Author: 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 observed Letsbonk.fun launch an offensive against Pump.fun's market share, successfully forming a suppression. During this period, some 'new players' have also joined the battle; although they haven't caused much of a stir in the short term, they deserve our understanding and attention.
Let's start with this data chart from Jupiter.
Although Letsbonk.fun has still occupied the top market share in the past 7 days, its current hotspots in the Pump.fun ecosystem have shown a completely different direction.
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 period of silence lasting nearly half a month. Half a month ago, everyone thought this was a 'public relations disaster' of a live interview, as this live broadcast deeply affected the coin price, with $PUMP dropping nearly 15% during the broadcast, and a single-day drop of nearly 20%, at one point falling below a market value 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, from July 30 to now, the reputation of Pump.fun has seen a notable turnaround.
The reason is simple — the community coins in the Pump.fun ecosystem have performed well during this unstable market period.
The above image was shared by Pump.fun's official Twitter on July 23, featuring Meme coins from the Pump.fun ecosystem that many consider to be 'officially selected'. Among these coins, $TROLL has performed the best, rising up to 9 times since July 25, with a market cap exceeding $100 million. During the same period, $Tokabu rose about 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 market caps nearing $30 million and $18 million, respectively.
The newer faces in this chart have shown an upward trend since July 25, with only the 'broadcaster coin' and established coins like $FWOG and $michi, which have large market caps and have been around for over 300 days, not keeping up with this trend.
So what good news is there for 'new coins'? It seems there isn't any, as Pump.fun and alon’s silence didn't end until the day before yesterday. From a narrative perspective, these 'new coins' maintained high content output and community activity during the lowest point of Pump.fun, which aligns with Pump.fun's expectations for the long-term sustainable development of Meme coins.
The 'counterattack' from Pump.fun was only revealed to us the day before yesterday — the $PUMP buyback data dashboard.
‘In the past 6 days, we have repurchased approximately $PUMP worth 8740 SOL, which is 102% of our income during this period.’
Early this morning, Pump.fun's official Twitter updated its cover image, once again promoting the 'officially selected' Meme coins.
Interestingly, after the live broadcast on July 24, the Meme coins purchased by Pump.fun's founder were almost all in a state of loss. Now, all his holdings have turned profitable, and the increase is not small:
For the Meme coin market to revive, the first step is to 'put the clothes back on', which means restoring players' confidence in Meme coins, believing that Meme coins are not just 'conspiracies'. Good narratives, good content, good communities, and continuous operations can ultimately make a Meme coin stand out. While we still need to observe the performance of these coins on Pump.fun, we can say that if they can maintain this, it 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 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 coin house currently in a short-term bottleneck
In the past 7 days, Letsbonk.fun's market share still exceeds 50%, maintaining its top position. The rebound in Pump.fun's activity is mainly due to the excellent performance of 'newly listed coins', which actually haven't sparked widespread discussion about 'new coins'.
Recently, the 'hot topic coins' such as $Ani have all occurred on Letsbonk.fun. Pump.fun's successful path has now been taken over by Letsbonk.fun.
In contrast, the 'big targets' on Letsbonk.fun have recently faced a correction. $USELESS has fallen from a peak market cap of $400 million to around $200 million, while $Memecoin dropped from nearly $60 million to around $11 million, $Bluechip fell from a peak of $17 million to $1.5 million, and $Ani declined from a peak of $86 million to approximately $30 million.
$$BONK and $$GP have also fallen by 36% and 63% from their peak, respectively.
Although related assets have underperformed, Letsbonk.fun's buybacks and support for its ecosystem Meme coins have not stopped. Rather than saying the war between Letsbonk.fun and Pump.fun continues, it is more accurate to say that both are working hard in their respective fields. Only when the overall confidence in the Meme coin market is restored can both have a better future.
Peace and love; looking forward to Letsbonk.fun's future performance.
Bags and Moonit: Old platforms, new tricks
Bags was originally a social trading application that launched its token launchpad feature on May 22. Moonit is the platform of Helio, launched at the end of April this year.
Bags has recently gained attention for its 'donation narrative'. $CANCER donates 100% of its trading fee income to one of the world's most renowned and influential breast cancer charities, Susan G. Komen, having donated $35,000 to the organization and also transferred about 2.2% of $CANCER to it.
Because the coins launched on Bags can directly allocate the creator's trading fee income to a specific Twitter account, another token that drew attention, $WINRAR, has directly designated its token income to the official Twitter of the widely used compression application WinRAR. This attracted a reply from the official WinRAR Twitter.
However, these two coins ended as quickly as a gust of wind, and both are currently basically in a state of complete decline. As for the leading platform Bags, it's hard to say that it currently has a leading position in terms of attention and market value...
Moonit's setup is much larger. They have launched an AI protocol co-developed by 9GAG, Memeland, Helio Pay, MoonPay, and Dexscreener that can automatically tokenize internet culture and viral memes.
In simple terms, this protocol uses AI to identify popular Memes on 9GAG and then automatically issue coins, equivalent to 'automatically launching carefully selected hot topics from 9GAG'. This mainly connects the 9GAG aspect; if there are platforms that can connect TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media, I believe they could also create such things.
If this model is to be successful, there are still many issues to overcome. The foremost is 'technology does not equal liquidity'; there are too many developers on the entire chain. If a blockbuster Meme emerges, everyone will rush to launch it, so whether the coins released can gather consensus, players may still consider the liquidity of the platform.
The second issue is continuous development. If 9GAG's community can be brought to coins, it would be quite appealing. However, as we can see in the fourth step of the above image, the CTO... If your selected 9GAG Memes still require a CTO, that may indicate that the community foundation is weak, and this potential advantage hasn't been fully realized.
Moonit's new feature still hasn't outperformed the leaders.
There are more and more platforms, but the problems to solve seem to have not decreased.
Conclusion
The Meme launchpad battle will continue in the foreseeable future. The huge success that Pump.fun achieved over the past year has made everyone eager to 'join the feast'. However, everyone also faces a severe question — how to restore the market's interest and confidence in Meme coins?
As CEXs seem lackluster about launching new Meme coins, will there be better infrastructure and liquidity on-chain to make Meme coins great again?
Rather than calling it a 'war', it is more accurate to say it is a test faced by all Meme coin launchpads. After all, the lessons from inscriptions are clear — the tools for inscriptions are becoming more sophisticated, but the craze for inscriptions has long gone.
I hope the ultimate beneficiaries will be the entire Meme coin market and all the players in the crypto space who still love Meme coins.