Written by: Nancy, PANews
Recently, the sentiment in the MEME market has gradually warmed up, especially driven by several 'golden dog' projects, leading to a significant increase in overall market activity. However, the MEME ecosystem is still in the early stages of recovery, and capital confidence has not yet fully restored. Meanwhile, with the coexistence of insufficient liquidity and high sensitivity to sentiment, the head effect has gradually become the core driving force of traffic and capital, especially the synergy between platforms and tools further amplifies the market influence of KOLs, making it a key variable for capital flow and sentiment fluctuation.
Launchpad: Head effect is significant, driving emerging platforms
Although the MEME market has warmed up, there is still a considerable gap from the historical highs in terms of token creation numbers and user activity.
Taking Pump.fun, the current launch pad for MEME tokens, as an example, Dune data shows that as of May 7, the platform's daily token creation volume has exceeded 33,000, an increase of 48.6% from the previous low period (around 17,000), but still only 47.5% of the historical peak. In terms of token graduation rate, it has currently rebounded to 0.81%, showing significant improvement from the lowest point, but there is still a considerable gap to the historical high of 1.67%. In terms of user activity, Pump.fun currently has 199,000 daily active wallets, rebounding 55.1% from last month's low, but only 46.9% of the historical peak (around 424,000). Notably, from the perspective of new users, the current daily new wallets are about 94,000, compared to the historical peak of over 216,000, indicating limited recovery. This suggests that while the popularity of MEME has clearly warmed up in the short term, overall user participation and liquidity breadth have not yet fully recovered.
However, some emerging token launch platforms have also rapidly expanded by leveraging the head effect. For example, the recently popular Boop has successfully utilized the head effect to achieve user growth and market cap increase in the short term through KOL-driven FOMO effects, platform incentive mechanisms, and precise market timing control. However, this approach also faces challenges such as short-term retention issues from KOL air drops and competitive pressure from rivals potentially replicating strategies.
It is worth mentioning that several recently popular 'golden dog' projects have shown a significant head effect, where high-influence figures such as KOLs and whales drive traffic and capital inflow, forming a snowball effect that further amplifies the narrative value of tokens. For example, whales collectively pushed Fartcoin's market cap to break $1 billion, and House gained popularity with the support of well-known KOLs like ansem and him. In contrast, recent MEME coins that rely on event-driven or grassroots narratives, although they once attracted short-term attention, found it difficult to sustainably convert traffic into effective capital inflow, leading to a rapid decline in popularity.
Trading Bots: Trading volume rebounds, still down nearly 90% from peak
Trading bots are gradually becoming an important tool for on-chain users to enhance trading efficiency, and recently have also seen a rebound with the warming of market sentiment. Dune data shows that as of May 6, the daily trading volume of trading bots reached $85.37 million, with daily users exceeding 57,000, increasing nearly 64.1% and 43.8% from recent lows, respectively. However, compared to the peak in January of this year, the daily trading volume and daily user numbers are still down 89.1% and 62.5%, respectively.
For ordinary retail investors, the smart money tracking, automated trading, and on-chain data analysis features of trading bots allow them to monitor and quickly capture dynamics of KOLs/whales in an information-asymmetrical market environment, effectively improving participation efficiency and reducing PVP risks.
At the same time, retail investors often hold a high level of trust in the trading bots recommended or used by these KOLs, which significantly enhances the market acceptance and activity of the related bots. Of course, KOLs, due to their capital size and market influence, tend to prefer tools that are easy to operate, execute quickly, and have high success rates to ensure trading efficiency and maximize returns. Therefore, whether trading bots can meet the demand in terms of diversified functions, safety, or response speed is a core factor influencing KOLs' willingness to use them. Of course, potential risks of market manipulation by some KOLs through bots cannot be ruled out.
For instance, the recently emerged Axiom has quickly gained favor among MEME players due to its advantages such as complex strategy support, efficient trade execution, and user-friendly design, particularly meeting the core needs of KOLs/whales, thus rapidly rising to become a leader in the trading bot arena.
DEX: MEME revenue plummets, PumpSwap has shown initial advantages
MEME remains one of the core sources of DEX revenue. Taking Raydium as an example, Blockworks data shows that in the past 30 days, the daily revenue from MEME-related transactions accounted for as much as 86.8% of the trading revenue, while the daily revenue from MEME token issuance reached 93.5%, highlighting its dominant position in the overall revenue structure of the platform.
However, the revenue brought by MEME is experiencing a significant decline. Blockworks data shows that as of May 6, Raydium's daily trading revenue from MEME was only $156,000, a drop of over 97% compared to the peak of $5.244 million in January. At the same time, the daily revenue from MEME token issuance also fell from a high of $149,000 to only $19,000, showcasing the rapid cooling of market enthusiasm and the obvious retreat of user speculation sentiment.
In contrast, PumpSwap has demonstrated strong development momentum. Dune data shows that since its launch on March 20, the platform has accumulated a trading volume of $17.67 billion, and has shown a significant upward trend since early April, with a single-day peak trading volume exceeding $670 million. Meanwhile, the platform's user activity has also continued to climb, quickly attracting a large number of new users during the cold start phase, followed by a gradual increase in returning user ratio, indicating strong user retention capabilities. Notably, as of May 7, PumpSwap has captured 12.7% of the total trading volume on Solana DEX, gaining preliminary competitive advantages in the ecosystem.
In this process, the role of whales/KOLs should not be overlooked, as they can not only significantly drive the growth of MEME trading volume but also promote the rapid expansion of liquidity pools and the concentrated influx of new users, becoming the core driving factor for the platform's short-term explosion.
Wallet: Activity has rebounded, down over 80% from January peak
The usage of wallets is also one of the important indicators reflecting on-chain sentiment. Dune data shows that as of May 5, the weekly transaction volume of mainstream wallets reached over $460 million, rebounding 35.2% from a recent low, but only 51.6% of this year's peak (around $950 million). Meanwhile, the number of weekly active addresses for wallets reached 17,000, a significant drop of over 80.4% from the January peak of 87,000. This indicates that although transaction volume has rebounded, user engagement remains sluggish, and overall on-chain activity is still in the early stages of recovery, with market sentiment not yet fully warming up.
Similarly, the appeal and user stickiness of wallets depend on core factors such as the completeness of their features, the breadth of usage scenarios, and ecological integration capabilities. For example, wallets with high market shares like OKX Web3 Wallet and Binance Wallet have successfully attracted a large number of MEME players, becoming mainstream choices in this segment. In this process, the usage rate and word-of-mouth effect of whales and KOLs have also played a key role in driving not only the wallet's visibility but also enhancing ordinary users' trust and willingness to use.
