Authors: Joyce, Frost, BlockBeats

Pump.fun is the most special product in this cycle. Since its launch over 4 months ago, Pump.fun has released over 1.17 million tokens, with total revenue exceeding 50 million USD. How should we understand this number? Compared to the top traffic product Uniswap in the previous bull market, Uniswap Labs is estimated to have an annual revenue of about 25 to 30 million USD.

It can be said that Pump.fun is not a typical Web3 project. It does not have a complex token economic model or a DAO governance mechanism. However, with precise market positioning, Pump.fun has created a profitable business market. Under the dominance of attention economy, many people interpret the potential of continuous prosperity in meme coins as the advantage of short videos over long videos. In the era of "everyone issuing coins," can latecomers still get a piece of the pie? With the attention economy overlaying extreme PVP, what new tricks can be expected in the gameplay of meme coins?

The person who burned himself to promote meme coins is still live streaming

Do you remember the developer who burned himself to promote his meme coin a month ago? Last Thursday, June 27, he was still live streaming on Twitter.

This developer's name is Mikol. On May 17, he launched a meme coin called TruthOrDare (DARE) on Pump.fun. At that time, Pump.fun did not have live streaming functionality, so he could only post pictures in the comments section. Mikol demonstrated the "highlights" of the first season to the community by live streaming himself pouring isopropanol on his body and having friends shoot fireworks in his direction on Twitch. Amidst the cheers of fans and the rise of DARE, his body caught fire, and he suffered third-degree burns all over and was sent to the hospital.

The token DARE gained a 12-fold increase on the day of Mikol's burn, only to quickly return to zero the next day. Mikol's story was reported by the encrypted community media Decrypt, attracting a lot of attention. Faced with such attention, Mikol, lying in the ICU, recorded a video for the community, expressing that he would not give up operating, "You will see a better me."

There is not only Mikol who burns himself in extreme behavior to attract attention in hopes of an increase in the value of his meme coin. The Solana meme craze has brought in a large number of newcomers to the crypto world, giving rise to many meme coins that are watched in seconds. In addition to Mikol's "burning coin," there were also meme coins named "LIVEWITHMOM," which involved live streaming of exposed private body parts to "solicit purchases."

Even though the lifecycles of these meme coins are extremely short, and very few have market values exceeding 1 million USD, the combination of live streaming and coin issuance has allowed many people with low incomes to find the key to wealth.

A week after this incident, Pump.fun launched its live streaming feature. The community's initial reaction was to advise coin issuers, "Please do not self-immolate for the sake of making money."

Just as Mikol's story attracted community attention, there were many who believed that such behavior was too pathological and contrary to the original spirit of the crypto community. Some even advised Mikol to find a good job after recovering from his illness. However, after his condition stabilized, Mikol, still in the hospital, started live streaming on Twitch and simultaneously on Pump.fun. As he wished, his return to live streaming led to a 15-fold increase in DARE's value once again.

The increase in value from his return only lasted for a day, and the price of DARE continued to decline, seemingly finding it difficult to regain momentum. However, from then until now, Mikol has often live streamed with bandages, performing stunts such as eating raw eggs, swallowing cinnamon, and sharing his daily recovery routine. New members have also joined his "TruthOrDare family," demonstrating skills such as eating mustard and consuming chili peppers.

Unless in very few cases, it may be difficult for Mikol and his DARE to regain the same level of attention as before. There are still more people like Mikol on the internet, hoping to gain community attention by presenting sufficiently abstract and impactful performances to make their memes soar.

Those with high traffic have already issued coins, from Jenner to Mother, Father, and others. The wave of celebrity coins has allowed coin issuers and early followers to make a fortune. Although people like Vitalik have expressed opposition to this phenomenon, it is increasingly difficult to stop the trend of "entertainment to death" in the crypto community.

It can be argued that the newcomers entering the crypto community in this wave are from the "sinking market." The market for meme coins is still very large, but unlike meme coins such as DOGE and PEPE, which had some connection to the crypto community in the past, the current meme coin craze is pointing in a new direction, towards the sinking market outside the crypto community.

