After concepts like MCP, the Internet Capital Market (ICM) concept in the Web2 domain has also been introduced to Web3. ICM is a decentralized financing method where funds flow directly to developers without venture capital or intermediaries. Developers publish ideas, users participate with tokens, and if the project is popular, the tokens appreciate; if not recognized, they naturally fade away. ICM breaks the boundaries of crowdfunding, financing, and speculation, allowing capital to flow more directly and freely.
In the ICM narrative, the project that has taken the lead is Believe. As a representative project under the ICM concept, its platform token $LAUNCHCOIN saw an intraday increase of over 500%, with a market cap that once exceeded $300 million. On the Believe platform, users can post and issue tokens simultaneously, investing in the creative ideas of creators. Both token creators and early participating users can receive more incentives, and Believe has also received support from the Solana Foundation. However, after experiencing a short-term explosive popularity, the entire ecosystem has cooled down, leading to community doubts and controversies. Below, we will explore this further.
Believe's Daily Trading Fees Rank First Among New Issuing Platforms on Solana
On May 23, Believe optimized its original token issuance model, and the method of posting and issuing tokens by account @launchcoin will be suspended. Currently, the platform will adopt an open listing mechanism, allowing developers to submit and publish projects instantly through the official website without official review. Meanwhile, to prevent "draining" and projects lacking actual products, the platform will block such developers from obtaining platform fees and will initially screen based on community feedback, with plans to introduce a mandatory mechanism for products in the future. Additionally, the official will implement a Verified label certification for certain projects, indicating that the project party has communicated with the platform and demonstrated integrity, but this does not constitute an endorsement or guarantee.
Believe is also one of the newly emerging issuing platforms on Solana, but according to Dune data, [the issuance of tokens on the Solana chain is still concentrated on Pump.fun](http://the issuance of tokens on the Solana chain is still concentrated on Pump.fun), with MemeCoin issued by Pump.fun accounting for over 90% of the entire Solana public chain.
However, some other faces have emerged among the new issuing platforms on the Solana chain. Among these new issuing platforms, based on market capitalization, the largest share is held by Raydium's new issuing platform LaunchLabs at 38.1%, followed by Let's bonk at 36%, and then Believe at 25.8% [and Boop.fun at 1%](http://and Boop.fun).
Image 1 Source: analytics.topledge
At the same time, in terms of cumulative trading fees on the new issuing platforms, Believe ranks first, with daily cumulative trading fees nearing $15 million. This is closely related to the trading fee mechanism set by Believe and is one of Believe's pain points, which we will analyze in detail below.
Image 2 Source: analytics.topledge
Three Major Pain Points of Believe Trigger a Trust Crisis, Lack of Beneficial Effects Makes It Difficult to Drive Growth
On the Believe platform, creators must issue tokens through a bonding curve mechanism. This means that creators need to create a token and initiate trading through a bonding curve. When the token's market value reaches a certain standard, it will "graduate" into a deeper liquidity pool. Under these mechanisms, some pain points of the Believe platform are also implied.
- High Trading Fees
Believe platform imposes a mandatory 2% fee on all transactions, with 1% allocated to creators, 0.1% as a reward for Scouts (early token promoters), and 0.9% retained by the platform. This rate is significantly higher than mainstream launch platforms (approximately 1%-1.5%), and users must pay fees in both buying and selling directions, leading to an actual burden of up to 4%. More importantly, this model can easily erode user profits in the case of significant price fluctuations, suppressing the activity of short-term trading. Many community users question whether the platform uses transaction fees as its primary source of profit rather than genuinely promoting a win-win situation for creators and the community.
- Unclear Income for Token Creators
Although the platform claims that creators can receive a 1% share of transactions, several users have reported that after reaching transaction volumes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, their actual earnings were surprisingly low. Some creators even revealed that they earned only $50 from a transaction volume of $450,000, far below reasonable expectations. Meanwhile, the platform lacks publicly transparent settlement documents or on-chain verifiable contracts, further undermining user trust.
- Lack of Beneficial Effects
Many of Believe's token creators come from Web2 and are not familiar with the concepts of Web3. As a result, projects generally exhibit a serious deviation between tokens and products, with some projects having no products at all. Additionally, Believe has been accused of insider trading, with many new token launches being targeted by snipers, where buying and issuing tokens occur in the same second and block, providing no beneficial effects for participating retail investors.
The Current Situation of the Believe Ecosystem is Not Optimistic, with Only Five Projects Exceeding $10 Million in Market Cap
After the short-term ICM narrative concept, the overall ecosystem of Believe has gradually cooled down. According to believescreener data, the current total market cap of the platform is approximately $433 million, with the platform token $LAUNCHCOIN having a market cap of about $242 million, accounting for 56.2% of the total market cap. Furthermore, there are only five projects in the entire ecosystem with a market cap exceeding $10 million.
Image 3 Source: believescreener
These conditions indicate that Believe still faces challenges in landing quality ideas and building a sustainable economic model. The current ecosystem reflects a fragile structure dominated by speculative participation; if it cannot find a more stable balance between product logic, community incentives, and traffic mechanisms, Believe may struggle to support the project's long-term vision.
Conclusion
Believe focuses on the ICM narrative and has become a frontrunner in this field. Currently, it appears that Believe has not stabilized its market share, and the official responses to existing project issues have not fundamentally resolved the problems. The optimization of the token issuance mechanism also needs to be tested by the market. However, the reflections derived from the Believe phenomenon are worth our attention.
Looking at the introduction of concepts from Web2 to Web3, there is still funding and traffic chasing in the early stages of concept introduction, but in the medium to long term, most are just a wave of heat. Whether it is the introduction of AI Agent to MCP or Launchpad to ICM, there are situations where projects cannot maintain long-term operations. Perhaps, a deeper consideration is that the concepts in the Web2 domain are already very mature; is the introduction of Web3 concepts merely a speculative demand? Or is it only after Web3 has widespread practical applications that introducing some mechanisms from Web2 becomes more meaningful? At the current stage, investors should take a more objective view of these grafted concepts.
Despite the many issues with Believe, it also indirectly reflects the market's genuine demand for innovative mechanisms in Launchpad. [From Believe to the previous boop.fun](http://From Believe to the previous boop.fun), these cases indicate that if Launchpad platforms want to continue to develop, they must return to the core demands of fairness, transparency, and the interests of community users. Taking Virtuals Protocol as an example, it is precisely through continuous optimization of the user system that it can stand out and move forward steadily amidst one narrative wave after another.
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