Is the issuing coin platform in a crazy competition? Have you really made money?

Author丨Jesse, BUBBLE

Source丨BlockBeats

Original Title: The token issuance platform has rolled up, but have you made any money?

In the past year, the Meme coin issuance platform Launchpad on the Solana chain has experienced explosive growth and quickly formed a highly competitive landscape. Pump.fun, as one of the earliest rising platforms, is seen as a catalyst for the prosperity of the “on-chain casino” on Solana. The platform allows any user to issue tokens without any threshold, adopts bonding curve pricing, and has pioneered a fair issuance model with no presales and no team shares.

With Solana’s advantages of low-cost, high-speed transactions, Pump.fun detonated the meme coin frenzy in 2024. In just 13 months, platform users issued more than 8 million tokens, peaking on October 24, 2024, with more than 36,000 tokens produced in a single day, with an average of 25 new tokens being born every minute. This unprecedented scale of token creation allowed Pump.fun to dominate the market for a time, and also made Solana known as the largest “casino” on the chain. However, the success of Pump.fun also comes with concerns. On the one hand, a large number of low-quality projects have emerged, with a graduation rate of less than 1%, and the vast majority of tokens are short-lived. On the other hand, the platform is highly profitable but users generally lose money, statistics show that nearly 90% of users lose their principal or make less than $100 in meme coin trading, while the platform has received about $98 million in just 6 months.

By the end of 2024, Pump.fun’s official revenue is expected to exceed $223 million (approximately 1.15 million SOL), and it continues to liquidate the SOL earned. In just a year and a half, the platform fee account has sold about 3.403 million SOL (approximately $629 million), becoming the second-largest source of selling pressure after early Solana investors FTX/Alameda. Such a massive outflow of funds has raised concerns within the community about the platform’s sustainability and ecological impact. In the face of Pump.fun’s dominance, market participants have swiftly taken action, leading to intense competition within the entire Meme Launchpad sector. Within the Solana ecosystem, the established decentralized exchange Raydium has launched LaunchLab to compete with Pump.fun; the popular meme coin BONK has opened the LetsBonk.fun launchpad; and the on-chain aggregator Jupiter is also attempting to offer similar services.

Daily token deployment situation, data comes from @adam_tehc’s DUNE

**1.**Challenge of Pump.fun

Pump.fun, as a pioneer of meme coin one-click launch platforms, has established a basic operating model. Users only need to fill in basic information such as token name and symbol, and can automatically deploy token contracts and establish trading pools without programming skills, significantly lowering the threshold for issuing coins. The platform uses various bonding curve pricing models to balance initial prices and market demand, and the issued tokens can be traded immediately in the platform’s AMM pool without needing to inject liquidity in advance.

When the new coins reach a certain market value threshold, they will automatically inject part of the liquidity into the Raydium trading pool and burn the corresponding LP tokens, ensuring that the project team cannot withdraw from the pool and run away, improving the liquidity security.

With the experience of “no-code token issuance and instant trading”, Pump.fun quickly rose to fame in 2024, giving rise to a large number of creative meme tokens, including many with hundreds or even thousands of times the value, attracting numerous speculators. The platform extracts transaction fees, becoming one of the most profitable on-chain applications in 2024.

However, as it developed, the problems with Pump.fun gradually became apparent: less than 1% of the over 8 million issued tokens successfully “graduated” into external liquidity pools; user earnings were severely polarized, forming a zero-sum game; the platform monetized transaction fees and continued to sell SOL, putting selling pressure on the Solana network; the completely anonymous and unverified model, while in line with the spirit of cryptocurrency, brought regulatory and trust risks. As a result, Pump.fun’s growth rate slowed down in early 2025, with daily transaction volumes dropping from a peak of $544 million in January to $270 million in February, a decline of nearly 50%.

The token graduation rate of Pumpfun has been continuously declining on a weekly basis.

