Three months to become the "Binance of the meme world," what you don't know about Moonshot

Authors: Joyce, Raymond, BlockBeats

MOODENG, SPX, GOAT… In this meme craze, the emergence of various big dogs has gradually brought the name Moonshot to the attention of crypto players. This newly launched product, through three months of quiet building, has suddenly become known as the "Binance of meme coins." This mobile application, which carries the narrative of "buying memes with fiat," seems to have become the sluice gate of the meme track, regarded by insiders as a key driving force behind the rise of all big dogs.

On the other hand, the explosive popularity of Moonshot came so suddenly that many meme players still know very little about it. What did Moonshot do right in the months leading up to its rise? Is it really, as people say, the ultimate entry point for money and traffic in the meme track?

How the Big Dog Pushers Were Forged

Moonshot launched on July 18, and less than a week after its launch, Murad, who had not yet given a speech on the meme supercycle at Token 2049, specifically tweeted to introduce Moonshot, along with a demo video. "I am not involved in this project in any way, but startups like Moonshot will make the Memecoin supercycle even larger. Their users do not need to know anything about wallets or blockchains; they just need to click once, like paying to upgrade an iPhone game."

At the beginning of Moonshot's launch, many tokens were listed, but its influence did not extend beyond the community until it encountered MOODENG, which had not yet significantly increased in market value. When MOODENG was launched, Moonshot did not specifically tweet about it. After MOODENG continued to rise, the official Twitter account kept updating the "price increase after listing" posts. On September 26, Moonshot tweeted, "The highest trading volume day in Moonshot's history," accompanied by a meme of the MOODENG hippo.

On September 27, Moonshot popped up a notification that MOODENG had achieved a 100x increase since its listing on the app and initiated a vote to "rename Moonshot to MOODENG." Meanwhile, the official MOODENG Twitter account frequently recommended the community use Moonshot to purchase tokens.

Dune data shows that from September 24 to September 28, while MOODENG's market cap rapidly increased from around $100 million to about $300 million, Moonshot's daily expenses quickly rose from about $3,681 to $24,000, and daily trading users grew from 396 to 3,458.

As MOODENG pushed Moonshot "out of the circle," Murad was delivering his "memecoin supercycle" keynote speech at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, calling for $SPX6900. Since the beginning of September, SPX6900's market cap rose from less than $9 million to $900 million in just a month, and before Murad's speech, Moonshot had already listed SPX6900, which at that time had a market cap of less than $30 million.

With the consecutive hits on big dogs, Moonshot truly began to experience the "listing effect." Meme coin projects also hoped to list on Moonshot. The meme coin APU on Ethereum started rising from a market cap of around $60 million at the beginning of September. When it increased by about 2.5 times to a market cap of around $150 million, APU announced on October 6 that it would list on Moonshot and would cross-chain from Ethereum to Solana via Wormhole. Subsequently, APU continued to rise, and as of the time of writing, its market cap was $330 million.

Although the "mutual achievement" with MOODENG brought rapid development to Moonshot, with daily expenses rising from $3,700 at the end of September to $32,000 last weekend, the number of users on Moonshot has not seen significant growth since MOODENG, and daily expenses have experienced periodic declines. In the sentiment-driven meme market, what Moonshot brings to memes is a heat that is more important than trading volume.

Last week, the AI meme coin exploded, running up to a market cap of over $500 million for $GOAT. For related reading, see "Behind the Explosion of GOAT: The Speculative Expectations and Concerns of AI Memes | 100x Review." Moonshot announced the listing of this coin when GOAT's trading volume surged and began to climb from a bottom of less than $40 million to $500 million, once again witnessing Moonshot's "magic."

However, from the perspective of the "listing effect," the trading volume on Moonshot is relatively small compared to the total trading volume of meme coins. At 1 AM today, Moonshot listed the meme coin slop. According to Dune data as of around 4 PM, slop's trading volume on Moonshot was $110,000, while according to Dexcreener data, slop's total trading volume during this period was $46 million, meaning Moonshot contributed 0.2% of slop's trading volume.

From the chart, it can be seen that after the news of the listing on Moonshot, slop's price surged nearly 20% in half an hour, but began to decline after reaching a market cap of $50 million, currently standing at $25.48 million, nearly halving from its peak.

