Pump.fun Faces Heat as Upstart Launchpads Roll Out Smarter Tokenomics

Move over, meme factories—new platforms are rewriting the playbook with dynamic vesting and anti-rug mechanics. These aren’t your 2021-era shitcoin printers.

Token engineering gets real

The catch? Even the slickest tokenomics can’t fix greed—some degenerate will always find a way to turn a 10x into a ’please sir, can I have some liquidity back.’

• Pump.fun maintains dominance with over 200,000 token launches weekly despite a broader dip in activity.
• New platforms like LaunchLab and Boopdotfun introduce experimental mechanics to challenge incumbents.
• Base and BNB chains see varied traction with launchpads, while memecoins outside these platforms often lead in trading volume

Pump.fun, the token launchpad ecosystem, has experienced significant momentum in recent months, becoming a central mechanism for decentralized token creation. Leading the parade is Pump.fun, whose site enables more than 200,000 weekly token launches.

While total token creation has slowed by half since last January, the trend line shows over 100% year-over-year increase since mid-2024. This represents a maturation of the sector as launchpads move away from novelty status towards becoming structural tools in permissionless markets.

One indicator of maturity for Pump.fun is the rising token “graduation” rate that approaches 2%, which indicates a growing proportion of the project gaining significant engagement and visibility in the market.

With ups and downs in overall volumes, Pump.fun remains consistently active for about 10% of Solana’s meme token traffic.

Pump.fun Drives New Token Ecosystems

Competition in the launchpad ecosystem has heated up. Raydium Protocol, a Solana ecosystem giant, has re-energized its own in-house launchpad, LaunchLab.

Once dormant in terms of activity, LaunchLab picked up steam after the release of a Bonk.fun-type alternative. The system enables teams to have their own branded versions of launchpads, which allows for more customized token ecosystems.

In another initiative, Boopdotfun tested an incentive model tied to token performance. Its airdrop mechanism forced recipients to launch a token and reach a predetermined market capitalization before releasing a reward.

This performance-based mechanism saw a quick spike in usage but saw usage decline steeply within a week as sustainability became a concern. Moonshot, backed in part by Jupiter Exchange, sustains a steady but small stream of a few thousand weekly launches. It has not yet proved to have breakout traction or substantial volume share.

BNB Chain’s Meme Token Engagement Grows

There have also risen several launchpad models on Base that include tools such as automated deployment tool Clanker and socially oriented initiatives like Zora. All but Zora have recorded relatively small base-activity numbers, typically in the dozens.

At the same time, the BNB Chain welcomes @four_meme_on, which sustains a moderate following. Binance’s recent focus on BNB-based tokens and rising social interaction has heralded in this momentum.

In spite of the proliferation of launchpads on multiple chains, non-launchpad memecoins still dominate total trading volumes, most notably on Base.

However, launchpads keep advancing as underlying infrastructure for token economies, and new participants experiment with new techniques to entice users.

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