2. Wheel Battle - LaunchLab, Boop, Believe

**1.**LaunchLab’s On-Chain Degen Strategy

Raydium LaunchLab is one of the most direct competitors of Pump.fun in the Solana ecosystem. Raydium itself is an important AMM protocol on Solana, and in its early days, it benefited from Pump.fun’s contribution of 41% of Swap fee revenue. However, with Pump.fun launching PumpSwap independently, Raydium’s traffic and trading volume have been significantly impacted.

In March 2025, Raydium launched LaunchLab, which is seen as a direct response to Pump.fun. The overall mechanism of the platform is highly similar to Pump.fun, both supporting one-click token issuance and curve pricing, but with targeted optimizations in the details.

Supports multiple pricing curves, allowing project teams to choose linear, logarithmic, or exponential models based on token positioning; sets lower transaction fees at only 1%, below Pump.fun’s 2%, and with no additional migration fees; the graduation threshold has also been lowered, requiring only 85 SOL (approximately $11,000) to transfer to the Raydium AMM pool; at the same time, a creator sharing mechanism has been introduced, allowing graduation token founders to continue receiving 10% of the transaction fee sharing; the platform has also strengthened ecological integration, including the buyback of the platform token RAY with transaction fees, supporting LP locking, and introducing diverse pricing innovations.

On the day the news was released, the RAY coin surged by 14%, with the market having high hopes for Raydium LaunchLab. Although the official statement indicated that LaunchLab is “providing alternative options,” it has effectively attracted some projects to shift their focus, weakening the dominance of Pump.fun.

In addition, several platforms, including LetsBonk.fun launched in collaboration with the BONK community, as well as Meteora, Boop, and Genesis Launches, are also striving to break through and push the entire Launchpad market into a stage of full competition.

The daily active users of LaunchLab are growing rapidly.

**2.**A different approach to Believe, innovative narrative productization concept strategy

As the Meme Launchpad track becomes increasingly crowded, the “rebirth” of the Believe project has attracted widespread attention in the industry.

As the Meme Launchpad track becomes increasingly crowded, the rebirth of the Believe project has attracted widespread attention in the industry. Founded by Australian entrepreneur Ben Pasternak, Believe was formerly known as the social token platform Clout. Ben has created several hit applications and successfully monetized them, but Clout quickly faded due to its over-reliance on celebrity effects. At the end of April 2025, Ben returned to the market with the upgraded platform Believe, shifting the philosophy from “Believe in Someone” to “Believe in Something,” emphasizing the value belief in creativity and ideas, marking a strategic transformation of the platform from social asset trading to a creative incubation factory.

Ben commented on this change, saying “This is a shift from influence to trust. We are no longer hyping celebrities, but rather looking for meaningful projects.”

Believe adopts a unique product mechanism, using social platforms as the entry point for token issuance, achieving a seamless connection between Web2 and Web3. Users only need to @LaunchACoin on platform X and attach the token name, and the system will automatically create the token using Meteora’s joint curve, without the need to log into a DApp or fill out a form. This “discussion equals token issuance” interaction model allows any valuable idea to be instantly transformed into a Token, significantly lowering the participation threshold. The platform also establishes a “B Point” mechanism, where when the token fee income reaches a critical value, the founder can withdraw funds to support the project; if it does not meet the standard, it is considered a market rejection. Although the B Point is not a rigid numerical threshold, its underlying logic is similar to the Kickstarter crowdfunding mechanism: “transaction heat equals market voting.”

Imran Khan, the founding partner of Alliance DAO, once commented, “Founders or Scouts mark @LaunchACoin, and a token is born. The market will assign value based on the significance of the problem this idea aims to solve.” In short, market enthusiasm determines the fate of a project.

