In the past year, the meme coin issuance platforms in the Solana chain's Launchpad market have experienced explosive growth and rapidly formed a fierce competitive landscape. Pump.fun, as the earliest platform to rise, is seen as a catalyst for the prosperity of Solana's "on-chain casino." The platform allows any user to issue tokens without barriers, employing binding curve pricing, pioneering a fair issuance model without presales or team allocations.
Leveraging Solana's low-cost and high-speed trading advantages, Pump.fun ignited a meme coin frenzy in 2024. In just 13 months, platform users issued over 8 million tokens, with a peak output of over 36,000 tokens in a single day on October 24, 2024, averaging 25 new tokens per minute. This unprecedented scale of token creation allowed Pump.fun to dominate the market, making Solana known as the largest "casino" on-chain. However, Pump.fun's success also brought concerns. On one hand, a large number of low-quality projects emerged, with a graduation rate of less than 1%, and most tokens were short-lived. On the other hand, while the platform was highly profitable, users generally lost money; statistics show that nearly 90% of users lost their principal or earned less than $100 in meme coin trading, while the platform earned about $98 million within just six months.
By the end of 2024, Pump.fun's official revenue exceeded $223 million (about 1.15 million SOL), and it continued to cash in SOL. In just a year and a half, the platform's fee account sold about 3.403 million SOL (about $629 million), becoming the second-largest source of selling pressure after early Solana investors FTX/Alameda. Such a massive outflow of funds raised concerns within the community about the platform's sustainability and ecological impact. Faced with Pump.fun's monopoly, market participants quickly acted, and the entire Meme Launchpad track entered a heated competition. Within the Solana ecosystem, the established decentralized trading platform Raydium launched LaunchLab to compete with Pump.fun; the popular meme coin BONK opened the LetsBonk.fun launchpad; and the on-chain aggregator Jupiter also attempted to launch similar services.
Daily token deployment data, sourced from @adam_tehc's DUNE.
Challenges of Pump.fun.
Pump.fun, as a pioneer of one-click meme coin launch platforms, has established a basic operational model. Users only need to fill in basic information such as token name and symbol, and can automatically deploy token contracts and establish trading pools without programming skills, significantly lowering the barriers to issuing tokens. The platform employs various binding curve pricing models to balance initial prices with market demand, allowing issued tokens to be traded immediately in the platform's AMM pool without needing to inject liquidity in advance.
The platform innovatively introduced an LP share destruction mechanism, which automatically injects part of the liquidity into the Raydium trading pool and destroys the corresponding LP tokens when a new coin reaches a specific market cap threshold, ensuring that project parties cannot withdraw liquidity and run away, enhancing liquidity security.
With the experience of "no-code token issuance, instant trading," Pump.fun rapidly became popular in 2024, spawning a large number of creative meme tokens, including many that multiplied by hundreds or even thousands, attracting numerous speculators. The platform became one of the most profitable on-chain applications of 2024 through transaction fee extraction.
However, as it developed, Pump.fun's problems gradually became apparent: among over 8 million issued tokens, fewer than 1% successfully "graduated" into external liquidity pools; user profits are severely polarized, creating a zero-sum game; the platform monetizes transaction fees and continues to sell SOL, putting selling pressure on the Solana network; the completely anonymous and unverified model, while adhering to the spirit of crypto, brings regulatory and trust risks. Consequently, Pump.fun's growth rate slowed in early 2025, with daily trading volume dropping from a peak of $544 million in January to $270 million in February, a decline of nearly 50%.
Pumpfun's token graduation rate has shown a continuous downward trend on a weekly basis.
The wheel battle of LaunchPad - LaunchLab, Boop, Believe
LaunchLab's on-chain Degen approach.
Raydium LaunchLab is one of the most direct competitors to Pump.fun in the Solana ecosystem. Raydium itself is an important AMM protocol on Solana and benefited early on when Pump.fun contributed 41% of its Swap fee revenue. However, as Pump.fun launched PumpSwap independently, Raydium's traffic and trading volume were significantly impacted.
In March 2025, Raydium launched LaunchLab, seen as a direct counterattack on Pump.fun. The overall mechanism of the platform is highly similar to that of Pump.fun, both supporting one-click token issuance and curve pricing, but with targeted optimizations in details.
Supporting diverse pricing curves, allowing project parties to choose linear, logarithmic, or exponential models based on token positioning; setting lower transaction fee rates, only 1%, which is lower than Pump.fun's 2%, and without additional migration fees; the graduation threshold has also been lowered, requiring only 85 SOL (about $11,000) to be transferred to the Raydium AMM pool; meanwhile, a creator revenue-sharing mechanism has been introduced, allowing founding creators of graduated tokens to continue receiving 10% of transaction fee sharing; the platform has also strengthened ecological integration, including repurchasing platform token RAY with fees, supporting LP locking, and introducing pricing diversity and other innovative designs.
