Written by: Cookie
The 'meme launchpad battle' between pump.fun and Letsbonk.fun has been ongoing for a month since early July. During this time, we have witnessed pump.fun complete one of the largest ICOs in cryptocurrency history and Letsbonk.fun launch an attack on pump.fun's market share, successfully forming a suppression. During this period, some 'new characters' have also joined the battle; although they haven't caused a huge wave in the short term, they are still worth our understanding and attention.
Let's start with this data chart from Jupiter.
Although Letsbonk.fun has maintained its top market share in the past 7 days, its current ecosystem hotspots are showing a completely different direction from those of pump.fun.
pump.fun: Is the PVE market returning?
On July 24, after completing a live interview with threadguy, pump.fun and its founder @a1lon9 entered a nearly half-month silence. A month ago, many believed this was a 'public relations disaster' of a live interview, as it profoundly affected the token price, causing $PUMP to drop nearly 15% during the broadcast, with a daily decline close to 20%, once falling below a market cap of $3 billion.
Since the end of this live broadcast until now, the gap in market share between pump.fun and Letsbonk.fun has not significantly narrowed. However, from July 30 to now, pump.fun's reputation has undergone a significant turnaround.
The reason is simple—community tokens in the pump.fun ecosystem have performed well during this unstable market period.
The image above was posted by pump.fun's official Twitter on July 23, where the meme coins in the pump.fun ecosystem were seen as 'officially selected' by many. Among these coins, $TROLL performed the best, having risen up to 9 times since July 25, with a market cap surpassing $100 million. During the same period, $Tokabu rose approximately 5 times, with a market cap once exceeding $35 million. $USDUC rose up to 2 times, with a market cap approaching $40 million at one point. $CHILLHOUSE and $neet also saw similar gains to $USDUC, with their market caps at one point nearing $30 million and $18 million, respectively.
Among the newer faces, all have been in an upward trend since July 25, with the only exceptions being 'broadcaster tokens' and older tokens like $FWOG and $michi, which have been around for more than 300 days and have not kept up with this wave.
So what good news is there for 'new coins'? It seems there isn't much, as the silence from pump.fun and alon only ended the day before yesterday. If we speak from a narrative perspective, these 'new coins' maintained a high level of content output and community activity during pump.fun's lowest period, which at least aligns with pump.fun's expectations for the long-term sustainable development of meme coins over the past period.
The 'counterattack' from pump.fun's official has only been revealed to us until the day before yesterday—the $PUMP buyback data dashboard.
In the past 6 days, we have repurchased about $PUMP worth approximately 8740 SOL, which is 102% of our income during this period.
Early this morning, pump.fun's official Twitter updated the cover image once again, promoting the 'officially selected' meme coins.
Interestingly, after the live broadcast on July 24, the meme tokens purchased by the founder of pump.fun were almost all at a loss. As of now, his holdings have turned profitable across the board, and the extent is not small:
For the meme coin market to revive, the first step is to 'put the clothes back on', that is, to regain players' confidence in meme coins, believing that meme coins are not just 'conspiracies'; good narratives, good content, good communities, and continuous operations can ultimately help a meme coin succeed. While we still need to observe the performance of these tokens on pump.fun, it can be said that if it can be sustained, this is a good start.
Next, pump.fun still has many cards to play, such as airdrops and live broadcasts. This is a long road after the first step. With major exchanges like Binance and OKX almost no longer launching new Solana meme coins, pump.fun must explore more possibilities.
The revolution has not yet succeeded; comrades still need to work hard.
Letsbonk.fun: A new home for short-term bottleneck cryptocurrencies
In the past 7 days, Letsbonk.fun's market share has still exceeded 50%, maintaining the top position. The recovery of pump.fun's volume is mainly due to the excellent performance of 'new tokens', which have not generated much broad discussion around 'new coins'.
In the past period, the 'hot tokens', such as $Ani, have occurred on Letsbonk.fun. The successful path of pump.fun has now been taken over by Letsbonk.fun.
In contrast, the 'big targets' on Letsbonk.fun have recently entered a pullback. $USELESS has pulled back from a peak market cap of $400 million to around $200 million, $memecoin pulled back from nearly $60 million to around $11 million, $Bluechip from a peak of $17 million to $1.5 million, and $Ani from a peak of $86 million to about $30 million.
$$BONK and $$GP have also fallen by 36% and 63% from their peak, respectively.
Although the related assets have not performed well, Letsbonk.fun's buybacks and support for its ecosystem meme coins have not ceased. Rather than saying that the war between Letsbonk.fun and pump.fun is still ongoing, it is more accurate to say that both are working hard in their own ways. Only when the overall confidence in the meme coin market is restored will both have a better future.
Peace and love, looking forward to the follow-up performance of Letsbonk.fun.
Bags and Moonit: Old platforms, new tricks
Bags was originally a social trading application, and they launched the token launchpad feature on May 22. Moonit is Helio's platform, which started at the end of April this year.
Recently, Bags has attracted attention for its 'donation narrative'. $CANCER donates 100% of its transaction fee income to one of the world's most well-known and influential breast cancer charities, Susan G. Komen, and has currently donated $35,000 to the organization, along with approximately 2.2% of $CANCER.
Because the tokens launched on Bags can directly allocate the creator's transaction fee income to a specific Twitter account, another token that drew attention, $WINRAR, designated its token income to the official Twitter of WinRAR, an application that almost everyone has used. This attracted a response from WinRAR's official Twitter.
However, both of these tokens have ended like a passing wind and are currently in a state of decline. As for Bags, the platform's leader, it is hard to say that it currently has a leader in terms of attention and market value...
Moonit has a much larger setup. They launched an AI protocol jointly created by 9GAG, Memeland, Helio Pay, MoonPay, and Dexscreener, which can automatically tokenize internet culture and viral memes.
In simple terms, this protocol automatically issues tokens by using AI to identify popular memes on 9GAG, equivalent to 'automatically launching selected hot tokens from 9GAG'. This mainly connects the 9GAG circle; if there were a platform that could connect TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media, I believe similar things could be done.
If this model is to work, there are still quite a few problems to overcome. The foremost is 'technology does not equal liquidity'; there are too many developers on the chain, and if a popular meme emerges, everyone will rush to launch, so whether the launched tokens can gather consensus, players may still consider the liquidity of the platform.
The second issue is sustainability. If the 9GAG community can be brought onto the token, it would be more appealing. However, as seen in step 4 of the above image, there is a CTO involved... If your carefully selected 9GAG memes still need a CTO, it may indicate that the community foundation is still weak, and this potential advantage has not been realized.
Moonit's new feature still hasn't produced a leader.
With more platforms emerging, the issues to be resolved seem not to have diminished.
Conclusion
The meme launchpad battle will continue in the foreseeable future. The enormous success of pump.fun over the past year has made everyone eager to 'get a piece of the action'. However, everyone also faces a serious problem—how to regain the market's interest and confidence in meme coins?
As CEXs seem to be less interested in launching new meme coins, can there be better infrastructure and liquidity on-chain to make meme coins great again?
Rather than calling it a 'war', it is more like a test faced by all meme coin launchpads. After all, the lessons from the past of inscriptions are right before us—while the inscription tools have become more refined, the craze for inscriptions has already faded away.
I hope that the entire meme coin market ultimately benefits, particularly all the cryptocurrency players who still enjoy meme coins.
