Launchpad Reshuffle: The Collapse of Pump.fun's Crypto Empire

Author: Thejaswini M A Source: token dispatch Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

"The King is dead, long live the King."

This declaration echoed through the Palace of Versailles on May 10, 1774. Louis XV had just breathed his last. In a moment, the nobles who had once kowtowed before him turned and left, flocking to the next king.

This wasn't cold-bloodedness; it was survival instinct.

The French understand a truth about power: it never belongs to anyone. Like water, it always seeks its next container. This declaration wasn't a mourning for the dead king, but a recognition of the living one. The monarchs of yesteryear might today be mere historical footnotes. The change came swiftly, cruelly, and inevitably. Power requires this kind of indifference. Empires rise on the bones of their predecessors. New rulers inherit the throne. And so it goes. And now, on the Solana chain’s memecoin Launchpad, this ancient ritual is being enacted. Pump.fun is the undisputed leader, holding 88% of the market share just a month ago. Now, it holds only 13%, while new challenger Let’sBONK has taken 86%. This is more than just another manifestation of the volatility of the crypto world. This is a textbook example of the collapse of an empire: When you forget that attention is the ultimate moat, even the greatest first-mover advantage vanishes in an instant. How did the Pump.fun empire build? To understand Pump.fun's fall, we must first understand just how powerful it once was. Launched in January 2024 by three 20-somethings, it defied the logic of memecoin issuance with a single sentence: "Upload a picture of a dog, breakfast, or even a random meme, give it a name, click a few times, and boom! You've issued a coin for under $2, no code required." It satisfied a fundamental impulse: to transform something "nothing" into something "of some value." In the crypto world, this isn't a fantasy; it's a business model. By January 2025, Pump.fun had generated over $458 million in revenue, listing thousands of new coins daily, with peak daily revenue exceeding $7 million. More crucially, it won the battle for attention, becoming synonymous with Solana memecoin culture. Anyone launching a coin on Crypto Twitter defaulted to using Pump.fun. It not only dominated the infrastructure but also firmly controlled the cultural discourse. Empires built on self-sufficiency often develop weaknesses that competitors can exploit. Tragedy began with one of its most "innovative" features: live streaming. Originally intended to allow issuers to promote their tokens on camera, things spiraled out of control. Starting in November 2024, some people began engaging in extreme behavior during livestreams to attract attention: simulated self-harm, suicide threats, animal abuse, and, in the most serious instance, a minor threatened his family with a shotgun in front of the camera, simply to pump up the market. Pump.fun was forced to urgently shut down its livestreaming feature, but its reputation was already ruined. Revenue plummeted by 66% that week, public opinion backfired, and competitors began to swoop in. Faced with declining revenue and competitive pressure, Pump.fun made a seemingly clever but ultimately fatal decision: launching an initial coin offering (ICO) to save itself. The ICO was technically a success—raising $500 million from over 10,000 wallets in just 12 minutes, plus a $700 million private round. But a closer look revealed the same old story: over 200 wallets had fully deposited the $1 million cap, and the first 340 buyers scooped up 60% of the shares. All sale tokens were fully unlocked (no lock-up), with only a 48-72 hour transfer blackout period. Almost half of participants added funds to their wallets within 24 hours—a pattern that could indicate an organized buying strategy or simply strong retail interest in the offering. The token price initially surged 75% to $0.007, but enthusiasm quickly cooled. Within weeks, it plummeted 60%, hitting new lows in a classic "death spiral." The token economics themselves were also highly aggressive, with only 33% allocated to public and private offerings, leaving the remaining 67% in the hands of the project, with no clear timeline for distribution. Of this 33%, 18% was private placement reserved for institutional investors. Although users generated nearly $750 million in revenue for the platform, there were no immediate community rewards. Meanwhile, private placement investors dumped $160 million worth of tokens on exchanges, creating significant selling pressure. The final straw that broke the camel's back was co-founder Alon Cohen's public announcement that the long-promised airdrop "will not happen in the foreseeable future." For months, the project had hinted at upcoming rewards that would be "more generous than anyone else in the industry," building immense market anticipation. But just when community trust was at its most fragile, they canceled the airdrop. The token price plummeted 15% in 24 hours. It wasn't the airdrop itself that was significant, but the cost of the broken promise that was so devastating.

Bonk’s Rise

While Pump.fun continues to stumble, Let’sBONK is quietly building everything its competitor lacks: transparency, community orientation, and clear communication.

Currently, Let’sBONK’s daily revenue has reached $1.3 million, while Pump.fun only makes $254,000, a five-fold difference. Annualized, Let’sBONK’s monthly revenue reaches $434.92 million, while Pump.fun’s is $267.25 million.

