The Summer of Meme

It’s no exaggeration to call this year’s cryptocurrency market “The Summer of Memes.” The phrase “All-in on Memes, live like a king” aptly summarizes the market’s fervor for Meme coins. Since the creation of Dogecoin (DOGE) in 2014, a new type of cryptocurrency—Meme coins—has emerged. After three cycles of bull and bear markets, Meme coins have finally become mainstream in the latest bull market. Meme coins can be broadly categorized into three types: emotion-driven, capital-driven, and community-driven.
Among these, emotion-driven Meme coins are typically influenced by sudden social events or celebrities (such as Elon Musk or Trump). These are fleeting, emotion-driven phenomena with a highly speculative nature. Their hype cycles usually last from a few hours to a few days before gradually fading away. Given the unpredictability and short-lived nature of such events, developers starting from scratch with coding and community building are often too slow to capitalize on the momentum. On the other hand, community-driven Meme coins are built around narratives, culture, and roadmaps, continuously developing and expanding their community base. With unlimited growth potential and strong network effects, these projects’ hype cycles can last from days to years, depending on the community’s development. Therefore, establishing and maintaining a community is crucial for the project’s success.

From the analysis above, it’s clear that Meme coins, as lightweight tokens that carry user emotions, would become cumbersome if developed and community-built like other projects. Thus, a low-cost and rapid Meme launch platform is what the market urgently needs.

The Emergence of Pump.fun, Solana’s Largest Meme Launch Platform

Enter Pump.fun. As its name suggests, Pump.fun is a massive pump on Solana. Since last year, Solana’s Meme projects have been skyrocketing, including viral hits like WIF, which took the internet by storm, BOME, which initiated the “presale trend,” and SLERF, which was “resurrected from the dead.” Pump.fun, riding on Solana’s success, has garnered widespread attention due to its ultra-low-cost token issuance and highly automated features. From March 1st of this year to date, Pump.fun has generated approximately $97.67 million in revenue. A tiny team of just three people created nearly $100 million in revenue in about six months.

Pump.fun’s success factors include fairness, no team allocation, unique innovative mechanisms, and the integration of live entertainment features. It has streamlined the final steps of launching Memecoins into a productized process, significantly lowering the barriers to entry and enabling ordinary users to create their own Meme coins easily.
However, much like SushiSwap’s “vampire attack” on Uniswap, the leader of a hot race is bound to face a wave of competition. As time passed, many users began to realize that Memecoins launched on Pump.fun was increasingly becoming PVP (player versus player), leading to growing dissatisfaction. The market demanded a new Memecoin launchpad.

A “Vampire Attack” on Launch Platforms—Sun.pump

As a result, Pump.fun’s competitors eagerly joined the Meme launchpad frenzy. The excitement seemed to enter its second half with the announcement by TRON founder Justin Sun that TRON would support the ecosystem’s first fair launch trading Meme coin platform, “Sun Pump.” Sun Pump claims to uphold principles of fair issuance and fair trading, allowing creators to launch tokens easily and at very low cost, much like Pump.fun, utilizing a bonded curve pricing mechanism. Sun Pump benefits from TRON’s traffic support, Gas subsidies, and a $10 million incentive plan. Since its launch on August 13th, it has attracted much of the market’s attention. About a week after its Beta version went live, Sun Pump’s single-day revenue surpassed Pump.fun’s, and its traffic reached 30%-40% of Pump.fun’s.

The platform quickly gained attention, with the market value of tokens like Sundog (SUNDOG) on Tron soaring to $190 million, far exceeding the top token on Pump.fun, Michi (MICHI), which has a market value of $61 million. The rapid success has caught the attention of traders, many of whom are now migrating from Solana to Tron in search of better opportunities.
Notably, SunPump’s launchpad has shown a higher “graduation” rate, with 1.98% of issued tokens listed on Tron’s decentralized exchange Sunswap after reaching trading volume thresholds. In contrast, only 1.26% of tokens issued on Pump.fun made it to Solana’s Raydium exchange. Last week, Pump.fun began to experience significant user attrition, with traders believing the platform had become oversaturated. With too many tokens flooding the market, no platform can achieve significant success. Although the number of tokens issued on Pump.fun has decreased, the success rate remains just over 1%, further driving people toward SunPump.

A Heated Race and Emerging Competitive Landscape

In May, a team launched a Meme launcher on the Base chain—We.Rich. This platform almost replicated some of Pump.fun’s features, even introducing several golden dogs. However, just two weeks after We.Rich’s launch, the platform’s popularity began to wane, never regaining the initial excitement.
In mid-June, DEX Screener quietly launched its Moonshot product. Moonshot allows users to see which new Memes are trending on DEX Screener and enables them to launch their own Meme coins on the platform. Moonshot quickly attracted many users who were eager to try it out.

Another hot launch platform, Rug.fun, hails from the Farcaster ecosystem and offers a relatively unique gameplay experience, similar to horse racing. Players need to correctly guess the first and tenth place to receive high payout rewards. Each round of the game lasts 12 hours, during which players can create tokens or buy tokens. Initially, players could freely change their bet tokens without incurring additional fees.
In August, Four.meme launched. Four.meme, as a launch platform on the BNB Chain, draws clear connections to BNB from its project name to its brand logo, which features CZ’s classic hand gesture “Four.”
Currently, every chain has its version of Pump.fun. As different chain Memecoin launch platforms rise, the Memecoin market’s traffic is being divided, with a lack of new liquidity. As a newcomer, Sun.pump has recently attracted much attention, driving up TRX prices. The market is awash with hot money, but whether this momentum can be sustained remains uncertain. Whether Pump.fun can leverage Solana to regain user attention also remains to be seen. Although Base and BNB Chain have official events and support, the wealth effect has not been significant. It will be interesting to see what other exciting developments unfold in the Meme launch platform arena.