The crypto market is undergoing a transition from PGC to UGA

The emergence of the meme craze has many practical reasons for the development of the industry. Indeed, the appeal of the crypto narrative in this bull market is not as strong as before. Compared to "value coins" with opaque chip distribution and grand narratives that do not materialize, newcomers prefer to use memes as their first experience in the crypto world.

Behind this is the increasing number of users who see through the ultimate PVP logic. Regardless of how the narrative changes, it is all just to create a sufficiently Ponzi-like scheme, waiting for the next person to take over. The market is not lacking in people issuing coins, but rather in people who can tell the coin issuance story well. Since the community consensus has become "the essence of value coins is also a form of air coins," it is better to issue coins oneself. The emergence of Pump.fun is timely.

The emergence of Pump.fun allows users to release their own meme coins at very low cost (0.02 SOL). Meme coins go through cycles of takeoff and collapse within a few hours. Over 10,000 tokens are released daily on Pump.fun, accounting for over 80% of the total tokens in the Solana ecosystem. Recently, Pump.fun's daily revenue has been between 450,000 and 1 million USD, and its total revenue has exceeded 50 million USD since its launch a few months ago.

As pointed out in an analysis report released by Youbi Capital in May, the popularity of low-liquidity assets is an inherent response to the current cycle's insufficient liquidity. There is also a potential metaphor for the sharp increase in the number of coin issuances after the transition from PGA (Professional Generated Asset) to UGA (User Generated Asset), leading to increasingly dispersed consensus.

However, new opportunities still exist.

Three days ago, DEX Screener launched the token issuance platform Moonshot. On the first day, over 7,000 tokens were released. At the same time, Solana was also praised by the community for launching the ability to trade tokens on Twitter through the feature called blinks. The meme coin SC, which combines these two hot topics, saw its value increase by over 100 times in two days, indicating that the market is eager to grab a piece of the coin issuance platform, and users are also looking forward to new stories after Pump.fun.

After all, the unprecedented and significant reduction in the speed and threshold of asset issuance and trading brought about by cryptographic technology has created a potentially vast application market. As long as there is a demand in the community for "attention monetization," the crypto market still has narratives to tell.

What if live streaming happens in Web3?

In the traditional internet, the "attention economy" industry has developed over about 20 years, going through the transition from the forum and post-bar era to the era of graphic and text microblogs, and then to the era of short video live streaming. A similar trajectory is unfolding in the crypto field.

On May 29, Pump.fun announced the launch of live streaming on its platform. For a website focused on making quick profits, users indeed do not have a need to watch live streams. However, live streaming, as the form of communication with the highest information carrying capacity, the most immersive and infectious, combined with the asset issuance function, is worth imagining from the perspective of the attention economy.

Simplifying commercialization to the extreme

The path to commercialization in Web3 is completely different from that of the traditional internet. However, in the attention economy, the typical cases of Web2 can provide some insights to the crypto industry.

Take Kuaishou as an example. In 2013, less than two years after its inception, Kuaishou decided to transition from a tool for creating animated images to an internet community where users produce content themselves, recording and sharing their lives and creativity through short videos, and interacting with fans. Unlike new platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou's user base is the "average person in society," mainly consisting of young people in second and third-tier cities.

In 2014, Kuaishou's monthly active users reached 1 million with the entry of YY anchors who had a loyal fan base in the sinking market. By the end of 2016, Kuaishou's monthly active users exceeded 64 million. During these two years of rapid growth, YY anchors occupied the top four positions on the list of Kuaishou's top anchors at the time.

Kuaishou maintained the characteristics of the sinking market community. It did not sign contracts with internet celebrities, did not provide traffic support, and its fair algorithm mechanism encouraged the vigorous development of user-generated content (UGC). Compared to products of the same period, Kuaishou stood out with its unique "decentralized community" model.

In 2017, Kuaishou took the lead in seizing the dividends of live streaming, becoming the world's largest single live streaming platform. According to Kuaishou's prospectus, from 2017 to 2019, the company's revenue was 8.3 billion, 20.3 billion, and 39.1 billion RMB, with live streaming revenue accounting for 7.9 billion, 18.6 billion, 31.4 billion, and 17.3 billion RMB, respectively, representing 95.18%, 91.63%, 80.31%, and 68.38% of the total revenue. It is evident that at the time, live streaming was Kuaishou's core business and foundation.

