The Evolution of Solana's On-Chain Memecoin Launchpad

“The king is dead, long live the king.” This declaration echoed in the Palace of Versailles on May 10, 1774. Louis XV had just breathed his last. In an instant, those nobles who had bowed before him turned away, flocking to the next king. This is not cold-bloodedness; it is the instinct for survival.

The French deeply understand a truth about power: power never belongs to anyone. It is like water, always seeking the next vessel. This declaration is not a lament for the deceased king, but an acknowledgment of the one who is alive. The former monarch may today become a footnote in history. Change comes swiftly, ruthlessly, and inevitably.

Power requires this indifference. Empires rise on the bones of their ancestors. New rulers inherit the old throne. This cycle repeats itself. And now, the memecoin Launchpad landscape on Solana is playing out this ancient ritual.

Pump.fun was once the undisputed leader, holding 88% of the market share just a month ago, but now it is down to 13%, while the new challenger Let'sBONK has taken 86% of the territory.

This is not just another manifestation of the “volatility” in the crypto world. It is more of a textbook case of an empire's collapse: when you forget that attention is the ultimate moat, even the greatest first-mover advantage can vanish in an instant.

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How was the Pump.fun Empire established?

To understand the fall of Pump.fun, one must first grasp how strong it once was. It was launched in January 2024 by three young people in their 20s, and it overturned the issuance logic of meme coins with a single sentence: “You upload a picture of a dog, breakfast, or even a random meme image, give it a name, click a few times, Boom! You’ve created a coin, costing less than $2, without needing any code.”

It meets a fundamental impulse: to turn something that is “nothing” into something that has “some value.” In the crypto world, this is not a delusion; it's a business model. By January 2025, Pump.fun generated over $458 million in revenue, launching thousands of new coins daily, with peak daily income surpassing $7 million.

More importantly, it has won the attention battlefield - becoming synonymous with Solana memecoin culture. Anyone on Crypto Twitter who wants to launch a coin defaults to using Pump.fun. It not only occupies the infrastructure but also firmly controls the cultural discourse. Empires that develop based on their own success often develop weaknesses that competitors can exploit.

The tragedy began with one of its most “innovative” features: live broadcasting.

It was originally intended to allow token issuers to promote their tokens in front of the camera, but as you can guess, things spiraled out of control. Starting in November 2024, in order to gain attention, some people began to engage in extreme behaviors during live broadcasts: simulating self-harm, threatening suicide, abusing animals, and the most severe incident: a minor user brandished a shotgun in front of the camera to threaten their family, all just to pump the price.

Pump.fun was forced to urgently shut down its live streaming feature, but its reputation has already been ruined. Weekly revenue plummeted by 66% in an instant, public opinion backlash ensued, and competitors began to take advantage of the situation. Faced with declining revenue and competitive pressure, Pump.fun made a decision that seemed smart but was actually fatal: to launch a token (ICO) for self-rescue.

This ICO was technically successful—raising $500 million from over 10,000 wallets in just 12 minutes, along with a $700 million private placement.

But if you look deeper, you will find that the old trick is back: over 200 wallets hit the $1 million cap, and the top 340 buyers consumed 60% of the share. All the tokens sold are fully unlocked (no lock-up), but there is a transfer restriction period set for 48 to 72 hours.

Nearly half of the participants only funded their wallets within 24 hours—this pattern may suggest an organized buying strategy, or it could simply be retail users' strong interest in this issuance.

The token price initially soared by 75% to $0.007, but enthusiasm quickly cooled down. Within a few weeks, it fell by 60%, continually hitting new lows, a typical “death spiral” trend. The tokenomics itself is also very aggressive, with only 33% allocated to public and private offerings, while the remaining 67% is controlled by the project team, and the allocation schedule is unclear. Of this 33%, 18% is specifically reserved for private placement shares for institutional investors.

Despite users generating nearly $750 million for the platform, there were no immediate community rewards; meanwhile, private investors sold $160 million worth of tokens on the exchange, creating significant selling pressure.

The last straw that broke the camel's back was the co-founder Alon Cohen's public announcement that the long-promised airdrop “will not happen in the foreseeable future.”

For months, the project has hinted that the upcoming rewards “will be more generous than anyone in the industry,” creating huge market expectations. However, just at the moment when community trust was at its weakest, they announced the cancellation of the airdrop. The token price plummeted by 15% within 24 hours. It is not that the airdrop itself is so important, but the cost of breaking promises is extremely deadly.

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The Rise of Bonk

As Pump.fun keeps hitting landmines, Let'sBONK is quietly building everything that its competitors lack: transparency, community orientation, and clear communication.

Currently, Let'sBONK's daily revenue has reached 1.3 million dollars, while Pump.fun is only 254,000 dollars, a difference of 5 times. On an annualized basis, Let'sBONK's monthly revenue is as high as 434.92 million dollars, while Pump.fun is 267.25 million dollars.

From nearly zero in May to a stable breakthrough of one million dollars in daily income in July, Let'sBONK's revenue has been steadily rising. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's revenue has plummeted from a peak of over 7 million dollars in January, falling back to the levels of September 2024.

