Author: Arain, ChainCatcher
According to Dune Analytics data, from March 1st of this year to the present, Pump.Fun has accumulated approximately 99.74 million US dollars in revenue. With a super mini-team of only 3 people, in about half a year, they have created nearly 100 million US dollars in revenue.
Retail investors cheer for the wealth effect of Pump.Fun, while competitors of Pump.Fun ambitiously join the feast of Meme Launchpad. With the announcement by Sun Yuchen, the founder of TRON, that TRON will support the first fair launch trading meme coin platform "SunPump" within the TRON ecosystem, the frenzy of MemeCoin seems to have entered the second half.
Faced with the emerging competitors of Pump.Fun in the market, more investment institutions and investors are maintaining a wait-and-see attitude.
"We won't invest because this cycle is too short. Generally, platforms that make money don't usually issue platform tokens. Once they do, the end is not far off," a investment institution, who requested anonymity, bluntly stated in an interview with ChainCatcher.
Sun Yuchen also pointed out the market reality in an interview with ChainCatcher. He said that nothing can create an exciting narrative in a short period of time like Meme can, and TRON hopes to inject new vitality into the stagnant market.
"Of course, the new launcher will divert existing funds," Sun Yuchen said.
Concentrated Emergence of Meme Launchpads, Investors Remain Cautious
It's not an exaggeration to say that this year's cryptocurrency market is the "Summer of Meme." On the "Cryptocurrency Narratives" section of Dune Analytics, Meme is the highest volume narrative concept.
Pump.Fun, as its name suggests, is a huge pump on Solana: while continuously creating overnight phenomenon-level Meme projects for the market, it also brings fun to participants in the current stagnant market.
"You can't imagine how big this market is. The wealth effect of Meme is strong, and the entry barrier is low. For individual users, there is a tempting narrative of turning the tide. Sufficient sinking will bring a larger user base. Pump.Fun is like Uniswap back in the day, and the story of Uniswap and SushiSwap is bound to be repeated. The Meme Launchpad sector will not always be dominated by Pump.Fun alone," said a community leader of the Meme community, who also mentioned that the community is preparing to target Meme coins along with some upcoming new Meme Launchpads.
In the past DeFi summer, Uniswap stood out, allowing coins to be issued and listed on Uniswap for just a few dollars, especially with the feature of providing liquidity with one click, which allowed it to bypass centralized exchanges, be seen by users, and be traded. This led to Uniswap becoming a paradise for copycat coins and meme coins. This is similar to the situation with Pump.Fun today. Later, Sushiswap emerged and briefly rivaled Uniswap.
Even Pump.Fun's anonymous founder, Alon, mentioned in a live broadcast that Pump.fun is imitating Uniswap V2's bonding curve trading to provide participants with a similar trading experience.
However, Alon did not invent the bonding curve. The focus is on creating a fair platform for content creators and speculators. He believes that, imitating the best LP (liquidity provider) issuance, Pump.fun's bonding curve requires a balance of approximately 3 to 5K in liquidity.
In fact, it is precisely because of the pursuit of "fairness" that Pump.fun has always maintained its leading position.
As a competitor of Pump.fun, Makenow.meme once had a moment of popularity in the Meme Launchpad market. The product simplified the process for users to issue Memecoins to just needing to tweet, but its rules clearly favored KOLs, Degen players, scientists, and were not "fair." In addition, it violated X's rules, and the official account was frozen for a period of time. Makenow.meme eventually faded away amidst the noise.
Although many of Pump.fun's competitors ultimately failed, the market is still waiting for projects that can rival Pump.Fun. More appropriately, it should be to take a piece of the cake from Pump.Fun.
According to RootData and ChainCatcher's incomplete statistics, since 2024, more than 10 new Meme Launchpads or projects with Meme Launchpad functionality have emerged, and they support different public chains, with the most Meme Launchpad projects supporting Base and Solana.
This may be due to the relatively low operating costs on these two public chains, but Pump.Fun's anonymous founder, Alon, believes that the culture and ecosystem of public chains also have an impact.
In a live broadcast, he specifically mentioned Solana and Base, believing that Solana has a unique and authentic culture, closely intertwined with anonymous Meme, while Base, unlike Solana, has more cryptocurrencies and focuses on community building.
Despite the market's expectation for new Meme Launchpads to surpass, and as ChainCatcher has learned, several similar projects have recently started and are seeking financing, many investment institutions in the market are still holding a wait-and-see attitude.
