What Is Raydium and Why Do Meme Coins Graduate There?
By Alphacino Editorial Team ·
Quick Take
Graduation from pump.fun to Raydium is a make-or-break moment — here is exactly what happens and why it matters.
If you have spent any time in the Solana meme coin ecosystem, you have seen the phrase "graduated to Raydium." It sounds like an achievement — and it is. But understanding what it actually means changes how you think about every token you trade.
Raydium is Solana's largest automated market maker (AMM) and one of the primary decentralized exchanges on the network. Unlike centralized exchanges where an order book matches buyers and sellers, Raydium uses liquidity pools. Anyone can deposit two tokens in a ratio and earn fees from trades that pass through their pool. It is the deep-water layer of the Solana DeFi stack.
The graduation mechanic comes from pump.fun. When a token launches on pump.fun, it trades on a bonding curve — a mathematical formula that automatically prices tokens based on supply. There is no external liquidity pool. All buying and selling happens inside pump.fun's own contract. When the bonding curve reaches a market cap of roughly $69,000 (approximately 85 SOL raised), the token "graduates." At that point, pump.fun automatically deploys a Raydium liquidity pool, seeds it with the raised SOL and a portion of the token supply, and opens the token to the broader Solana DEX ecosystem.
Graduation matters for a few reasons. First, the token becomes tradeable on any Solana DEX aggregator — Jupiter, for example — which dramatically widens its potential buyer pool. Second, the token now appears in Raydium's own interface and on DEX screeners like DexScreener. Visibility spikes sharply. Third, the mechanics shift: instead of a bonding curve, price is now determined by the open market and liquidity in the pool.
For traders, the graduation event is often the first serious price discovery moment. Many tokens dump hard as early pump.fun buyers take profits against the new liquidity. Others — the ones with real community momentum — run significantly from graduation. Watching which category a new graduate falls into is one of the sharper edges you can develop as a Solana meme coin trader.
Stay ahead of Solana meme coin moves at alphacino.io