guidance: Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin.0xResearch: Get alpha directly in your inbox — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.Lightspeed: All things Solana, in your inbox, every day from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.The Drop: The newsletter for crypto collectors and traders, covering games, tokens, apps, memes and more.