An often overlooked chapter in Apple’s early history is that Bill Gates and Microsoft were the ones who helped develop the first applications for the original Macintosh in the 1980s.

The relationship between Apple and Microsoft was, in a way, a symbiosis that eventually evolved into one of the fiercest rivalries in tech history.

A similar dynamic is currently playing out in the Solana ecosystem: While Raydium (as a DEX) and Pump.fun (as a token launchpad) once together powered the "memecoin machinery" on Solana, both are now building their own full-stack casino. A few weeks ago, Pump.fun launched its own DEX. Now, on Wednesday, Raydium has followed suit with the release of its own memecoin launchpad LaunchLab.

Refresher: Up until now, the lifecycle of a typical memecoin on Solana usually looked like this:

• Users created their own memecoins on Pump.fun with just a few clicks.

• Initially, tokens were traded directly on the platform, with prices determined via a bonding curve – with Pump.fun charging a 1% fee per trade.

• Once a token reached a market cap of $69,000, a liquidity pool was automatically created on Raydium. Pump.fun also used to charge a “graduation fee” of roughly 6 SOL for this.

Printer goes brrr: Since its launch at the beginning of last year, roughly 9.5 million tokens have been created on Pump.fun. This resulted in cumulative revenues of about 3.2 million SOL – which, at today’s prices, amounts to approximately $416 million – making Pump.fun the highest-grossing DeFi protocol of the past year.

Partner in crime: But Pump.fun wasn’t the only winner of Solana’s memecoin mania. During the same period, Raydium recorded record-breaking trading volume, even briefly surpassing market leader Uniswap in January. In total, Raydium generated nearly $75 million in trading fees.

• Exactly how much of that can be attributed to the trading of Pump.fun tokens is difficult to determine. However, according to data from Blockworks Research, the figure may be as high as 40%.

Let the games begin: Whatever the number may be – for Pump.fun, it was more than enough of an incentive to launch its own DEX and capture the full value of its memecoins. In the first four weeks after launch, PumpSwap generated $8.4 billion in trading volume.

Trouble for Raydium? Daily volume stabilized at around $300 million, giving PumpSwap just over 14% of Solana’s total DEX volume – making it the fourth-largest DEX on the network. Raydium’s share, on the other hand, dropped from 57% to 37% during this period.

Cashflow: Just like Raydium, PumpSwap charges a 0.25% trading fee, of which 0.20% goes to LPs and 0.05% to the protocol. To date, this has brought in over $17 million in revenue for the DEX.

Raydium's response: After rumors surfaced last month that Raydium was working on a Pump.fun competitor, the DEX officially went live on Wednesday with its own token launchpad: LaunchLab.

Zoom in: LaunchLab follows a similar design to Pump.fun but offers more functionality for token creators – including the ability to set exact token supply and a vesting schedule for locked tokens. Creators can also claim 10% of the trading fees generated via their token’s DEX pool on Raydium.

Selling shovels to the shovel-sellers: Unlike Pump.fun, LaunchLab is opening up its infrastructure to third-party platforms, allowing them to offer their own users the ability to create tokens.

Monetization: Much like Pump.fun, LaunchLab charges a 1% fee on all trades along the bonding curve – but with a different distribution model:

• 50% goes into a community pool, which will later reward both creators and traders (details to follow)

• 25% are used for the $RAY buyback

• 25% are retained by the team for infrastructure maintenance

First data: In the first 48 hours post-launch, 2,800 tokens were created via LaunchLab. Of those, 29 ended up getting listed on Raydium.

My thoughts

The memecoin monopoly on Solana has essentially imploded – by its own hand. With competition heating up, users and third-party protocols are likely to benefit in the long run. LaunchLab’s expanded feature set offers an early glimpse of that potential, and we’ll likely see fee pressure build over time as well.

The real challenge for LaunchLab now lies in competing with Pump.fun’s well-established brand. Opening up its infrastructure to other platforms is a strategic first move in that direction. Whether that’s enough to truly take on the incumbent will become clear in the months ahead. Even if that proves true, Pump.fun still has a major ace up its sleeve: a potential airdrop.

But who knows – maybe, like with Apple and Microsoft, this story could end with two winners.