Written by: Cookie
The 'meme launchpad battle' between pump.fun and Letsbonk.fun has been ongoing for a month now since early July. During this time, we have witnessed pump.fun complete one of the largest ICOs in cryptocurrency history, and we have seen Letsbonk.fun launch an offensive against pump.fun's market share and successfully impose suppression. During this period, some 'new characters' have joined the fray, and although they have not caused much of a stir 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 market share at the top for the past 7 days, it is currently showing a completely different direction in the hot spots within the pump.fun ecosystem.
pump.fun: Is the PVE market returning?
On July 24, after completing a live interview with threadguy, pump.fun and its founder @a1lon9 entered into a nearly half-month silence. Half a month ago, everyone thought this was a 'public relations disaster' of a live interview because it profoundly affected the coin price, with $PUMP dropping nearly 15% during the live broadcast, a daily drop of nearly 20%, briefly falling below a market cap of $3 billion.
Since the end of this live broadcast, the gap in market share between pump.fun and Letsbonk.fun has not significantly narrowed. However, since July 30, pump.fun's reputation has seen a notable reversal.
The reason is simple—the community coins in the pump.fun ecosystem performed well during this period of market instability.
The image above was posted by pump.fun's official Twitter on July 23, where the meme coins in the pump.fun ecosystem were viewed by many as 'officially selected.' Among these coins, $TROLL performed the best, having increased 9 times since July 25, with a market cap exceeding $100 million. During the same time frame, $Tokabu increased about 5 times, with its market cap briefly exceeding $35 million. $USDUC doubled at its peak, with its market cap nearing $40 million. $CHILLHOUSE and $neet also achieved similar gains to $USDUC, with market caps briefly approaching $30 million and $18 million respectively.
Among them, the newer faces have all seen price increases since July 25, with only 'streamer coins' and larger market cap coins like $FWOG and $michi, which have existed for over 300 days, not keeping up with this wave of market.
So what benefits do 'new coins' have? It seems there are none, as the silence from pump.fun and alon only ended the day before yesterday. From a narrative perspective, these 'new coins' maintained a high level of content output and community activity even during the lowest ebb of pump.fun, at least during this period, they have met pump.fun's expectations for the long-term sustainable development of meme coins.
The 'counterattack' from pump.fun's official side was only revealed to us the day before yesterday—$PUMP buyback data dashboard.
In the past 6 days, we repurchased about $PUMP worth 8740 SOL, which is 102% of our revenue during this time.
This morning, pump.fun's official Twitter updated the cover image again, promoting the 'officially selected' meme coins once more:
Interestingly, after the live broadcast on July 24, the meme coins purchased by the founder of pump.fun were almost all in a state of loss. As of now, his holdings have all turned profitable, and the extent is not small:
For the meme coin market to recover, the first step is to 'put the clothes back on,' which means to regain players' confidence in meme coins, believing that meme coins are not just about 'conspiracy.' Good narratives, good content, good communities, and continuous operations will ultimately help a meme coin succeed. Although we still need to continue observing the performance of these coins on pump.fun, it can be said that if it can be maintained, this is a good start.
Next, pump.fun still has many cards in hand, such as airdrops and live broadcasts. This is a long road after the first step. In the case where major exchanges like Binance and OKX are almost no longer listing 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 coins that have recently hit a bottleneck
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 coins,' which actually did not cause much widespread discussion about 'new coins.'
In the past period, the 'hot market,' such as $Ani, has all occurred on Letsbonk.fun. The successful path of pump.fun in the past is now occupied by Letsbonk.fun.
In contrast, the 'big targets' on Letsbonk.fun have recently fallen into a pullback. $USELESS has pulled back from a peak market cap of $400 million to around $200 million, $memecoin has pulled back from nearing $60 million to around $11 million, $Bluechip has pulled back from a peak of $17 million to $1.5 million, and $Ani has pulled back from a peak of $86 million to about $30 million.
$$BONK and $$GP have dropped 36% and 63% from their peak respectively.
Although the performance of related assets has not been good, the buybacks and support for its ecosystem meme coins from Letsbonk.fun have not stopped. Rather than saying the war between Letsbonk.fun and pump.fun is still ongoing, it would be 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 platform, new tricks
Bags was originally a social trading application that launched a token launchpad feature on May 22. Moonit is the platform of Helio, which started in late April this year.
Recently, Bags has attracted attention for its 'donation narrative.' $CANCER has donated 100% of its trading fee income to one of the world's most well-known and influential breast cancer charities, Susan G. Komen, having already donated $35,000 to the organization and transferred about 2.2% of $CANCER to them.
Because the coins launched on Bags can directly attribute the creator's trading fee income to a specific Twitter account, another token that has attracted attention is $WINRAR, which directly assigned its token income to the official Twitter account of the widely used compression software WinRAR. This attracted a response from WinRAR's official Twitter.
However, these two coins ended as quickly as a gust of wind, and both are now basically in a state of decline. As for the leading platform Bags, it is hard to say that this platform currently has a leader in terms of attention and market cap...
Moonit's setup is much larger. They launched an AI protocol co-built by 9GAG, Memeland, Helio Pay, MoonPay, and Dexscreener, which can automatically tokenize internet culture and viral memes.
In simple terms, this protocol is about using AI to identify popular memes on 9GAG and then automatically launch tokens, equivalent to 'automatically launching selected hot markets on 9GAG.' This mainly connects the 9GAG aspect; if a platform can connect with social media like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, I believe similar things can be done.
If this model is to work, there are still many issues to overcome. The foremost is 'technology does not equal liquidity.' There are too many developers on the entire chain, and if a hot meme emerges, everyone will rush to launch it, so whether the coins released can gather consensus, players may still consider the platform's liquidity.
The second issue is the problem of sustainable development. If they can bring the 9GAG community onto the coin, that would be quite appealing. However, as everyone can see, the fourth step in the image above is the CTO... If your carefully selected 9GAG meme still needs a CTO, it may indicate that the community foundation is still weak, and this potential advantage has not been fully realized.
Moonit's new feature has not yet produced a leading player.
With more and more platforms, the problems to be solved do not seem to decrease.
Conclusion
The meme launchpad battle will continue in the foreseeable future. The huge success achieved by pump.fun in the past year has made everyone want to 'feast.' But everyone is facing a serious problem together—how to regain the market's interest and confidence in meme coins?
At a time when CEXs seem disinterested 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 would be more accurate to say it's a test that all meme coin launchpads are facing together. After all, the lessons from the inscriptions are right in front of us—the tools for inscriptions are becoming increasingly refined, but the craze for inscriptions has already passed.
I hope the ultimate beneficiary is the entire meme coin market and all the crypto players who still love meme coins.