After rapid development, Kuaishou had to adjust its content ecosystem. After all, traditional Web2 companies need to undergo commercialization transformation. In this process, only content producers with high audience consumption levels, who satisfy traditional social values, and who survive in fierce competition can remain until the end.

Looking back, it is more accurate to say that Kuaishou targeted the new market of the attention economy track rather than just focusing on the sinking market. Similarly, for coin issuance platforms targeting crypto newcomers, there is no need to consider "commercialization transformation."

In traditional internet giants, whether they are content platforms or e-commerce platforms, they hope to show users "here are good things worth watching/buying" because only content that is recognized and loved by more users has commercial value and can bring profits to the platform. However, Pump.fun does not need commercialization. Its profit model is extremely simple and pure. It only needs to show "there are enough coins and traders here," and as long as there are transactions, Pump.fun can make money.

Currently, although Pump.fun has opened up the comments section and live streaming functionality, users visit Pump.fun just to complete the buying or selling process. Discussions about meme coins mainly take place on Twitter, and meme coin developers with live streaming ideas mostly choose platforms such as Twitch and Kick for live streaming promotion.

In the Pump.fun interface, users can only choose based on two indicators: the number of comments and the token market value. If there were a live streaming section, would Pump.fun produce "live streaming gurus"?

Human game theory and regulatory challenges

Currently, there are already some meme display platforms, such as Game.com, whose Twitter followers have just exceeded 7,000, offering paid list token services. For 0.8 SOL, users can publish their own meme coins on this platform to gain more attention.

The Pump.fun team seems to have no intention of making further explorations on the existing services. After all, for a small team that has generated over 40 million USD in revenue in a year and has a stable daily revenue of 600,000 USD, there is indeed no motivation to break the product and innovate the narrative further. Its positioning as a "tool" is sufficient.

With more newcomers entering the crypto field, live streaming may become a differentiating label for other coin issuance platforms such as Moonshot.

However, the collapse of several x to earn projects in the past in Web3 has already shown that no matter how sophisticated the design is, it cannot challenge human nature. On June 13, a user launched a meme coin on Pump.fun with a sheep wearing a hat as the theme and conducted a live stream at the same time. However, shortly after the live stream started, the comments section was still discussing the sheep's actions, and snipers who bought the tokens at the time of issuance quickly sold most of the tokens at a high price, causing the token price to plummet.

After the token collapse, the meme coin issuer explained in the comments section, "My token balance has remained unchanged and can be verified through solscan. If I was just trying to make quick money, why would I live stream my sheep instead of selling my tokens?"

Not selling may be because the tokens had not been listed on Raydium, and in the end, the token did not reach a market value of 60,000 USD. The issuer never live streamed his sheep again.

In addition, regulatory issues are also something that platforms of this kind need to pay attention to. If live streaming is combined with asset issuance, various extreme and vulgar behaviors to attract attention are bound to occur. When Pump.fun announced the launch of the live streaming feature, the community's biggest concern was how the platform would review extreme content. When coin issuers publish inappropriate content such as pornography or more extreme behavior, should Pump.fun intervene to prevent potential criminal activities?

Conclusion

Looking back at the meme coin issuers mentioned at the beginning of this article, one can sense the content ecosystem of traditional internet short video platforms in the early years. After several years of development, these platforms have explored highly profitable business models.

As a form of content that provides an "immersive experience," live streaming makes people realize to what extent the convergence of "traffic" can be simplified, and the monetization channels such as tipping and product placement also give content producers to some extent the ability to counterbalance platform capital.

In the crypto field, the platform's control quickly dissipates. Attention remains the core driving force propelling the entire market forward. What kind of story would unfold if live streaming happened in Web3? Can the extreme utilization of traffic find new forms of expression in a decentralized environment?

Looking back over the years, in the continuous rupture and reconstruction of consensus, the crypto industry has produced countless projects that have gone from "innovation" to collapse. The emergence of Pump.fun is just the beginning.

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