Author: Crypto Weituo

Open Source Scythe 29 - A Month After the ICO: A Look Back at Pump and Bonk, Why Did This Happen?

A month ago, Pump had its ICO, and the entire network was filled with FUD, while I was bullish (original post). As a result, the comments section was filled with insults calling me an "advertising dog" and "taking money."

Now, Pump's market share has returned to 80%, while Bonk has dropped to 3%, surpassed by Bags, making the debate meaningless.

Let’s step out of our positions and revisit some of my viewpoints from that time based on the results, which may still hold significance for future project teams and P players.

Note: The subjects discussed below are the platforms of Pump and Bonk themselves, not the tokens issued by the platforms. Please do not argue.

"Mainstream Media Says": Compared to Pump, Bonk is like a traditional radio station

I agree with @edx0101 and @MichaelLiu93 that meme funds have no loyalty. But this precisely explains why Bonk did not win.

Those born in the 80s and 90s should remember the Chinese media before smartphones: Central TV - Provincial TV - Local TV, where all channels broadcast the news at 7 PM sharp.

Traffic is concentrated on key official figures, and only those who go overboard can take off, leaving Tom and the clam shell with an excessive endorsement responsibility.

On one hand, they need to call for Devs to attract them, while on the other hand, they fear being exploited like "BNBCARD" by the top players. The result is high costs for market-making, and new players do not come. As a mutual aid platform, it fails to achieve a high turnover rate and can only keep shouting about a few, ultimately leading to a price collapse. The two issues of "trapped by traffic" and "marginal effects of shouting" are inherently contradictory: shouting leads to a collapse, and not shouting leads to failure as well.

Why do I say Pump is mainstream media?

I have been mocked for this statement by many, but please read on:

Mainstream media, or self-media, allows more traffic players to monetize without needing anyone's endorsement.

What Pump does is transform itself into a true traffic portal.

If you look at their official Twitter, it resembles Facebook's 9GAG, whose job is to create/select memes from across the internet and foster an interactive space in the comments. The original traffic matrix accounts that emerged from the 9GAG comments section are akin to the angles and CA that emerged from Pump's comments section, such as $tokabu.

Each tweet casually garners 200,000 to 300,000 views, which is dozens of times more than Letsbonk. At its peak, @theunipcs had a few tweets reach this number, but it relied on clearly energizing the community.

Bonk is focused on market capitalization, while Pump is cultivating Dev and KOL groups

Pump and Alon do not need endorsements because traffic players like Threadguy, Gainzy, Rasmr, Yenni, and Scooter can get involved in some drama and still be considered angles.

They can be scoundrels, and you may not trust them, but as long as Pump, as a meme portal, has traffic, these players are present, contradictions exist, and the comment section remains active — Pump's traffic cost has been proven to be significantly lower than Bonk's.

Communication and endorsement are entirely different matters; communication only requires attention, not credibility.

Just as there are fewer people today who want to be TV hosts, the centralized broadcasting system will inevitably be replaced by decentralized mainstream media.

Ponzi is useful, "community" is useless

Bonk is a typical case of "succeeding because of community, failing because of community."

The mechanism is almost the same as Pump's, but the product's completeness is far inferior, so it can only rely on three selling points: buyback and burn, staking $SOL, and gaining Solana's "official support."

Essentially, it attempts to create a "community-first" image through these forms to win over the money of Solana's loyal community and narrate a DeFi logic of the Bonk flywheel:

$Bonk rises → Bonk platform buyback and burn → Push up $Bonk again.

Why did it fail?

First, Bonk is trying to operate without understanding the market.

Memecoins are essentially mutual aid platforms and are also a split of Sol. Each meme helps Sol deflate bubbles.

However, Bonk mistakenly treats it as a split of $Bonk. In reality, buyback and burn are essentially a variant of dividends; when the parent coin's price rises, it will only create more bubbles. Bonk's peak total profit of just 2M, even if fully bought back, cannot support a 2 billion market cap; this flywheel does not hold.

Originally, as a mutual aid platform, it only needed to keep finding ways to pull out small golden dogs to maintain activity. Instead, Bonk tied itself to a large truck with "community first," turning it into a dividend platform with sunk costs. A significant drop directly leads to a double kill and a collapse.

Second, Bonk has been brainwashed by its "community."