Since the ICO, the PUMP token has dropped 60% in market value, while BONK has remained relatively stable, maintaining a market value of $2.1 billion. Let'sBONK will use 1% of its revenue each week to repurchase BONK, supporting this ecological token that predates the platform and has a solid foundation.

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Attention Economy

Pump.fun once seized the opportunity through network effects—developers issue tokens there because traders are there; traders are there because the hottest memecoins are launched there. This flywheel is spinning faster and faster, seemingly unstoppable.

But attention is fragile. It is not like the moats of traditional businesses—economies of scale, switching costs, regulatory barriers—once trust collapses, the user's mindset can instantly shatter. A live streaming incident gives users reason to try alternative platforms. Let'sBONK immediately becomes the “clean” choice, a platform without historical baggage.

It's like when Myspace lost to Facebook back in the day. Myspace had features and scale, but it lost the cultural narrative. Facebook became the platform for “real users,” while Myspace became synonymous with spam, a chaotic interface, and marginalization. Realizing the crisis of survival, Pump.fun launched a nearly desperate counterattack.

First, they increased the token buyback ratio from 25% of daily revenue to 100%. While this means that approximately $254,000 is used for buybacks daily, far exceeding Let'sBONK's daily buyback of $13,000 (which is only 1%), it also represents that Pump.fun is using all of its revenue for buybacks rather than for platform growth.

Secondly, they launched a 30-day incentive program that rewards PUMP tokens based on trading activity. However, initial feedback indicates that this strategy has not reversed the competitive landscape.

The issue is not at the tactical level, but at the strategic level. No amount of buybacks or incentive programs can restore lost trust, nor can they recapture the attention of users that has already shifted.

The reward mechanism of Pump.fun revolves solely around trading volume, while Let'sBONK has established a truly user-interest-bound ecological reward system.

The BONK reward program allows users to lock up for 6 to 12 months and receive a proportional share of the revenue from the product ecosystem such as BonkBot, BonkSwap, etc. The longer the lock-up period, the higher the multiplier. The better the product performance, the more returns for users. This is not about “spending money to make people trade,” but about “paying to let users build together.”

Users (including project parties) can obtain “Bonk Points” through trading, purchasing, or issuing tokens. These points are expected to be redeemable for physical goods or rights in the future, further incentivizing active participation. The gamified growth experience makes users feel like they are part of a larger mission.

While Pump.fun was still exploring ICOs and experiencing airdrop delivery failures, Let'sBONK has already provided a structured reward system for core users. In the crypto world, capital will always flow towards better incentive mechanisms.

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A Bigger Picture

In traditional industries, market leaders often sit atop their thrones for decades. General Motors dominated automobile manufacturing for half a century, and IBM controlled enterprise computing for nearly as long. However, in the digital market, the cost of switching for users is close to zero, and a dominant position can vanish in a matter of months.

Investigations have revealed that Dylan Kerler, co-founder of Pump.fun, was involved in a “pump and dump” scheme in 2017 — precisely the behavior that Pump.fun claims to eliminate. In an industry built on trust and memes, the collapse of reputation equates to a survival crisis.

The success of Let'sBONK is not due to the fact that they built a fundamentally superior product, but rather because they entered the market at the most vulnerable moment of Pump.fun's reputation. In the attention economy, timing is often more critical than technology.

The winner-takes-all logic of network effects is starting to reverse. Once users begin to migrate to Let'sBONK, the flywheel that propelled Pump.fun's rise also starts to reverse. Developers follow traders, and traders chase the hottest projects, leading to an accelerated decline of the platform.

Does Pump.fun still have a chance to turn things around? Although its market share has significantly shrunk, it hasn't reached the point of being out of the game.

They do have some advantages: the $1.2 billion in funding has bought them time and provided them with the capital to experiment and outlast competitors. Their platform has supported hundreds of thousands of project launches without crashing—this is particularly important in an environment where other new platforms can easily fail under pressure. Even with a decline in market share, they still generate over $250,000 in revenue daily, approaching $100 million annually, and with a massive capital reserve, they still have a strong foundation.

They are the pioneers of this category. Transforming coin issuance from programming into a few clicks of a mouse has earned them lasting brand recognition. The first-mover advantage doesn't just disappear.

Recent actions also indicate that they have not given up: Pump.fun 2.0 has added real-time data updates and one-click trading; the buyback ratio has been increased to 100%; and user incentives have been introduced. These are not signs of surrender, but rather a counterattack.

The most likely scenario is not a complete collapse, but rather market fragmentation. There are rarely permanent monopolists in the crypto space. What is more likely is that Let'sBONK becomes the main platform, dominating the number of tokens issued and revenue, while Pump.fun transforms into a niche platform with loyal users, securing a place based on its interface, features, or ecosystem.

But to truly turn the tide, Pump.fun must not only solve technical issues or rely on spending money to retain people, but must also rebuild trust and reclaim cultural high ground. This means achieving an open and transparent, community-centered token economic structure, and may even require a complete overhaul of leadership to thoroughly break away from past controversies.

The French court has long understood a principle: when one