According to Messari’s latest State of Raydium report. Raydium began 2025 with impressive trading activity, reaching new heights in January. The DEX saw a 12.7% increase in its daily average volume, climbing to $3.6 billion.
This surge was powered by the launch of the TRUMP memecoin, which brought in a remarkable $195.8 billion in volume during the first month. On January 19, daily volume peaked at $16 billion, a record-breaking number for the platform.
Nonetheless, following the initial spike, the volume decreased sharply. The daily volume by March 31 was $709.6 million. This was accompanied by a decline in the general crypto market that had an influence on the overall volume on all exchanges. The dominance of Raydium also decreased as it share of Solana DEX volume decreased from Q4 2024 at 56% to Q1 2025 at 46.9%.
Raydium’s Meme token share drops despite growth
Meteora became a serious contender in the Solana DEX market during Q1 2025. Following a series of high-profile token listings such as TRUMP and MELANIA tokens, it outpaced Orca to become the second-largest Solana DEX by volume. The volume share of the protocol jumped to 31.8% in the middle of February. The increase was short-lived as a sudden downturn resulted from the fall of the LIBRA token and a market manipulation controversy.
In the meantime, meme tokens retained much of the volume on Raydium. Meme-trading share expanded from Q1 2024’s 14.3% to Q1 2025’s 20%. While overall volume was up, however, meme-token share fell from the last period’s 27.9%. Meanwhile, AI tokens increased sharply by a volume share of 130% as they gained traction on the platform.
Raydium faces 65% drop in market cap
Raydium also entered the world of perpetual futures when it launched the public beta on its Raydium Perps back in January. Users could trade non-expire-date tokens with leverage of up to 50x. Users could trade gas-free with low fees during the beta phase. Although it began on a good note, the daily volume on the Raydium Perps fell from $116 million in February to a low of $11.8 million towards the latter part of March.
The roll-out of perps was on the heels of record fees by Raydium in January amounting to $402.8 million. Nevertheless, even as daily fees increased by a record 6.4% compared to Q4 2024, the exchange experienced a sharp reduction in circulating market cap by 65%. The reduction in circulating market cap coupled with declining trading turnover indicates that while Raydium had seen stunning expansion in the first part of the year, it might be difficult to maintain the same pace in the coming months.