In terms of the profit structure, Believe has also implemented a series of innovative designs. A 2% transaction fee is charged for each transaction, and unlike other LaunchPads, its tokens still carry a 2% trading tax for both buying and selling within the contract after launch. However, the distribution structure is highly incentive-oriented: 1% is allocated to the token creator (founder), 0.1% is rewarded to Scouts (the earliest users who discovered or promoted the token), and the remaining 0.9% goes to platform operations. This mechanism not only provides immediate income assurance for creators but also incorporates “token discoverers” into the revenue sharing system for the first time, greatly incentivizing the community to actively discover and spread quality ideas.

Since its launch, Believe has recorded a total trading volume of 1.8 billion dollars, bringing 9.5 million dollars in direct revenue to creators, of which 4.7 million dollars is from the trading of Believe tokens.

According to the BelieveScan panel data, the fee income of Believe in the past 24 hours is approximately 10 million.

While opening up for token issuance, Believe is also attempting to govern the platform’s order to avoid becoming a place for the proliferation of junk coins.

In terms of creator incentives, Believe’s mechanism is to choose to share with issuers, returning 1% directly to creators for each transaction; there are no reserved holdings or token proportion controls, allowing founders to freely define distribution; the establishment of a Scout incentive mechanism promotes “decentralized” content discovery; the platform actively displays data such as transaction volume and creator income, enhancing transparency. The involvement of some Web2 entrepreneurs has also strengthened Believe’s Meta quality, with developers like RizzGPT’s Alex Leiman and well-known hacker Ruben Norte having issued personal tokens on the platform, with project market values once soaring to millions of dollars, pushing Believe’s image from a purely Meme playground towards a “creative value testing ground.”

This narrative logic is particularly evident in the LaunchCoin event. The token originated from PASTERNAK, which was personally issued by Ben, and was later renamed LaunchCoin when it was launched on the platform, giving it functional significance. On the day of its launch, LaunchCoin surged 200 times, with a market value exceeding 200 million dollars, sparking intense discussions within the community.

Some users see it as a sign that the platform has officially entered the governance token phase; others question whether Ben is using his founder status for arbitrage. In the end, Ben sold most of his holdings in batches, making a profit of about 1.3 million dollars. The fate of LaunchCoin has sparked heated debates in the community around the core theme of “trust.” Whether supporters or skeptics, this storm has successfully brought Believe’s brand positioning back to the center of discussion and validated the attention on its main value direction.

The trust narrative emphasizes the value behind creativity, no longer simply encouraging foolhardy operations, attracting more rational Builders and entrepreneurs. The profit bundling mechanism allows creators, Scouts, and platforms to have a profit mechanism, binding participants’ interests economically and continuously incentivizing quality content. Under this mechanism, although many Web2 talents have emerged with product-launch tokens.

However, the real feedback from the community after participation is that when the token goes live, most of the chips are held by bots, and due to the high tax that existed at the beginning, there are fewer sell orders. High-quality projects can quickly reach a market value of over 5-10 million dollars, and then the trading tax decreases. Bots holding a large number of chips will then sell off massively, resulting in many tokens rising to hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions in market value, but their sustainability is not very good. Some people in the community believe that this is good for entrepreneurs, Scouts, and platforms, but these costs are borne by retail investors.

Ben hopes to seek a dynamic balance between “empowering real value projects” and “curbing blind speculative bubbles” through Believe. Although there is still controversy over whether it can truly go far in the market, at the current stage, Believe has successfully established a differentiated label in the Meme Launchpad battle through mechanism innovation, topical events, and explosive data.

III. Key Differences Comparison of Leading Platforms

After the runaway success of Pump.fun and the subsequent imitation by various platforms, the current Meme Launchpad market has formed multiple leading camps. Below is a horizontal comparison of Pump.fun, Raydium LaunchLab, Boop, and Believe across key dimensions.

**1.**Issuance Method and Threshold

Pump.fun, LaunchLab, and SunPump all use a DApp page-style one-click token issuance, where users need to log in and fill in the relevant token information to complete the deployment process. Believe, on the other hand, completely steps out of the DApp paradigm, triggering token issuance through Twitter social links without needing to enter the platform page.

