The Raydium (RAY) token appreciated by approximately 90% over the week, reaching $1.75 on September 11, marking its highest level in about 11 months. In the last 24 hours, the increase was 14.67%, making RAY the second fastest-growing cryptocurrency among the 300 largest assets after the meme token STONK. Meanwhile, the overall market declined by 3.9% during the same seven days, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP trading below last week's levels. The rise of RAY occurred against the backdrop of increased activity in the Raydium decentralized exchange ecosystem based on Solana.
One of the factors was StonkFun's decision on September 6 to direct all new token launches through Raydium LaunchLab. Following this transition, the deployment cost decreased from 0.29 SOL to 0.03 SOL. An additional factor was the token buyback by the protocol itself. On September 9, Raydium purchased RAY for $640,788, marking the largest daily buyback since February 2025. According to Messari data, the protocol allocates 12% of its fees to buy its own token. The dynamics were also influenced by the increase in trading of tokenized stocks: on September 10, Backpack Securities launched the GRND token on Raydium, linked to Grindr shares. Within the first hour, the trading volume for this asset reached $11 million.
Throughout the week, over 15 tokens related to company stocks, including Boeing, Costco, and Roblox, were also launched on the platform through Backpack and Sunrise. The increase in trading volumes supports the protocol's fee income, and their rise, in turn, may contribute to a greater buyback of RAY. However, the current dynamics do not guarantee the sustainability of the growth rates. A separate question concerns the activity around StonkFun: it remains unclear how sustainable the launch and trading volumes will be after the decline in speculative interest. Therefore, the current strengthening of RAY is linked to several streams of activity, and their future dynamics will determine whether the increased demand can be maintained.