MEME becomes the cake to fight over in the bull market: Pump.fun data inflated, TON, Jupiter and others intensively entering the market

Author: Frank, PANews

The market has taken a sharp downturn, and the mainstream cryptocurrency market is lukewarm. MEME coins are becoming the main battleground for various ecosystems.

On July 4, Jupiter announced the launch of a MEME market discovery tool called APE. In addition, in June, the well-known industry tracking tool DEX Screener also launched a similar issuance platform called Moonshot, which saw over 7,000 MEME tokens released on Moonshot within just one day. The increasingly popular TON ecosystem has also successively launched several one-click MEME coin issuance platforms: Gas Pump, Wonton, and Pumper.

As the market has recently entered a phase of turbulence, this seemingly lucrative sector has become a red ocean, and the hype around MEME coins seems to be exaggerated. More and more entrants are pushing against the wind.

The "One-Click Issuance" Model Is No Longer Attractive

Pump.fun seems to be the barometer of the current MEME market. This team, reportedly consisting of only three people, has generated over $54 million in revenue in just four months. On July 1, data from DefiLlama showed that Pump.fun's 24-hour revenue exceeded $1.99 million, breaking historical records. For a moment, many on social media were astonished that a one-click issuance platform could maintain such popularity. However, an investigation by PANews found discrepancies in the data on DefiLlama, where the assets organized from the Pump.fun wallet were mistakenly counted as revenue, leading to inflated figures of $1.99 million and $1.22 million on July 1 and 3, respectively, while the actual figures were around $600,000 and $630,000.

In addition to the issues with these two days' data, the total revenue figures for Pump.fun also have some discrepancies. The past wallet organization and large transfers amounted to approximately 39,251 SOL (worth about $6 million), and after excluding this portion, Pump.fun's actual revenue should be around $48 million.

Moreover, Pump.fun's daily trading volume has also shown a downward trend, peaking at 3.32 million transactions on June 12, with 18,000 tokens deployed that day. By July 3, these figures had dropped to 1.51 million transactions and 11,000 tokens. The number of active users fell from 51,000 on June 19 to 23,000 on July 3. Overall data has nearly halved.

Data across the entire Solana chain also shows a downward trend. On June 12, the number of active addresses on Solana reached 1.23 million, but by June 30, this number had dropped to 800,000, a decrease of about 30%.

The Gap with Moonshot Remains Significant

Although the MEME market is also facing a contraction, more entrants are intensively flooding in. In June, DEX Screener launched Moonshot, a platform similar to Pump.fun, which is considered a strong competitor. DEX Screener is a commonly used tracking tool for MEME players and a platform for discovering new tokens. After the popularity of Pump.fun, many tokens are now released on Pump.fun, and after going live on Raydium, players will check on more professional tracking platforms like DEX Screener or birdeye. Clearly, DEX Screener is unwilling to be just a "buyer" and launching Moonshot seems to be a natural progression. Moonshot and Pump.fun are nearly identical in most functionalities, and DEX Screener claims that its launchpad ensures that all smart contracts launched on the platform undergo thorough audits. Additionally, Moonshot has raised the threshold for tokens to over 500 SOL to gain liquidity pools on Raydium.

However, Moonshot lacks the community board and live streaming features that Pump.fun offers, which has resulted in lower popularity for the platform. Pump.fun founder Alon responded to the emergence of competitors on Twitter: "You can imitate the product, but you can never imitate the culture." As of July 5, Moonshot's total revenue was approximately 3,645.65 SOL ($461,685.48), which is less than Pump.fun's daily revenue.

Is Jupiter Aiming to Build a Centralized Exchange on the Chain?

Jupiter clearly intends to participate in the MEME coin market, but it seems to have noticed the fierce competition in the one-click issuance market and has chosen to start with MEME tools. On July 4, Jupiter announced the launch of a MEME market discovery tool called APE. The platform has two core functionalities.

The first core function is to discover the latest tokens launched. APE continuously refreshes the 100 latest tokens from Orca, Raydium, and Meteora. When clicking on a specific token, detailed token inspection results are provided, especially for RUG risk screening.

The second core function, Vault, may have more innovative significance. APE has created a DEX similar to a centralized exchange. Users can deposit SOL tokens into the Vault account before trading, eliminating the need for on-chain confirmation during transactions and avoiding the risk of MEV bot attacks.

However, this product has just launched, and there are still poor experiences in K-line display, waiting views, and other functionalities.

Are MEME Coins Struggling in the TON Ecosystem?

The TON ecosystem has seen several similar one-click issuance platforms emerge, including Gas Pump, Wonton, and Pumper. However, overall, the MEME coins in the TON ecosystem are still in their infancy and cannot be described as hot. The highest market cap for a token on Gas Pump is only $14,700. Wonton's official website shows it is under DDoS attack and unable to provide services. The popularity on Pumper is also quite low, with the highest token purchase volume being less than 210 TON ($1,400).

As the overall market becomes increasingly unstable, the entire MEME market is also trending downward. According to data from Coingecko, the MEME coin market has decreased by 22.5% over the past seven days. Data from July 5 shows that the number of new MEME tokens launched in Solana's trading pools in the past 24 hours was 1,350, which is more than half of the daily average of over 3,000 in May and June. Previously popular presale tokens, celebrity tokens, and pet tokens have also shown a continuous decline. New mainstream MEME coins like BOME, POPCAT, michi, and MOTHER have seen their prices halved in just five days.

As a highly volatile asset class, the frenzy surrounding MEME coins is evident to the crypto community. When the market experiences downturns and extreme fluctuations, the instability of MEME coins becomes even more apparent. At this time, the projects still entering the fray to grab a piece of the pie are clearly not catching a good moment and can only wait for the market to warm up again. PANews will continue to monitor the developments of MEME issuance platforms.