From the threshold perspective, Boop, Pump.fun, and LaunchLab have almost no requirements for issuers, allowing any user to issue tokens at any time. Believe appears to have zero barriers to entry, but in reality, it has formed a certain “natural selection” through social networks, with people who follow entrepreneurs like Ben and Alex becoming the first batch of creators and participants.

In terms of “graduation thresholds”, Pump.fun was initially set to a market value of $69,000; LaunchLab was initially set at 85 SOL (approximately $11,000), but it can be set to a minimum launch mode of 30 SOL, which has a lower threshold; while Believe does not set a fixed threshold and judges whether the idea is accepted by the market based on the trading fee income from the “B point”.

2. Fee Structure and Distribution Mechanism

Pump.fun charges a 2% transaction fee, initially fully owned by the platform, starting from May 2025, it will return 50% to creators; LaunchLab has a transaction fee rate of 1%, of which 25% is used to repurchase the platform token RAY, and founders can apply for an additional maximum of 10%; Believe charges a 2% transaction fee embedded within the token contract, of which 1% goes to creators, 0.1% to Scouts, and 0.9% is retained by the platform. According to the data, Believe offers the highest profit-sharing ratio to creators among all platforms, while also pioneering the Scout profit-sharing incentive, allowing discoverers to continue benefiting.

**3.**Community Participation and Governance

Pump.fun adheres to extreme libertarianism, with no censorship or governance mechanisms. The community relies on spontaneous organization for hot topic dissemination, but this also makes it susceptible to manipulation by large players, resulting in retail investors “losing more and winning less.”

Raydium LaunchLab leverages its AMM background to bind DeFi community resources and facilitates ecosystem circulation through platform token incentives; Boop, on the other hand, relies on Dingaling’s previous influence within the community.

Believe attempts to incorporate community consensus decision-making elements in its governance. Through methods such as token governance and Snapshot voting, discussions are held on whether the tokens should enter the DEX liquidity pool, whether to support promotion, etc., forming a preliminary framework from “issuing tokens means governance.” If it matures in the future, its user community stickiness is expected to far exceed that of current mainstream platforms.

4. Creator Economy Model

In terms of creator incentives, Believe and LaunchLab are the most attractive. Believe has built a flywheel effect of issuing tokens → attracting new users → issuing tokens again, based on a 1% transaction fee returned upon token issuance, combined with the Scout reward mechanism.

LaunchLab retains creators through low barriers, high freedom, and RAY buyback mechanisms, while Pump.fun has lost some attractiveness in the new environment due to a lack of early incentive mechanisms.

IV. Market Outlook for LaunchPad

As the Meme Launchpad market transitions from its explosive growth phase to maturity, some key trends are emerging, providing reference directions for platform competition and industry evolution.

**1.**The data frenzy has subsided, and refined competition has begun

On-chain data shows that the frenzy of meme coin issuance is declining. Taking Pump.fun as an example, its daily trading volume and daily coin issuance have significantly decreased since early 2025, making the “get rich overnight” myth difficult to replicate on a large scale.

This means that the stage of barbaric growth is about to end, and competition among platforms will shift towards refined operations. Whoever can continuously create popular products, improve creator profitability, and enhance user trading experiences will be able to take the initiative before the next wave of excitement. The data from Pump.fun users voting with their feet (a halved trading volume) also indicates that if a platform cannot improve the profit and loss structure and emotional experience of participants, even first-mover advantages will gradually be eroded.

2. The business model shifts from “harvesting” to “win-win”

The early profit model of Pump.fun is simple and straightforward: the platform charges fees, and users have a very low winning rate in the gamble, creating a one-sided structure where “the platform wins and the users lose.” In contrast, new platforms represented by Believe and LaunchLab generally adopt a growth strategy that benefits creators and the community.

