One-click token issuance becomes the "new password for crypto." After pump.fun, which platform can still succeed?

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

Shortly after the cumulative revenue surpassed $55 million, the Solana ecosystem meme coin issuance platform pump.fun suddenly released a "stunning statement" yesterday—"That's it, folks. Thank you for joining our bull market. We had a great time, and we hope you did too. To save costs, pump.fun will close at UTC 00:00 until market conditions improve. Make sure to set your alarm for 18 months from now! See you then."

Although it was later confirmed to be an "official joke," this move sparked widespread discussion within the community and the market: Has the small team behind pump.fun become complacent enough to "wash their hands clean"? Are there still sufficiently competitive opponents in the market? What are the core competitive advantages of one-click token issuance platforms? Odaily Planet Daily will explore and analyze these questions in this article.

The Sustained Promoter of the Solana Meme Coin Craze

As early as early May, Odaily Planet Daily's senior author Nan Zhi conducted an in-depth interpretation of pump.fun (see: "The Driving Force Behind the Record Growth of Solana Ecosystem Tokens: Analyzing the Growth Engine Pump.fun"), and as mentioned in the article—"Pump.fun launched in February 2024, and initially, there wasn't much user attention or usage, but by mid-March, the number of users and usage began to soar."

It is evident that pump.fun's rapid rise benefited from the Solana ecosystem meme coin craze led by BOME in mid-March. Moreover, compared to other meme coin projects that either fluctuated or faded into obscurity, its performance once again demonstrates that platform protocols can achieve maximum value capture through fee models, becoming the "ultimate fruit pickers."

pump.fun official website interface

A rough review of its development history shows that pump.fun's story is quite complete:

• In early April, according to data from The Block, the memecoin issuance and trading platform Pump.fun generated $5.2 million in revenue in just 38 days and claimed to ensure that tokens created on the platform would not experience "rug pull" malicious behavior, with each token being fairly issued, without pre-sales or team allocations. ------However, this was quickly disproven by the token issuance performance measured in minutes.

• By early May, pump.fun had issued 418,936 tokens, with cumulative revenue reaching $6.9 million. From April 1 to May 1, Pump.fun's revenue reached $4.99 million. Not only that, but its 24-hour revenue once surpassed popular ecosystems, projects, or platforms like Base, Lido, and Uniswap, ranking in the top five for revenue. ------Riding the wave of meme coins, pump.fun became one of the few "highlights" in the crypto market during the transition between bull and bear markets; after all, everyone needs a casino, and it used to be CEX, now it's pump.fun.

• In mid-May, pump.fun suffered a flash loan attack, and the official statement indicated that the attack was carried out by a former employee who illegally obtained withdrawal permissions using their privileges within the company and executed the flash loan attack through a lending protocol, stealing approximately 12,300 SOL (worth about $1.9 million). The official team subsequently upgraded the contract to ensure platform security. ------The fact that pump.fun could continue to operate smoothly after the theft also demonstrates its anti-fragility.

• By early June, pump.fun's cumulative revenue surpassed $30 million, and it continued to gain momentum, achieving "the highest 24-hour revenue ranking in the blockchain" by early July, surpassing Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and other public chains, reaching $1.99 million. ------At this point, pump.fun truly became a promoter that "disrupted the blockchain network ecosystem."

Moreover, the relationship between pump.fun and the Solana ecosystem has become increasingly close, enjoying ecological dividends, such as the launch of Blinks boosting the listing and surge of SC and other tokens, as well as the cost advantages of project launches on the Solana network and the low threshold for participation. At the same time, it has also injected new innovative forces into the Solana ecosystem to a certain extent, such as the market value of the BILLY meme token once exceeding $100 million, bringing new traffic and liquidity to the Solana ecosystem.

It can be said that in terms of asset issuance efficiency and fair distribution of chips, pump.fun has struck the right balance, thus complementing this market cycle.

pump.fun profit calculation

The Emerging Market Contenders

After witnessing pump.fun's terrifying ability to attract funds, many project teams and platforms in the market became envious, leading to the gradual emergence of a batch of similar "one-click token issuance" platforms. Below are some currently representative or innovative projects that we will briefly introduce.

Moonshot: Backed by Aggregation Platform Dexscreener, Performing Well

In late June, the real-time DEX analysis platform Dexscreener launched the Moonshot token issuance platform, similar to pump.fun. Notably, this platform does not use a separate new website but is integrated into Dexscreener's built-in page, with relatively simpler project thresholds and trading pages compared to pump.fun's cluttered and constantly changing numbers. This makes it visually less stressful. Of course, perhaps because of these reasons, Moonshot provides a lower intensity of numerical stimulation.
Shortly after its launch, Moonshot achieved notable results, launching tens of thousands of tokens in just a few days, and the price performance of tokens like SC was also excellent. This was also discussed in Odaily Planet Daily's previous article, "Using AI Robots to Target Moonshot New Coins: Can Novices Become Scientists?"

Moonshot interface glimpse

We.Rich: Base Ecosystem Imitation, Low Platform Activity

We.Rich is a one-click token issuance platform similar to pump.fun within the Base ecosystem, with similar functions, but the Base ecosystem and pixel-style UI interface are the platform's two major features.