From almost zero in May to consistently exceeding $1 million in daily revenue in July, Let’sBONK’s revenue has steadily increased. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's revenue has plummeted from a January peak of over $7 million to levels last seen in September 2024. Since its ICO, the PUMP token has lost 60% of its market value, while BONK has remained relatively stable, with a market capitalization of $2.1 billion. Let’sBONK uses 1% of its weekly revenue to repurchase BONK tokens, supporting this pre-existing ecosystem token. Pump.fun once capitalized on network effects—developers launched tokens there because traders were there, and traders were there because the hottest memecoins were first launched there. This flywheel spun faster and faster, seemingly unstoppable. But attention is fragile. Unlike the moats of traditional businesses—economies of scale, switching costs, and regulatory barriers—users’ minds can crumble in an instant if trust collapses. A livestreaming incident gave users reason to try alternative platforms. Let’sBONK immediately became a “clean” option, one without the baggage of history. It was like Myspace losing to Facebook. Myspace had the features and scale, but it lost the cultural narrative. Facebook became a platform for "real users," while Myspace became synonymous with spam, a cluttered interface, and marginalization. Realizing its existential threat, Pump.fun launched a desperate counterattack. First, they increased their token buyback ratio from 25% to 100% of daily revenue. While this meant approximately $254,000 per day in buybacks, significantly more than Let’sBONK’s $13,000 per day (a mere 1%), it also meant that Pump.fun was dedicating all of its revenue to buybacks rather than investing in platform growth. Second, they launched a 30-day incentive program, awarding PUMP tokens based on trading activity. However, initial feedback indicated that this strategy did little to reverse the competitive landscape. The problem isn't tactical, but strategic. No amount of buybacks or incentive programs can restore lost trust or recapture lost user attention. Pump.fun's rewards system is solely based on trading volume, while Let'sBONK has built an ecosystem-wide rewards system truly aligned with user interests. The BONK rewards program allows users to lock up their tokens for 6 to 12 months and receive a proportional share of the revenue from ecosystem products like BonkBot and BonkSwap. The longer the lockup period, the higher the multiplier. The better the product's performance, the greater the user rewards. This isn't about "paying people to trade," but about "paying users to build together." Users (including project owners) can earn "Bonk points" through trading, purchasing, or issuing tokens. These points are expected to be redeemable for physical goods or equity in the future, further incentivizing active participation. The gamified growth experience makes users feel like they're participating in a larger mission. While Pump.fun was still exploring its ICO and experiencing short selling delays, Let'sBONK already provided a structured rewards system for core users. In the crypto world, capital will always flow to better incentive mechanisms. The Bigger Picture: In traditional industries, market leaders often maintain their dominance for decades. General Motors dominated auto manufacturing for half a century, and IBM dominated enterprise computing for almost as long. In digital markets, however, user switching costs are near zero, and dominant positions can be shattered in a matter of months. An investigation revealed that Pump.fun co-founder Dylan Kerler participated in a "pump and dump" scam in 2017—the very practice Pump.fun claimed to eliminate. In an industry built on trust and memes, a collapse of credibility is tantamount to an existential crisis. Let’sBONK’s success wasn’t due to building a fundamentally superior product, but rather to entering the market at a moment when Pump.fun’s reputation was at its most vulnerable. In the attention economy, timing is often more crucial than technology. The winner-takes-all logic of network effects began to reverse. Once users began migrating to Let’sBONK, the flywheel that had propelled Pump.fun to success began to reverse. Developers followed traders, and traders chased the hottest projects, accelerating the platform’s decline. Does Pump.fun still have a chance to turn things around? While its market share has shrunk significantly, it's not out of the game yet. They do have some advantages: their $1.2 billion in funding buys them time, allowing them to experiment and outlast their competitors. Their platform has supported hundreds of thousands of project launches without crashing—a crucial factor in an environment where other new platforms can easily fail under high pressure. Even with their declining market share, they still generate over $250,000 in daily revenue, approaching $100 million annualized, and with their substantial financial reserves, their foundation remains strong. They are the pioneers of this category. Transforming token issuance from a programmatic process to a few clicks has earned them lasting brand recognition. First-mover advantage isn't something you can just lose. Recent actions also demonstrate they haven't given up: Pump.fun 2.0 incorporates real-time data updates and one-click trading; the buyback ratio has been increased to 100%; and user incentives have been introduced. These aren't gestures of surrender, but rather counterattacks. The most likely outcome isn't a complete collapse, but rather market fragmentation. Permanent monopolies rarely emerge in the crypto space. More likely, Let'sBONK will become the dominant platform, dominating both token issuance and revenue, while Pump.fun will transform into a niche platform with a loyal user base, carving out a niche through its interface, features, or ecosystem. However, to truly turn things around, Pump.fun must not simply address technical issues or retain employees through generous offers; it must rebuild trust and reclaim its cultural footing. This requires an open, transparent, and community-centric token economic structure, and may even require a complete leadership overhaul to fully move beyond past controversies.

The French court has long understood one thing: When a king loses his legitimacy, no amount of gold, silver, or ceremony can restore his dignity. Only a new ruler can earn the respect of the old one. Sometimes, for the kingdom to survive, the crown must pass to a new ruler.