The "meme launchpad war" between pump.fun and Letsbonk.fun has been ongoing for a month since early July. During this time, we have witnessed pump.fun completing one of the largest ICOs in crypto history and Letsbonk.fun successfully attacking pump.fun's market share. Some "new players" have also joined the battle, which, while not causing significant waves in the short term, are worth understanding and paying attention to.
Let's start with this Jupiter data chart.
Although Letsbonk.fun still leads in market share over the past 7 days, its ecosystem's hot topics are currently moving in a completely different direction from pump.fun.
pump.fun: PVE Market Returning?
On July 24th, after completing a live interview with threadguy, pump.fun and its founder @a1lon9 entered a nearly half-month-long silence. Half a month ago, this live interview was considered a "public relations disaster" as it significantly impacted the token price, with $PUMP dropping nearly 15% during the livestream and falling close to 20% in a single day, briefly dropping below a $3 billion market cap.
(Related reading: A livestream that completely broke pump.fun)
From the end of this livestream until now, pump.fun's market share gap with Letsbonk.fun hasn't significantly narrowed. However, pump.fun's reputation has seen a notable reversal since July 30th.
The reason is simple - the ecosystem's community tokens performed well during this unstable market period.
The meme coins from the pump.fun ecosystem in this Official Twitter image from July 23rd were viewed by many as "officially selected". Among these, $TROLL performed most impressively, rising up to 9 times since July 25th and breaking through a $100 million market cap. In the same period, $Tokabu rose about 5 times, briefly exceeding a $35 million market cap. $USDUC rose 2 times, approaching a $40 million market cap. $CHILLHOUSE and $neet also gained similar returns, briefly reaching market caps of around $30 million and $18 million respectively.
The newer faces here have been rising since July 25th, with only "streamer coins" and older coins like $FWOG and $michi (existing for over 300 days) failing to catch this wave.
Do these "new coins" have any positive news? It seems not, as pump.fun and alon remained silent until just the day before yesterday. From a narrative perspective, these "new coins" maintained high content output and community activity even during pump.fun's lowest point, which at least aligns with pump.fun's expectations for meme coins' long-term sustainability.
The official "counterattack" from pump.fun was only revealed two days ago - a $PUMP buyback data dashboard.
And early this morning, pump.fun's Official Twitter updated its cover image, once again promoting the "officially selected" meme coins:
Interestingly, the meme coins purchased by pump.fun's founder after the July 24th livestream were almost all at a loss. Now, all his holdings have turned profitable, and significantly so:
For the meme coin market to recover, the first step is to "put the clothes back on" - rebuilding players' confidence in meme coins, believing they're not just about "conspiracies". Good narratives, good content, good communities, and continuous operations can ultimately help a meme coin succeed. While we need to continue observing the performance of these coins on pump.fun, this can be considered a good start if maintained.
Moving forward, pump.fun still has many cards to play, such as airdrops and livestreams. This is just the first step on a long journey. With major exchanges like Binance and OKX almost no longer listing new Solana meme coins, pump.fun must explore more possibilities.
The revolution is not yet successful, comrades must continue to strive.
Letsbonk.fun: A New Coin Haven Temporarily Stuck
Over the past 7 days, Letsbonk.fun's market share still exceeded 50%, maintaining its top position. pump.fun's renewed volume, mainly due to the excellent performance of "relatively new coins", hasn't actually generated widespread discussion about "new coins".
The recent "hot plates", such as $Ani, all occurred on Letsbonk.fun. The path to success that pump.fun once walked is now occupied by Letsbonk.fun.
In contrast, the "major targets" on Letsbonk.fun have recently experienced pullbacks. $USELESS dropped from a peak of $400 million to around $200 million, $memecoin retreated from near $60 million to around $11 million, $Bluechip fell from $17 million to $1.5 million, and $Ani declined from $86 million to about $30 million.
$$BONK and $$GP have also dropped 36% and 63% from their peaks respectively.
Despite poor asset performance, Letsbonk.fun's buybacks and support for its ecosystem meme coins haven't stopped. Rather than saying the war between Letsbonk.fun and pump.fun continues, it's more accurate to say both are making their own efforts. Only when overall confidence in the meme coin market is restored will both have a better future.
Peace and love, looking forward to Letsbonk.fun's subsequent performance.
Bags and Moonit: Old Platforms, New Tactics
Bags was originally a social trading app that launched its token launchpad on May 22nd. Moonit is Helio's platform, launched in late April.
Bags recently gained attention for its "donation narrative". $CANCER donated 100% of its transaction fee income to Susan G. Komen, one of the world's most renowned breast cancer charitable organizations, already donating $35,000 and transferring about 2.2% of $CANCER to the organization.
Because Bags allows coins to directly assign creators' transaction fee income to a specific Twitter account, another notable token $WINRAR directly assigned its token income to the Official Twitter of WinRAR, the compression software almost everyone has used, which attracted a response from WinRAR's Official Twitter.
However, both coins were short-lived and are now mostly depleted. As for Bags' platform leader, it's hard to say this platform currently has a clear leader in terms of attention or market cap.
Moonit's approach is much more substantial. They launched an AI protocol co-created by 9GAG, Memeland, Helio Pay, MoonPay, and Dexscreener that can automatically tokenize internet culture and viral memes.
Simply put, this protocol uses AI to identify popular memes on 9GAG and automatically issue tokens, which is equivalent to "automatically launching a carefully selected hot disk from 9GAG". This mainly connects the 9GAG link, and if there's a platform that can connect social media like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, I think it could do something similar.
If this model is to work, there are many problems to overcome. The first is that "technology does not equal liquidity". There are too many devs on the chain, and if there's a hit meme, everyone will rush to launch it. So whether the issued tokens can coalesce into consensus is something players will consider in terms of the platform's liquidity.
The second is the issue of sustainable development. If the 9GAG community can be brought to the token, it would be more attractive. But everyone can see that the 4th step in the diagram is CTO... If the carefully selected 9GAG meme still needs a CTO, it might to some extent indicate that the community foundation is weak, and this potential advantage is completely not realized.
Moonit's new feature currently has not yet emerged as a leader.
As platforms become more numerous, the problems to be solved do not seem to have decreased.
Conclusion
The meme launchpad war will continue in the foreseeable future. The huge success of pump.fun over the past year has made everyone want to "get a piece of the meat". But everyone also faces a serious problem - how to restore the market's interest and confidence in meme coins?
When CEXs seem less enthusiastic about listing new meme coins, can on-chain infrastructure and liquidity make meme coins great again?
Rather than calling it a "war", it's more like a test faced by all meme coin launchpads. After all, the precedent of inscriptions is right before our eyes - the tools for inscriptions are becoming more perfect, but the inscription boom has gone forever.
Hope the ultimate beneficiary is the entire meme coin market and all crypto players who still love meme coins.
Click to learn about BlockBeats job openings
Welcome to join the BlockBeats official community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Communication Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