Sun Yuchen told ChainCatcher, "The capital of other copycat coins is still in a state of flight. The market is currently dominated by narratives, and those that have been hyped are already hyped. Many projects have failed to achieve subsequent milestones, and the flawed token economic model has caused losses. In this sluggish market, TRON has chosen to reignite the meme fire, hoping to inject new vitality into the stagnant market through TRON's efforts and drive."
"Now, there are many memecoin launch platforms on various public chains, and most institutions are taking a wait-and-see attitude. Since asset issuance and trading have mature business models, we do not rely on institutional investment, but rather generate positive cash flow through self-sufficiency to achieve a healthy business model," said Jill, the person in charge of MemeFun.
Jill explained that MemeFun is currently the first memecoin launch platform in the ICP (Dfinity) ecosystem. The team has previously operated a leading inscription trading market in multiple public chain ecosystems and has received investment from the Binance ecosystem. They transitioned to a meme launch platform in the middle of this year.
"Inscriptions ultimately did not form a universal consensus. Compared to inscriptions, Meme assets have a longer lifecycle, have experienced several rounds of bull and bear market cycles, and still frequently show new vitality, forming a widely recognized global consensus. The cultural attributes of Meme also imply widespread dissemination and enduring vitality. Therefore, as the market buying power shifts in this cycle, we chose the memecoin launcher track," Jill explained their view of the Meme track and the reason for their transition into this track.
Capital Tentatively Enters the Arena
As mentioned by the interviewees above, most capital is in a wait-and-see state, but there are also projects that have received funding support.
According to RootData, Memehub.AI, Trugly.meme, We.Rich, and STIX have all received funding support.
After sorting through the information, ChainCatcher found that the most significant common feature of these four projects that have received funding support is that they are not just Meme Launchpads; some are upgraded versions of Meme Launchpads, and some are Meme Launchpad +.
For example, Memehub.AI is a Meme Launchpad + AI project. As a winner of the Binance Hackathon, Memehub.AI has received support from the Binance Incubator. It is an AI-driven Meme coin launch platform that allows users to generate Meme coin-related concepts with just a sentence or a keyword, including names, logos, introductions, and posters, and can create multi-mechanism Meme coins at very low cost without providing liquidity for trading. The project will support deployment on multiple public chains.
Both We.Rich and Trugly.meme are labeled as social, but based on the current product, they can also be considered as an upgraded version of Meme Launchpad.
We.Rich received a $2 million seed round investment led by Folius Ventures and Animoca Brands on July 31.
The platform positions itself as UGA, which stands for User-Generated Asset platform, rather than a Meme Launchpad. Its slogan is "Anyone can be a founder," and anyone can issue Memecoins without the need for LP. After issuance, the created Memecoin will enter the "seed round" fundraising progress, and once the fundraising progress is completed, the platform will reward the creator with a 0.1 ETH incentive. If the creator also buys a portion of the Memecoin at the time of issuance, they can also collect the corresponding Memecoin transaction fees. The platform is deployed on Base and currently uses Coinbase's wallet, enabling zero-cost one-click Memecoin issuance.
Trugly.meme has similar rules to We.Rich. The platform received investment from Gm Capital on April 25, which also invested in Movement. It is a platform for issuing, trading, and discovering memecoins on Base. Users can issue MEME404 and standard memecoins for free in less than 6 seconds. Although meme issuance is free, there is a fundraising target requirement, and the coin will only go live once the fundraising target is met, otherwise, a refund will be issued. After the fundraising is completed, the meme will officially go live, and the creator can allocate up to 50%, with a requirement of a 1-month lock-up period and 1-year vesting period. In addition, Trugly.meme also supports MEME404, a protocol that allows memecoin holders to display their balance through unique NFTs, unlocking different levels or "tiers" for meme holders.
As for STIX, it is different from the previous three projects and is a derivative project of Stickerly, one of the world's largest Web2 user-generated content sticker publishing platforms. Web3 STIX uses Stickerly's distribution platform to distribute tokens through regular popular sticker competitions and heavily promotes on STIX and Stickerly, making it a project focused on user acquisition.
The project completed a $1.8 million private placement round on July 26, with dozens of crypto KOLs including Presto Labs, Selini Capital, Mythos Group, and Altcoin Sherpa participating. The funds will be used to prepare for the Beta version release and token issuance for STIX.
New Entrants and the Changing PumpFun
Meme Launchpads that have completed financing are VC Meme Launchpads, and those that have not completed financing are still worth paying attention to—PumpFun, the current leader in Meme Launchpads, has not completed financing.
However, on July 18, the DeFi protocol Burve Protocol officially announced that it would acquire PumpFun at a valuation of $50 million.