Pump.fun's Junior Brother, the Perfect Partner of MoonPay

Many people do not know that Moonpay and Pump.fun are actually "junior brothers," both incubated by Alliance DAO, making significant strides in the "new retail in crypto" space. QW, a founding partner of Alliance DAO, mentioned in a podcast that Moonshot's market opportunity lies in the fact that "there are not enough retail gambling scenarios in the market."

Of course, having the right direction is not the only reason for Moonshot's success. What sets it apart from its senior brother Pump.fun is the effort it has put into user experience.

One of Alliance's major incubation principles is that when developing crypto products, one should not only focus on blockchain technology itself but also compare with those traditional internet applications that are already very mature and provide excellent user experiences, ensuring that their products can also offer the same smooth and simple onboarding experience. Imran Khan, a founding partner of Alliance DAO, once tweeted that the competitors of crypto products are not just other crypto applications but also the user onboarding experiences of traditional Web2 applications.

The day after Moonshot's launch, it partnered with MoonPay, and all of Moonshot's highlights, such as "fiat purchase, Apple Pay payment," benefited from MoonPay's functionality.

In terms of fees, users on Moonshot incur additional costs in two categories: those charged by Moonshot during the transaction process and those charged by the partner MoonPay during the deposit and withdrawal process. The former includes network fees (gas fees) and management fees, with a 2.5% fee (ranging from $0.3 to $6.25) for transaction amounts below $250, and a 1% fee for amounts exceeding $250.

The fee structure for MoonPay is detailed in the official documentation, with deposit and withdrawal fees for purchases made using PayPal being 4.5% and 3.4%, respectively. The payment function for Apple Pay was explored by MoonPay as early as 2022.

In addition to MoonPay, the non-custodial wallet Turnkey is also a partner of Moonshot. In an article published by Turnkey, it is introduced that after users log into Moonshot, Turnkey will create a non-custodial wallet in the background, allowing users to easily verify transactions using just their email or biometric technology (such as Face ID).

With Alliance DAO, which has incubated Pump.fun, controlling the product direction, MoonPay handling the payment side, and TurnKey managing the wallet side, the application that is "the first to easily trade meme coins using Apple Pay" made a stunning debut, which seems to be a natural outcome.

In Moonshot's official documentation, there are no publicly stated specific listing standards, but it mentions that "generally, a token needs to achieve a total trading volume of about $1 million within 24 hours." Moonshot initially listed many coins, including MAGA, SCF, SPX6900, MUMU, and other lesser-known meme coins, with its "breakout work" being MOODENG.

Clearly, in terms of product experience, Moonshot has reached the ideal standards of Alliance, and Imran even proudly stated that many founders of consumer-oriented startups have already taken Moonshot's user onboarding experience as a benchmark or model for their learning.

The Fiat Meme Track Already Has Competitors

As a newcomer in the payment track, Moonshot has ridden the wave of the meme bull market. By breaking through with fiat payments, Moonshot has further simplified the barrier for users to engage with memes. Moonshot's success lies not only in providing a more efficient trading experience but also in offering a new path for mass adoption in industry development.

The segmented track of fiat memes will certainly not leave Moonshot to walk alone; there are also fiat meme payment products in the market that benchmark against Moonshot: Prerich.

Prerich is an application that simplifies on-chain transactions, proposing a slogan similar to Moonshot's: "Buy memecoins with ease!" Prerich offers a user-friendly interface akin to Robinhood, supporting users in conducting quick and efficient on-chain transactions. Users can also log in using their email and credit card. Prerich's unique meme-themed design interface has also become one of the factors attracting community users.

However, the listing effect of Prerich is far less than that of Moonshot, as it has not produced big dogs like Moondeng and GOAT. Apart from differentiated meme icon marketing, Prerich needs to continuously list big dogs to catch up with Moonshot.

As long as the meme carnival in Crypto continues, innovative products in the payment track will keep emerging. After Moonshot has taken the lead in fiat payments, it opens up a larger imagination space for mass adoption.

As the Binance of the meme world, Moonshot has not only brought significant liquidity and wealth creation effects to on-chain memes but its product model, which is closer to Web2, is quietly changing future entrepreneurs.