On the day of the announcement, RAY token rose by 14%, with the market holding high hopes for Raydium LaunchLab. Although the official stated that LaunchLab is "providing an alternative option," it has successfully attracted some projects to shift, weakening Pump.fun's dominance.
Additionally, platforms such as LetsBonk.fun launched in collaboration with the BONK community, as well as Meteora, Boop, Genesis Launches, and several others are also striving to break the situation, pushing the entire Launchpad market into a comprehensive competition phase.
LaunchLab's daily active user growth is rapid.
An alternative approach from Believe, the concept of productizing creative narratives.
As the Meme Launchpad track becomes increasingly crowded, the 'rebirth' of Believe has attracted widespread attention in the industry.
As the Meme Launchpad track becomes increasingly crowded, the 'rebirth' of Believe has attracted widespread attention in the industry. Believe, founded by Australian entrepreneur Ben Pasternak, originated from the social token platform Clout. Ben has developed several hit applications and successfully monetized them, but Clout quickly fell silent due to its over-reliance on celebrity effects. At the end of April 2025, Ben returned to the market with an upgraded platform, Believe, shifting the concept from "Believe in Someone" to "Believe in Something," emphasizing the value faith in creativity and ideas, marking a strategic shift from social asset trading to a creative incubation factory.
Ben himself commented on this transformation: "This is a shift from influence to trust. We no longer hype celebrities but seek meaningful projects."
Believe employs a unique product mechanism, using social platforms as entry points for token issuance, achieving a seamless connection between Web2 and Web3. Users only need to @LaunchACoin on the X platform and attach the token name, and the system automatically creates the token using Meteora's joint curve, without needing to log into a DApp or fill out forms. This "discussion equals token issuance" interaction mode allows any valuable idea to be immediately transformed into a Token, significantly lowering participation barriers. The platform also established a "B point" mechanism, whereby when token transaction fee income reaches a critical value, founders can extract funds to support projects; if the threshold is not met, it is seen as a market rejection. Although the B point is not a rigid numerical threshold, its underlying logic is similar to Kickstarter-like crowdfunding mechanisms, where "transaction heat equals market voting."
Imran Khan, founding partner of Alliance DAO, once commented: "Founders or Scouts tag @LaunchACoin, and a token is born. The market will assign value to the importance of the problem this idea aims to solve," in short, market heat determines the fate of the project.
In terms of revenue structure, Believe has also undergone a series of innovative designs. Each transaction incurs a 2% fee, and unlike other LaunchPads, its tokens still have a 2% transaction tax for both buying and selling post-launch within the contract, but its distribution structure is highly incentive-oriented: 1% goes to the token creator (founder), 0.1% rewards Scouts (the earliest users who discovered or promoted the token), and the remaining 0.9% goes to platform operations. This mechanism not only provides immediate revenue assurance to creators but also incorporates "token discoverers" into the revenue-sharing system for the first time, greatly motivating the community to actively discover and disseminate quality ideas.
Since its launch, Believe has recorded a total transaction volume of $1.8 billion, bringing $9.5 million in direct income to creators, of which $4.7 million belongs to the trading of Believe tokens.
According to BelieveScan panel data, Believe's fee revenue in the past 24 hours was approximately $10 million.
While opening token issuance, Believe also attempts to govern the platform order to avoid becoming a wasteland of junk coins.
In terms of creator incentives, Believe's mechanism is to choose to share with issuers, returning 1% of each transaction directly to creators; there are no reserved holdings or token ratio controls, allowing founders to freely define distributions; a Scout incentive mechanism is established to promote decentralized content discovery; the platform actively displays data such as transaction volume and creator income, enhancing transparency. The addition of some Web2 entrepreneurs has also enhanced Believe's Meta quality, with RizzGPT developer Alex Leiman, well-known hacker Ruben Norte, and others having issued personal tokens on the platform, with project valuations reaching millions of dollars, pushing Believe's image from a purely Meme playground toward a "creative value testing ground."
This narrative logic is particularly evident in the LaunchCoin event. The token originated from Ben's personal issuance of PASTERNAK, which was renamed LaunchCoin at the time of the platform's launch and given functional significance. LaunchCoin skyrocketed 200 times on the day of its launch, with a market cap exceeding $200 million, sparking intense community discussion.
