PUMP rises against the trend, what has happened on the meme launchpad in the past two weeks

Author: Cookie, BlockBeats

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 establishing pressure. In this period, some "new players" have also joined the fray. Although they haven't made significant waves in the short term, they are worth our understanding and attention.

Let's start with this data chart from Jupiter.

Although Letsbonk.fun has still occupied the top spot in market share over the past 7 days, its current hotspots within the pump.fun ecosystem show a completely different direction.

pump.fun: Is PVE Market Making a Comeback?

On July 24, after a live interview with threadguy, pump.fun and its founder @a1lon9 entered a silence that lasted nearly half a month. A month ago, many considered this live interview to be a "public relations disaster," as it profoundly affected the coin price, with $PUMP dropping nearly 15% during the live stream and a daily decline close to 20%, briefly falling below a $3 billion market cap.

Since the end of this live stream, 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 seen a notable reversal.

The reason is simple—pump.fun's community coins have performed well during this period of market instability.

The image above, posted by pump.fun's official Twitter on July 23, features 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 its market cap briefly surpassing $35 million. $USDUC increased by up to 2 times, with its market cap nearing $40 million at one point. $CHILLHOUSE and $neet also saw similar gains to $USDUC, with market caps approaching $30 million and $18 million, respectively.

The newer faces here have all seen upward trends since July 25, with only the "streamer coin" and older coins like $FWOG and $michi, which have been around for over 300 days, not keeping up with this wave.

So what good news do the "new coins" have? It seems there isn't any, as the silence from pump.fun and alon only ended the day before yesterday. From a narrative perspective, these "new coins" maintained high content output and community activity during pump.fun's lowest point, aligning well with 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 have repurchased approximately $PUMP worth 8740 SOL, which is 102% of our income during this period.”

This morning, pump.fun's official Twitter updated its cover image, once again promoting the "officially selected" meme coins:

Interestingly, after the live stream on July 24, the meme coins purchased by pump.fun's founder were almost all in a state of loss. Now, his holdings have all turned profitable, and by a significant margin:

For the meme coin market to recover, the first step is to "put the clothes back on," meaning restoring players' confidence in meme coins, believing that meme coins are not just about "conspiracies." Good narratives, good content, good communities, and sustained operations can ultimately allow a meme coin to shine. While we still need to observe the performance of these coins on pump.fun, it can be said that if this momentum can be maintained, it is a good start.

Next, pump.fun still has many cards to play, such as airdrops and live streams. This is just the beginning of a long journey. With major exchanges like Binance and OKX seemingly uninterested in 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 in Short-Term Bottleneck

In the past 7 days, Letsbonk.fun's market share has still exceeded 50%, maintaining its top position. The recent warming of pump.fun's voice is mainly due to the excellent performance of "new coins," which haven't sparked much widespread discussion.

Recent "hot coins," such as $Ani, have all occurred on Letsbonk.fun. The successful path that pump.fun once took is now occupied by Letsbonk.fun.

In contrast, the "big targets" on Letsbonk.fun have recently entered a correction. $USELESS has dropped from a peak market cap of $400 million to around $200 million, $memecoin has fallen from nearly $60 million to about $11 million, $Bluechip has decreased from a peak of $17 million to $1.5 million, and $Ani has dropped from a peak of $86 million to about $30 million.

$$BONK and $$GP have also fallen 36% and 63% from their peaks, respectively.

Although the related assets have performed poorly, Letsbonk.fun's buybacks and support for its ecosystem meme coins have not ceased. Rather than saying the war between Letsbonk.fun and pump.fun is still ongoing, it is more accurate to say that both are working hard in their respective arenas. Only when the overall confidence in the meme coin market is restored will 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 a token launchpad feature on May 22. Moonit is a platform from Helio that started at the end of April this year.

Bags has recently attracted attention for its "donation narrative." $CANCER donates 100% of its trading fee revenue to one of the world's most well-known and influential breast cancer charities, Susan G. Komen. It has already donated $35,000 to the organization and transferred about 2.2% of $CANCER to them.

Since the coins launched on Bags can directly designate the creator's trading fee income to a specific Twitter account, another notable token, $WINRAR, has directed its token revenue to the official Twitter of the widely used compression application WinRAR. This attracted a reply from WinRAR's official Twitter.

However, both of these coins ended as quickly as a gust of wind and are currently in a state of decline. As for the leading coin on the Bags platform, it is difficult to say that there is currently a leader in terms of attention and market cap.

Moonit has a much larger setup. They launched an AI protocol co-developed by 9GAG, Memeland, Helio Pay, MoonPay, and Dexscreener that can automatically tokenize internet culture and viral meme coins.

In simple terms, this protocol uses AI to identify popular memes on 9GAG and automatically issue tokens, essentially "automatically launching selected hot coins from 9GAG." This primarily connects with 9GAG; if a platform could connect with TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media, I believe it could also create something similar.

If this model is to work, there are still many issues to overcome. The foremost is that "technology does not equal liquidity." There are too many developers on the entire chain, and if a viral meme emerges, everyone will rush to issue tokens, so whether the issued coins can gather consensus may still depend on the platform's liquidity.

The second issue is the problem of sustainable development. If the community from 9GAG can be brought onto the coins, that would be quite attractive. However, as seen in the fourth step in the image above, there is a CTO… If the selected 9GAG memes still require a CTO, it may indicate that the community foundation is still weak, and this potential advantage has not been fully realized.

Currently, Moonit's new feature has not yet produced a leading coin.

With more and more platforms, the problems to be solved do not seem to have diminished.

Conclusion

The meme launchpad battle will continue in the foreseeable future. The tremendous success that pump.fun achieved over the past year has made everyone eager to "get a piece of the pie." However, everyone is facing a serious question—how to restore 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 accurate to say that all meme coin launchpads are facing a common test. After all, the lessons from inscriptions are right before our eyes—the tools for inscriptions are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but the craze for inscriptions has already vanished.

I hope that in the end, the entire meme coin market and all the crypto players who still love meme coins will benefit.

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