New meme launch platforms emerge, but it will take time to catch up with Pump.fun

More than a week ago, DEX Screener quietly launched Moonshot, a Meme launch product interface.

In short, Moonshot allows players to check what popular new memes are on DEX Screener. In addition, players can also issue their own meme coins on DEX Screener. Once Moonshot was launched, many players entered to experience it.

After the new product was released, the community had high expectations for it. A community member said, "Moonshot relies on Dexscreener and uses its huge user base to provide more detailed token trading information for early trading users of Meme coins. The unified token details page design also reduces the user's learning cost and helps new and old users get started faster."

However, what’s interesting is that when Moonshot was “using its strengths to attack the opponent’s weaknesses”, it found that its opponent Pump.fun did not seem to be so easy to defeat.

“Pump.fun imitation disk”

Moonshot is not the first Meme launch platform. pump.fun was born in January 2024. Its founder is Alon (@a1lon9). After Alon chatted with Qiao (@QwQiao) of Alliance, pump.fun was launched with the help of Alliance. Its initial product idea actually came from Suki (@tradergirlsuki), a former Pantera member.

Afterwards, pump.fun quickly occupied the market share of Meme launch platforms with its excellent operation and god disk manufacturing capabilities. The first meme deployed on Pump.fun was TEST, and it was TEST that brought Pump.fun over $5 million in revenue and officially brought Pump.fun into the community's vision.

It is reported that there were several meme coins with astonishing growth on the pump.fun platform. Among them, the token named "bert" achieved a tenfold increase in just 15 minutes after opening, causing a sensation in the market. Another highly-watched project "WEI" attracted investors with its unique background story. WEI claimed to be an AI-generated girl and said she liked the Solana ecosystem very much. This abstract setting pushed its price up three times in just half an hour.

The success of the pump.fun platform is inseparable from its innovative technical mechanism. The platform uses the Bonding Curve and the mechanism of automatic migration to AMM (automatic market maker) to greatly simplify the issuance process of Meme coins. An industry analyst said: "Pump.Fun actually opened up the last mile of issuing Memecoin. This innovation greatly lowers the issuance threshold, allowing ordinary users to easily create their own Meme coins."

In addition to technological innovation, pump.fun has also added entertainment functions such as live broadcasting to the platform, combining Meme coin transactions with entertainment. This move not only enhances user stickiness, but also provides a new channel for the spread of Meme coins. But over time, many players gradually discovered that the Memecoin issued on pump.fun gradually became PVP and was no longer a god disk. The market needs new pioneers.

It’s not easy to beat Pump.fun

In May this year, a team launched a meme launcher based on the base chain, We.Rich. The platform almost replicated some of the features of pump.fun, and even had a lot of gold dogs. But just two weeks after the launch of We.Rich, the popularity of the platform began to gradually fade, and it has never reproduced the grand occasion of the initial launch. A month later, the We.Rich launcher fell into trouble. As of press time, its Telegram group had only 217 users, and most of them were inactive. Industry insiders pointed out that the operation of the project was almost stagnant.

After DEX Screener launched its new platform Moonshot this month, the platform was quickly criticized by users, and was accused of being "not as good as pump.fun". Some users criticized its slow action, which led to the impersonation of its official Twitter account.

Some netizens found that there were multiple fake accounts pretending to be "Moonshot" on the Twitter platform, including some high-imitation accounts with a large number of fans, and some have even accumulated about 11,000 fans.

Then DEX Screener posted a message on social media X saying: "Moonshot does not have an X account, don't be fooled."

In addition, crypto user @cryptoleon_eth said that "moonshot pvp is serious, he lost $200 in 2 hours." This Moonshot user bought 7 different meme coins on Moonshot, each for $20 to $30. However, these tokens fell rapidly after the purchase, resulting in serious losses. Soon everyone discovered that although the names of the meme tokens on Moonshot were interesting, the rug phenomenon was very serious.

