What Is Raydium and Why Do Meme Coins Graduate There?
By Alphacino Editorial Team ·
Quick Take
Graduating from pump.fun to Raydium is the moment a Solana meme coin becomes a real trade — here's why it matters.
If you've spent any time trading Solana meme coins, you've seen the term "graduated." A token launches on pump.fun, the bonding curve fills, and then it "graduates" to Raydium. But what does that actually mean — and why does it matter for your trade?
Raydium is the dominant automated market maker (AMM) on Solana. Think of it as the main arena where tokens get serious liquidity and real price discovery. When a token is still on pump.fun, it trades on an internal bonding curve with limited depth. Once it hits the graduation threshold — roughly 85 SOL raised — the protocol creates a liquidity pool on Raydium and burns the LP tokens.
That burned liquidity is the key detail. It means no one can remove the pool's funds, giving traders confidence that the token won't be rugged through a liquidity drain. It's not a guarantee of success — plenty of graduated tokens still dump to zero — but it's a meaningful credibility signal compared to tokens still on the curve.
Graduation also unlocks a much larger audience. Aggregators like DexScreener and Birdeye surface Raydium pools automatically, and trading bots that scan for new launches start picking up the token. Volume can spike sharply in the hours after graduation, which is why experienced traders watch for tokens approaching the threshold.
The graduation moment is one of the cleanest entry signals in the Solana meme coin playbook. Combine it with strong holder distribution and locked supply, and you have the foundation of a legitimate speculative setup. It's still risky — everything in this space is — but understanding graduation is what separates informed degen bets from random buys.
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