Perhaps due to the progress of the acquisition or stimulated by market competitors, on August 9, pump.fun announced two major changes (in the test version):
Free coin issuance. Token creators no longer need to pay about $2 for creating tokens; instead, the cost will be paid by the first buyer of the token. (Note: This unlocks the use case of someone creating tokens but not buying any tokens).
If the token completes its Bonding curve process, the creator will receive 0.5 SOL ($80). This fee will be paid from the pump.fun migration fee (now only 1.5 SOL); it will be paid to the token developer regardless of whether they have ever held or still hold the token. The reward also incentivizes all developers to increase their token allocation to 100%.
Shortly after the introduction of these changes, SunPump launched its Beta version on August 13, breaking the monopoly of pump.fun.
Based on a recent interview with Sun Yuchen by ChainCatcher (the original interview can be found on the ChainCatcher website), Sun Pump claims to adhere to the principles of fair issuance and fair trading, allowing creators to issue coins in a convenient and extremely low-cost manner, similar to PumpFun, using a bonding curve pricing mechanism.
However, as the first Meme Launchpad supported by the TRON ecosystem, SunPump enjoys TRON's traffic support, gas subsidies, and a multi-million dollar incentive program.
According to Dune data and data revealed by Sun Yuchen on social media, within about a week of the launch of the Sun Pump Beta version, daily revenue has exceeded that of Pump.Fun, and the traffic has reached 30%-40% of Pump.Fun's.
"In the first week of the launch, the number of projects created exceeded tens of thousands, and the revenue reached 4.36 million TRX, showing that the platform has achieved good economic benefits in a short period of time. We use a decentralized approach to use protocol revenue for token buyback and burning SUN tokens, providing long-term value feedback to protocol participants. This mechanism not only enhances user confidence in the platform but also contributes to the platform's sustainable development," Sun Yuchen told ChainCatcher.
Some believe that the rise of SunPump comes at the expense of Pump.Fun's loss of traffic, somewhat similar to the vampire attack that SushiSwap launched against Uniswap in the past.
In Sun Yuchen's view, it is not easy for new Meme Launchpads to establish themselves in the current relatively subdued investment sentiment.
"In the current relatively subdued investment sentiment, new launchers will divert existing funds, and it is difficult for latecomers to survive without sustained economic incentives and innovative gameplay. To bring incremental value, the platform needs to have sufficiently low issuance costs, deep liquidity, and trading flexibility. Looking at the entire industry ecosystem, there are not many teams that can meet all three points to become launchers," Sun Yuchen shared his viewpoint.
It should be noted that Sun Pump is based on the TRON ecosystem, while Pump.Fun is based on the Solana ecosystem. Alon mentioned in a live broadcast that different public chain ecosystems have different cultures, and culture is crucial for projects aimed at serving a large user base. Meme itself is a unique cultural phenomenon, serving as a shorthand for ideas or communities, "just like the example of Dogecoin and Elon Musk."
In addition, Alon also expressed doubts about Blast, as the chain is developing rapidly but lacks substantial content and focuses too much on economic interests, making it more difficult for good projects to receive attention on the chain.
"Blockchains with unique projects and strong cultures will succeed in the long run," Alon shared his perspective.
Jill also believes that culture is a necessary attribute and introduced the ecological culture of ICP. "The Chinese community is relatively unfamiliar with the ICP ecosystem, but in Europe and the United States, it is an interesting ecosystem. The Meme culture on ICP is a kind of geeky fun. For example, on Solana, there are many memes worth hundreds of millions of dollars that start with just one image and end with the same image. Some memes on ICP, such as EXE, combine the Windows 98 interface with memes to create a retro product that allows users to enter different applications through the desktop of the last century. For example, Motoko uses the programming language on ICP as the symbol of the meme and also builds a developer community. This geeky style of meme is a step closer to pure financial games." This is the reason MemeFun chose the ICP ecosystem.
As for the TRON ecosystem, Sun Yuchen initially positioned it as a global digital content entertainment system, but for a long time, the TRON ecosystem has been dominated by stablecoins, forming its initial positioning as a payment public chain. With the launch of Sun Pump following the trend and shaking up PumpFun, achieving certain results, the ecosystem landscape on TRON is undergoing changes.
"Culture is everything," this is Alone's live broadcast summary.
Alone also shared a trend he has recently observed, which is that a trend in Meme development is moving towards NFTs. However, Meme is different from NFT, as NFT requires a deeper cultural resonance and is a more complex product. He is excited about this trend.
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