Raydium’s native token RAY climbed sharply over the past week as trading activity tied to Solana launchpad StonkFun began flowing through Raydium’s LaunchLab. At the time referenced in the source report, RAY was up about 27% over 24 hours and 105% over seven days, trading near $1.72 and giving the token a market capitalization of roughly $465 million.

The move appears to be tied less to a product change at Raydium itself and more to a shift in how new tokens are being launched. After StonkFun routed all new launches to LaunchLab on Sept. 5, every trade from those launches began settling through Raydium pools, increasing fee generation for the decentralized exchange.

StonkFun volume feeds Raydium pools

StonkFun, a Solana-based token launchpad, moved every new token launch onto Raydium’s LaunchLab, according to the source article. Because those trades now pass through Raydium liquidity pools, the exchange collects fees from the resulting activity.

That change quickly translated into meaningful throughput. Over the past seven days, StonkFun generated $5.88 million in revenue, placing it second among launchpads in the source report. LaunchLab itself was listed ninth among launchpads, with $886,612 in seven-day fees.

Fee model creates automatic RAY demand

A key part of the market response centers on Raydium’s fee structure. The protocol allocates 12% of the trading fees it collects to buying RAY on the open market each day, with purchases made at prevailing market prices.

According to the report, the bought-back tokens are then held in a protocol wallet rather than sold back onto exchanges. That mechanism means higher trading volume can directly increase the amount of RAY purchased, while also limiting the amount that returns to the market through protocol sales.

September buybacks reached their highest level in months

The jump in launch activity was reflected in Raydium’s repurchase figures. On Sept. 8, the protocol spent $640,788 on RAY in a single day, marking its largest one-day buyback since February 2025.

The source article said daily buybacks had been largely flat through much of 2026 before starting to pick up in August. The first week of September then showed a much sharper increase, aligning with the additional fee flow tied to LaunchLab activity.

What to watch next

For now, the clearest confirmed development is the routing of new StonkFun launches through LaunchLab and the resulting rise in fees and buybacks. The recent rally in RAY came alongside that change, but the source material does not claim any new Raydium feature release was behind the move.

The next concrete signal will be whether launch-driven volume remains elevated in the days ahead. If trading through LaunchLab stays strong, Raydium’s daily buybacks would continue to reflect that fee activity under the protocol’s existing 12% allocation model.

Source: Cryptopolitan