Some users see this as a sign of the platform formally entering the governance token stage; others question whether Ben is using his founder status for arbitrage. Ultimately, Ben sold off a large portion of his holdings in batches, making a profit of about $1.3 million. The fate of LaunchCoin sparked intense discussions in the community around the core theme of "trust." Whether supporters or skeptics, this storm successfully pulled Believe's brand positioning back to the discussion center and validated the attention on its primary value direction.
The trust narrative emphasizes the value behind creativity, no longer simply encouraging foolhardy operations, attracting more rational Builders and entrepreneurs. The interest bundling mechanism ensures that creators, Scouts, and platforms all have profit mechanisms, binding participants economically and continuously incentivizing quality content. Under this mechanism, although many Web2 talents have emerged with product-launching tokens.
However, the real feedback from community participation is that after tokens go live, robots acquire the majority of the chips, and due to the high tax present at the beginning, there are fewer sell orders. High-quality projects can quickly reach a market cap of over $5-10 million, followed by a reduction in transaction taxes, leading to a large sell-off by robots holding substantial chips. Thus, many tokens rise to several hundred thousand or even millions in market cap, but their sustainability is not very good. Some community members believe this is beneficial for entrepreneurs, Scouts, and platforms, but these costs are borne by retail investors.
Ben hopes to seek a dynamic balance between "empowering real value projects" and "curbing blind speculative bubbles" through Believe. Although there is still controversy over whether it can truly sustain in the long run, at this stage, Believe has successfully established a differentiated label in the Meme Launchpad battle through innovative mechanisms, topical events, and hit data.
Key differences between leading platforms.
After the dominant performance of Pump.fun and the subsequent follow-up from various platforms, the current Meme Launchpad market has formed several leading factions. Below is a horizontal comparison of Pump.fun, Raydium LaunchLab, Boop, and Believe across key dimensions.
Issuance methods and thresholds
Pump.fun, LaunchLab, and SunPump all use DApp-style one-click token issuance, requiring users to log in and fill in relevant token information to complete the deployment process. Believe, on the other hand, completely breaks out of the DApp paradigm, triggering token issuance via Twitter social links without needing to enter the platform page.
In terms of thresholds, Boop, Pump.fun, and LaunchLab have virtually no requirements for issuers; any user can issue tokens at any time. Believe appears to have no threshold but actually creates a form of "natural selection" through social network relationships, where groups that follow entrepreneurs like Ben and Alex become the first creators and participants.
In terms of "graduation thresholds," Pump.fun initially set it at a market cap of $69,000; LaunchLab set an initial threshold of 85 SOL (about $11,000), but it can set a minimum launch mode of 30 SOL, making the barrier even lower; while Believe has no fixed threshold, judging whether the idea is accepted by the market based on "B point" transaction fee income.
Fee structure and distribution mechanism.
Pump.fun charges a 2% transaction fee, initially all going to the platform, but from May 2025, it began returning 50% to creators; LaunchLab's transaction fee rate is 1%, of which 25% is used to repurchase the platform token RAY, and founders can additionally apply for up to 10%; Believe charges a 2% transaction fee embedded in the token contract, with 1% going to creators, 0.1% to Scouts, and 0.9% reserved for the platform. From the data, Believe provides the highest revenue-sharing ratio to creators among all platforms, and it also pioneered Scout profit-sharing incentives, allowing discoverers to continue benefiting.
Community participation and governance.
Pump.fun adheres to extreme libertarianism, with no review or governance mechanisms, relying on spontaneous community organization for hot topic promotion, but is thus also easily manipulated by market makers, leading to retail investors "losing more and winning less."
Raydium LaunchLab, leveraging its AMM background, binds DeFi community resources and promotes internal circulation through platform token incentives; Boop relies on Dingaling’s previous influence in the community.
Believe attempts to incorporate elements of community consensus decision-making in governance. Through token-holding governance, Snapshot voting, and other methods, discussions on whether tokens should subsequently enter DEX liquidity pools or whether to support promotion are held, forming a preliminary framework from "token issuance equals governance." If it matures in the future, its user community's stickiness is expected to far exceed that of current mainstream platforms.
Creator economy model.
In terms of creator incentives, Believe and LaunchLab are the most attractive. Believe constructs a flywheel effect from token issuance → new user acquisition → re-issuance of tokens on the basis of returning 1% of transaction fees.
LaunchLab retains creators through low thresholds, high freedom, and RAY repurchases, while Pump.fun has lost some appeal in the new environment due to a lack of early incentive mechanisms.
Market outlook for LaunchPad
As the Meme Launchpad market moves from its explosive phase to a mature phase, some key trends are emerging, offering reference directions for platform competition and industry evolution.
As the data frenzy retreats, refined competition begins.