For example, Believe directly returns 1% of the transaction fees to the founders to encourage creators to continuously produce content; LaunchLab builds a more intrinsically growing ecological closed loop through transaction fee sharing and RAY repurchase. Future Launchpads will emphasize a win-win situation for the platform, creators, and users, forming a true “content incentive network.”

Pump.fun recently launched a creator revenue-sharing mechanism, which can also be seen as this new model putting pressure on old players.

**3.**Multi-chain patterns become the norm, with each ecosystem digging into its own Meme soil

As the competition among Solana-based platforms (Pump.fun, LaunchLab, BONK) heats up, other public chains are also ramping up their deployment of their own Meme Launchpad: Tron’s SunPump, Solana’s Boop, Base’s Genesis Launches, and even projects from the ICP and Avalanche ecosystems are starting to test the waters.

Essentially, meme token platforms have become a powerful tool for public chains to compete for active users. Meme coins, due to their low entry barriers and strong topical nature, are naturally suited for building on-chain traffic.

In the future, major public chains may give rise to one or two leading Meme Launchpads, which will be deeply integrated with wallets, social platforms, and NFT tools, becoming important indicators of ecosystem activity and user loyalty.

**4.**Community culture and narrative construction will become the platform’s moat

The core of a meme lies not in technology, but in the narrative. The platform itself is no exception:

Pump.fun started with the slogan “ultimate freedom, absolute openness,” but as a result, it fell into the problems of rampant market makers and poor quality projects;

Raydium emphasizes “fair launch and technical optimization,” shaping the image of the “Avenger” to attract native user return;

Boop will focus on the value recovery of the core token by integrating its personal brand “Dingaling” with the ecosystem of $Boop.

Believe takes the “trust and value” route, attempting to attract the Builder community and positioning creativity as the source of Memes.

In the future, community culture will directly determine what kind of user groups the platform attracts: whether they are more Degen (purely speculative), KOL (influencer-driven), Builder (value-oriented), or general users (mainly for entertainment). The platform’s differentiated positioning will no longer stop at product mechanisms, but will extend to the level of emotional consensus and cultural atmosphere.

From the perspective of daily token deployment ratios, Pumpfun’s market share has shifted from a significant monopoly to 57%.

5. From Meme to ICM, a new path for entrepreneurial incubation emerges

Although currently 99% of meme coins are still short-term speculative assets, some projects have begun to attempt “transitioning from meme to product.” Some founders are using transaction fees to establish initial funding pools, starting to form teams and develop prototypes; some platforms, like Believe, encourage founders to fulfill their Roadmap through a mechanism of “releasing startup funds after reaching point B.”

The community has begun to conduct long-term observation and governance on certain tokens, such as LaunchCoin, which has experimental value in governance, profit distribution, and functionality expansion. If a small number of Meme projects are successfully incubated into actual products through the Launchpad in the future, their “symbolic” nature will have a profound impact on the entire industry: it will prove that the Launchpad can not only incubate speculative coins but also nurture the objectives of Web3 projects. At that time, the Launchpad will no longer be a “distribution tool” but rather a “project cold start infrastructure.”

Five, Summary

The Meme Launchpad is currently standing at the critical point of transitioning from barbaric explosion to refined operation. The dominance of Pump.fun has been broken, as platforms like Raydium LaunchLab and Believe have entered the market with differentiated strategies, gradually capturing shares of users and creators.

The future winners in the industry are not necessarily those with the lowest transaction fees, but those who can build content flywheels, community consensus, and platform trust mechanisms. Believe has initially established its differentiated moat through social distribution models, Scout incentive mechanisms, and governance exploration, demonstrating strong potential for iteration and growth. Of course, this is still a marathon competition. Platforms that can truly stand out must achieve a balance across multiple dimensions, including “cultural identity, creator win-win, ecological governance, and safety compliance.”

As Ben Pasternak said: “We are not just creating a platform; we want to give every good idea a chance for monetization.” This may be the most credible direction for Meme Launchpad’s next phase.