Raydium Review: What You Need to Know About This Solana DEX in 2025

When you trade crypto on Raydium, a decentralized exchange built on the Solana blockchain that lets users swap tokens without a middleman. Also known as Raydium DEX, it’s one of the most used platforms on Solana for trading new tokens, adding liquidity, and earning yield—all without giving up control of your keys. Unlike big names like Binance or Coinbase, Raydium doesn’t ask for your ID or hold your crypto. You connect your wallet—like Phantom or Solflare—and trade directly. That’s the whole point of DeFi: you’re in charge.

Raydium’s real strength is its liquidity pools, smart contracts where users lock up pairs of tokens to help others trade, and in return earn a share of trading fees. Also known as AMM pools, they’re what make Raydium fast and cheap. On Ethereum, swapping tokens can cost $10 or more in gas. On Raydium? Often under $0.10. That’s because Solana handles thousands of transactions per second, not just a few. This speed lets Raydium support new tokens right after launch, which is why so many Solana memecoins and DeFi projects start there. But it’s not all smooth sailing. Some tokens listed on Raydium are pure speculation—no team, no audit, no future. You can get rich quick, but you can also lose everything if you don’t check the contract or the liquidity lock. That’s why users who stick around learn to read the fine print: who created the pool? Is the liquidity locked? Is the token verified? Raydium doesn’t vet projects—it just gives them a stage.

Another big reason people use Raydium is for yield farming, the practice of staking your tokens in a pool to earn extra rewards, often in the form of the platform’s native token, RAY. Also known as liquidity mining, this is how early users made serious returns in 2021 and 2022. Today, rewards are lower, but the platform still offers some of the best APYs on Solana for stablecoin pairs and major tokens like SOL, USDC, and WSOL. If you’re already holding Solana assets, Raydium is one of the few places where you can put them to work without leaving the ecosystem. It’s not a place for beginners who just want to buy Bitcoin. But if you’re comfortable with wallets, tokens, and smart contracts, Raydium gives you direct access to the pulse of Solana’s DeFi scene.

What you’ll find in the posts below are real user experiences, breakdowns of how Raydium compares to other DEXs like Jupiter or Orca, and warnings about risky pools that drained people’s funds. Some posts dive into the technical side—how the automated market maker works, how fee structures changed in 2025, and why some liquidity providers lost money despite high APYs. Others show you step-by-step how to add liquidity, claim rewards, or spot a rug pull before it happens. This isn’t a marketing page. It’s a collection of what actually works, what doesn’t, and what you need to know before you click ‘Swap’ or ‘Provide Liquidity.’