Interestingly, Moonshot's product model is jokingly called the "MS model" (Moonshot model) by community users. This model is causing widespread discussion and concern. Its characteristics are:

Make small cakes: Project parties tend to launch token issuance activities with smaller scale and higher thresholds.

Drive away "rural people": "rural people" here refer to retail investors and small investment institutions, who are considered to be the foundation of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

One family takes all: large institutional investors (commonly known as "dog dealers") gain more market share and profits.

The MS model has made some adjustments based on the original ecosystem of Pump.Fun, but these changes seem to be more subtractions than additions. The main impact of the MS model is to "kick out some dog dealers", that is, to reduce the participation of certain large investors. This change may be aimed at creating a fairer market environment, but it may also affect the liquidity and activity of the market.

LaunchPad (broadly speaking, a token issuance platform) has played a vital role in the development of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. From the early Uniswap to the now-popular pump.fun, the success of these platforms presents a strategy of "surrounding the city with the countryside", uniting the majority of ordinary user groups to ultimately achieve the prosperity of the platform.

However, there are also voices that believe that the MS model may be the result of the natural evolution of the market, reflecting investors' demand for more mature and professional projects. Supporters believe that this may help eliminate some lower-quality projects and improve the professional level of the entire industry.

The Meme launch platform track heats up, and a diversified competitive landscape is beginning to emerge

After the Moonshot launch, although there are indeed deficiencies in the mechanism and constant controversy, retail investors' attitude towards the Meme coin launch platform has shown a clear two-sidedness. When the Meme coin market was hot, retail investors were generally optimistic about these platforms; but when the market cooled down, they criticized the platforms for "being greedy". However, Meme coin launch platforms still frequently create "magic plates" to attract retail investors to scramble to bet. They are one of the most eye-catching existences in the dull market.

As a platform relying on the Dexscreener user base, Moonshot represents the power of "grassroots innovation" in the cryptocurrency world. As a popular cryptocurrency market analysis tool, Dexscreener has a large number of active users. Moonshot takes advantage of this user base and provides ordinary investors with a low-threshold way to participate in the creation and trading of Meme coins.

At the same time, the meme launcher track has become increasingly popular in the crypto entrepreneur circle. On June 22, 2024, the meme launcher named Lmao sent its first tweet and received nearly 10,000 views. Lmao was founded by Suki, the former Pantera quantitative leader.

Interestingly, Suki is also the original creator of the pump.fun product design. Because Suki rejected allicedao's investment, allicedao's wanqiao plagiarized Suki's idea and told it to the current pump.fun team, which was incubated by alllicedao. The product form of pump.fun in the first two months was almost the same as her own idea.

This time, Lmao created by Suki is not only a meme coin launch platform, but also has strong social attributes. Meme players can freely chat and exchange views on memes. Lmao's vision is to issue coins to all people.

Unlike pump.fun's indifference to the security of user assets, Lmao attaches great importance to the security of user assets. On May 17, pump.fun was attacked, and the attacker could participate in the meme coins released by the platform indefinitely through a loophole. The attack was caused by a former employee who used his privileged position in the company to steal about 12,300 SOLs. This greatly increased users' concerns about asset security. Lmao has strictly managed the rights of engineers, and the security of users' assets can be guaranteed, which is in sharp contrast to the attitude of pump.fun.

The Lmao platform, founded by top North American fund traders, represents another development path. They brought their rich financial experience into the Meme coin field, which is expected to bring a more standardized and professional operation mode to the market.

For now, however, despite the controversy and security issues in the community about pump.fun’s role in the Meme market, it seems that it will take time for emerging platforms to subvert its position. Some investors reviewed pump.fun’s past successes and believe that it is still the most competitive Meme coin launch platform on the Solana chain. Pump.fun has temporarily maintained its market leadership with its first-mover advantage and user base, but as the number of players in the track continues to increase, what interesting changes will occur in the meme launch platform is worthy of further attention.

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