However, based on its official Twitter update frequency and website information, this project has not achieved results comparable to pump.fun and instead seems to be struggling, with a mix of projects on the platform, including many adult-themed image projects.

Additionally, according to its official website display, the trading volume of platform projects is quite meager, indicating that trading activity is not active.

We.Rich official website interface

Rug.fun: Gamified Token Ranking Guessing Platform

From the project name, it is clear that this is another imitation of pump.fun, but it originated from the Farcaster ecosystem.

Moreover, this project has made certain upgrades and iterations based on pump.fun, introducing gamified gameplay—

First, the project has turned token issuance into a "guessing game." Initially, players needed to guess the 1st and 10th places to receive high odds returns. Later, perhaps to enhance the fun of the game or the competitiveness of the project, or perhaps due to a lack of participants and liquidity, the official changed it to the 1st and 3rd places as winners, while other projects would suffer a "rug"; secondly, each game round lasts 12 hours, allowing players to create or buy tokens. Currently, three rounds of games have concluded, including internal testing, the first round, and the second round, while the third round has not yet started; finally, the funds in the prize pool come from the liquidity of tokens ranked 2nd to 9th, with the protocol's official collecting a 1% fee.

Additionally, the official X account's updates have stopped since June 28, suspected to be a "real rug."

Official website interface

Four.Meme: Suspected "Shell Platform" on BNB Chain

According to its official introduction, this is the first fair launch platform for meme coins on the BNB chain, and its project name and brand logo also cleverly use CZ's classic gesture "Four," indicating that they have done their homework. In addition, the project has added a "pie-in-the-sky interface" on its official website—Airdrop Coming Soon, informing users that they can earn future points by participating in platform activities (creating token projects, trading, commenting, etc.) to receive airdrops.

However, based on the follower data and tweet data of its official X platform account, this is likely a transient "shell project," and the authenticity of the token projects is questionable. The seemingly serious leaderboard may also be a setup orchestrated by the project team.

https://four.meme/

flap.sh: A SocialFi Token Launch Platform that Participated in ETHGlobal and Introduced PK Mechanism

This is also a new one-click token issuance platform that has launched on the BNB chain, primarily focusing on the SocialFi concept (mainly reflected in chat rooms) and has introduced a "token PK mechanism"—once a certain token project reaches a market value of $86,000, it can become a PK candidate to compete for more liquidity (the winner merges the liquidity of the losers). If a project can reach a market value of $774,000, it wins. To launch on Pancakeswap V3, at least 70,000 tokens need to be injected as liquidity tokens and burned.

However, perhaps due to the platform being in its early stages, no candidate projects have emerged yet.

https://flap.sh/

bibobibo: A Danmaku Trading Platform for Trading While Commenting

It is understood that BiboBibo aims to create a danmaku trading platform, allowing users to express their trading opinions and emotions while trading. Currently, this project has not launched the "one-click token issuance" feature, and the official website shows that many projects are about to go live. Whether it can attract user attention and bring more liquidity to DEX through danmaku-style communication remains a big question mark.

https://bibobibo.xyz/

Lmao: The Latest Work of Investment Traders

This platform was founded by the former Pantera quantitative department Suki (some claim that the design concept of products similar to pump.fun came from this person, later communicated with founder Alon and AllianceDAO's Qiao, but this has not been confirmed by the parties involved). However, more information about this project has not been disclosed. According to the tweets from the project's X platform account, it still uses a relatively early "hunger marketing" approach, which feels somewhat outdated and boring.

https://lmao.fun/

Conclusion: For Now, "No Competitors," pump.fun Remains the "Only King"

Currently, there are still no competitors in the market that can rival pump.fun or even pose a certain threat to it. The reasons for this, in my opinion, mainly include three aspects:

• The meme coin sentiment has waned, and market attention and liquidity are in a concentrated state, with pump.fun occupying an excellent ecological position due to its first-mover advantage;

• New platforms lack sustained wealth creation effects, making it difficult to leverage the attention economy advantages of meme coins to attract liquidity on a larger scale;

• A low barrier to token issuance does not mean there are no barriers; a low participation threshold does not mean users are willing to engage in losing trades. The focus of one-click token issuance platforms remains on stirring up broader liquidity rather than simply PVP.

Looking back at the meme coin project market in the first half of the year, we can clearly see that meme coins operate in a zero-sum game environment, relying heavily on the massive funds and high liquidity brought by whales and big players, while also depending on a good narrative, memorable materials, and a sensational background to achieve further dissemination and discussion, encouraging more retail investors to participate. Therefore, in the current fluctuating market, for many meme coin players, pump.fun alone suffices, and there is currently no excess liquidity to support the survival of more platforms. Thus, the wealth stories of projects like JENEE and MOTHER may become difficult to replicate "final acts."

What users need is never flashy features or grand platform concepts; they come for the wealth creation effect and leave due to repeated losses.

If liquidity attraction cannot be achieved through incremental means, so-called "one-click token issuance platforms" are merely a false proposition.