Bonkguy often mentions the community, but I believe he does not understand what "community" means for project teams.

When I say "community" is useless, I mean that "the people who support you in the public domain are actually opponents."

Meme and dividend platforms are inherently zero-sum scenarios; in a zero-sum scenario, talking about "PVE" and "community" is self-deception, right? Here, "community" is 100% the opponent's platform.

The most puzzling operation is encouraging Chinese CTOs. If they want to find ways to build up to exchanges, to cut off external liquidity from exchanges, that counts as PVE. However, knowing that Sol memes are unlikely to get listed, pushing those without market-making ability and who have the most "crab mentality" among Chinese CTOs is just putting people in the fire.

The collapse of Bonk's momentum is directly related to the drama of those Chinese CTOs.

The harsh reality is that the "community" of the vast majority of projects is meaningless. If Dev truly believes in "community" and "long-term contributors," falling into the trap of "dividends" and "buybacks" disguised as "token utility" will only lead to faster bleeding and harsher criticism later.

A real community consists of people with aligned interests: casino owners, gamblers, brokers, and currency exchangers. They are not here to unite; they are here to make money. What you need to do is not to move them emotionally but to ensure they continue to profit without becoming your opponents.

Firmly Believe Pump Will Not Airdrop

Only three types of people find Pump useful:

• Long-term P players who persist in betting - traffic players who personally call for trades.
• Devs of all sizes who continuously issue tokens.

These people have aligned interests, making subsidies necessary:

• Airdrop to net-loss P players based on their losses and historical fees to subsidize and reduce kill rates, allowing them to continue playing.
• Provide incentives for traffic players to call for trades, corresponding to giving code food to those stacking codes.
• Create a cabal market cap fund that occasionally buys into secondary ignition points, forming a low issuance cost that competitors cannot match (market-making cost, communication cost).

Therefore, even if Pump has tweeted, I believe they will not and should not issue those "sunshine" airdrops to "reward long-term users," nor should they do a 100% buyback. Any predictable buyback itself will not have directional significance for the secondary market; at most, it will be a "reason to find" in an upward range.

This money can be used in other ways.

Insights for P Players and Project Teams

For Project Teams:

1. The lifeblood of the platform is the comprehensive launch cost. Players already on board can provide resources for small golden dogs, but the moat lies in how to effectively distribute traffic based on Web2 attention. This is why today's Pump increasingly resembles an MCN.

2. The on-chain narrative of SOL has been exhausted: The platform wars of Sol have actually destroyed all on-chain issuance narratives: AI, ICM… As long as it is fairly launched on-chain based on bonding curves and AMM, players no longer feel any difference. Bonk has already reached the ceiling for resource players.

3. If you are still building a platform on SOL, I suggest you give up directly. This is currently the most expensive track on the entire network, bar none. Ordinary people cannot survive here.

4. If your product is a trading product, and you want to make money effortlessly, do not set expectations for sunshine airdrops.

For P Players:

1. Platforms that rely on their own endorsement of "Dragon One" and "Dragon Two" concepts are doomed to fail.

2. However, if this platform wants to operate on Sol, it must pull out a market cap of over 5-10M, objectively a "Dragon One." After the failures of Bonk/Launchcoin, the ceilings for these Dragon Ones will only get lower. Do not cling to battles.

3. Remember, "there is no PVE, only PVP." Meme cannot be shorted with 50x leverage contracts. You can be a diamond hand for ultra-short trades, but you must set stop losses and never expand your position after a drop.

4. Do not engage with CTOs, do not engage with CTOs, do not engage with CTOs. Do not be used as a pawn by the platform.

5. P players are at the end of the food chain; you must find ways to become KOLs and get to the table.

Finally

I hope everyone does not only see "step on one, lift another" in this article.

Bonk's failure to successfully challenge Pump is not due to their lack of skill or resources. They did a great job, but positioning themselves as Sol's launchpad, facing Pump, even exceptional performance in the current market can only lead to this outcome.

The competition between Pump and Bonk on Sol is asymmetrical, akin to a top T72 tank operator encountering a drone on the battlefield in Ukraine. Compared to 99% of projects in this industry, Bonk does not "fail"; what is more important for us is to understand why, so we can better identify our positions, retreat wisely, cut losses in time, and replicate at a millimeter level.

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