RAY Hits 11-Month Peak as Three Factors Fuel 90% Surge

Raydium's RAY token climbed to an 11-month high Friday, capping a 90% weekly advance that made it the second-best performer among the top 300 cryptocurrencies.

The Solana-based decentralized exchange token rose even as the broader crypto market fell 3.9% over the same seven days, with Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP all moving lower.

RAY Outperforms a Declining Market

RAY, ranked 117th by market cap, added 14.67% in the past 24 hours and hit an intraday peak of $1.75.

That was its highest price since late October 2025. Only STONK, a meme coin that gained 1,220.8% this week, posted a larger weekly gain in the top 300.

Most Solana ecosystem tokens fell this week, making RAY the exception.

Three Drivers Behind the 90% Move

CoinGecko points to three catalysts for the rally. On September 6, StonkFun announced that all new token deployments would go through Raydium's LaunchLab.

The change reduced deployment costs to 0.03 SOL from 0.29 SOL. Raydium also upgraded LaunchLab this month.

On September 9, Raydium bought back $640,788 of RAY. Messari data shows it was the heaviest daily buyback since February 2025. The protocol directs 12% of fees toward RAY purchases.

Raydium buybacks recorded their highest level since February 2025.

solana:4k3Dyjzvzp8eMZWUXbBCjEvwSkkk59S5iCNLY3QrkX6R pic.twitter.com/fHzjMlVe2s

— Messari by Blockworks (@MessariCrypto) September 9, 2026

Tokenized equities provided the third factor. Backpack Securities listed Grindr's GRND token on September 10, which saw $11 million in trading volume within an hour.

More than 15 stock tokens, including Boeing, Costco and Roblox, went live through Backpack and Sunrise this week.

Buybacks increase with fee revenue, and fee revenue increases with volume. The key question is whether StonkFun's launch flow and stock-token trading can persist once the speculative frenzy around them subsides.