Solana (SOL) Soars on Raydium Decentralized Exchange Launch

Solana is a high-throughput blockchain operating as an alternative to Ethereum. It’s more institutionally oriented and powers Serum, a derivatives exchange for experienced traders, and the brainchild of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).

In an “ecosystem update,”  the team behind Solana has revealed what is driving momentum for the network. A lot of which has come from the recent launch of a high-speed, low fee, automated market maker called Raydium.

Rapid Raydium Revealed

Solana has attracted a few projects and partners recently such as The Graph. The Serum exchange has seen over a billion dollars in volume since its inception.

But the latest big catalyst for the network is Raydium, which launched on Feb. 21 as a Solana-powered decentralized exchange. In a thread introducing the project on Feb. 22, SBF explained the need for another automated market maker in an industry where they appear to be sprouting like mushrooms in a damp field.

SBF acknowledged that with regular AMMs there is a level of composability as they are all on Layer 1 and operate somewhat independently;

“Right now if someone buys ETH/USDT on Sushi, they can’t get Uni liquidity either! The whole point of DeFi is that we don’t need to have 1,000 completely unrelated protocols that can’t share anything. LPs can’t share orderflow, and takers can’t share liquidity.”

He added that there is demand for a financial instrument that can aggregate liquidity from different sources together. This would allow takers to access all of the offers at once, and maybe even have an engine that could match the makers and takers.

The newly launched platform appears to be generating interest already as a recent proposal to SushiSwap codenamed ‘Bonsai’ has sought to integrate the DEX and ecosystem with Solana to mitigate high fees on the Ethereum network.

SOL and SRM Hit All-Time Highs  

The momentum has driven Solana’s native token prices to an all-time high of $16.32 during the morning of Feb. 24. This move has added 40% on the week for SOL, whereas most other crypto assets are still in retreat.

The blockchain platform-based token has surged a whopping 262% since February’s open and is up more than 920% year to date.

Serum’s SRM token has also performed well with a 60% gain on the week to hit its own peak of $7.44 before a slight pullback. They are both among today’s top-performing crypto assets.