On-chain data shows that the frenzy of meme coin issuance is retreating. Taking Pump.fun as an example, its daily trading volume and daily number of issued tokens have significantly decreased since early 2025, making the myth of "getting rich overnight" difficult to replicate on a large scale.
This indicates that the phase of barbaric growth is about to end, and competition among platforms will shift towards refined operations. Those who can continuously create hit products, improve creator yield, and enhance user trading experience will take the initiative before the next wave. The data showing Pump.fun users voting with their feet (transaction volume halved) also indicates: if the platform cannot enhance the profit-loss structure and emotional experience of participants, even first-mover advantages will gradually be eroded.
Business models are shifting from "harvesting" to "co-win."
Pump.fun's early profit model was simple and brutal: the platform collected fees, and users had a very low chance of winning, forming a "platform wins, users lose" one-sided structure. In contrast, new platforms represented by Believe and LaunchLab generally adopt a model of sharing profits with creators and the community for growth.
For example, Believe returns 1% of the fees directly to founders, encouraging creators to continuously produce content; LaunchLab builds a more endogenous growth ecological loop through fee sharing and RAY repurchase. Future Launchpads will emphasize a three-way win among platforms, creators, and users, forming a true "content incentive network."
Pump.fun recently launched a creator revenue-sharing mechanism, which can also be seen as a driving force for this new model against old players.
A multi-chain landscape has become the norm, with each ecosystem digging into its own Meme soil.
As competition intensifies among Solana-based platforms (Pump.fun, LaunchLab, BONK), other public chains are also accelerating the deployment of their own Meme Launchpads: Tron’s SunPump, Solana’s Boop, Base’s Genesis Launches, and even projects from the ICP and Avalanche ecosystems are starting to test the waters.
Essentially, Meme issuance platforms have become a tool for public chains to compete for active users. Meme coins, due to their low entry barriers and strong topical attributes, are naturally suited for building on-chain traffic.
In the future, major public chains may spawn one or two leading Meme Launchpads, integrating deeply with wallets, social tools, and NFT tools, becoming important indicators of ecological activity and user loyalty.
Community culture and narrative construction will become the moat for platforms.
The core of Meme is not in technology, but in narrative. The platform itself is no exception:
Pump.fun started with "extreme freedom, absolute openness" but also fell into problems of market manipulation and poor-quality projects;
Raydium emphasizes "fair launches and technical optimization," shaping an "Avenger" image to attract native users back;
Boop integrates the personal brand "Dingaling" and the $Boop ecosystem, focusing on the value recovery of core tokens.
Believe takes the route of "trust and value," attempting to attract the Builder community, treating creativity as the source of Meme.
In the future, community culture will directly determine what type of user groups the platform attracts: whether they lean towards Degen (pure speculation), KOL (lead order type), Builder (value-oriented), or general users (primarily for entertainment). The platform's differentiated positioning will no longer be limited to product mechanisms but will extend to emotional consensus and cultural atmosphere.
In terms of daily token deployment ratios, Pumpfun's market share has changed from significant monopoly to 57%.
From Meme to ICM, new entrepreneurial incubation paths are emerging.
Although currently 99% of Meme coins are still short-term speculative products, some projects have begun to attempt "moving from Meme to product." Some founders are establishing initial capital pools through transaction fees, starting to build teams and develop prototypes; some platforms, like Believe, encourage founders to fulfill their Roadmaps through a mechanism of "releasing startup funds after reaching point B".
The community has begun to conduct long-term observations and governance on some tokens, with LaunchCoin having experimental value in governance, profit distribution, and functional expansion. If a small portion of Meme projects can successfully incubate into actual products through Launchpad in the future, their symbolic nature will have a profound impact on the entire industry: it proves that Launchpad can not only incubate speculative coins but also nurture Web3 project objectives. At that time, Launchpad will no longer be a "tool for issuance" but rather a "foundation for project cold starts."
Summary
Meme Launchpads are at a critical point, transitioning from explosive growth to refined operations. The monopoly of Pump.fun has been broken, with platforms like Raydium LaunchLab and Believe entering the market with differentiated strategies, gradually capturing shares from users and creators.
The future winners in the industry may not necessarily be the ones with the lowest fees, but rather those who can build a content flywheel, community consensus, and platform trust mechanisms. Believe is currently establishing its own differentiated moat through social distribution models, Scout incentive mechanisms, and governance exploration, demonstrating strong iterative and growth potential. Of course, this is still a marathon-like competition. The platforms that can truly stand out must achieve balance across multiple dimensions of "cultural identity, creator co-win, ecological governance, and safety compliance."
As Ben Pasternak said, "We are not just building a platform; we hope to give every good idea a monetization possibility." This might be the most trustworthy direction for the next phase of Meme Launchpads.
