Power Transition: The Rise and Fall of the Solana Memecoin Issuance Platform

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

This sentence echoed in the Palace of Versailles in 1774. Louis XV had just passed away, and the nobles immediately turned to the new king. This is not cold-bloodedness, but a manifestation of survival instinct.

The French deeply understand the essence of power: power never belongs to individuals; it flows like water, always seeking new containers. This sentence is not mourning the deceased but acknowledging the new ruler. Yesterday's king may just be a footnote in history today. The turnover comes quickly, ruthlessly, and inevitably.

Power requires this indifference. Empires rise on the bones of their predecessors, and new rulers inherit the old thrones, a cycle that repeats itself. And now, the memecoin issuance platform on the Solana chain is staging a new version of this ancient ritual.

A month ago, Pump.fun held 88% of the market share, but now it is down to 13%, while the emerging challenger Let'sBONK has captured 86% of the market.

This is not just another example of volatility in the crypto world, but also a typical case of an empire's collapse: when you ignore that attention is the ultimate moat, even the greatest first-mover advantage can instantly vanish.

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The Rise of Pump.fun Empire

To understand the decline of Pump.fun, it is essential to grasp how powerful it once was. In January 2024, three young people in their twenties launched this platform, overturning the issuance logic of meme coins with a single sentence: "Upload a picture, give it a name, click a few times, and you can issue a coin for less than $2, without any programming."

It satisfies a basic impulse: to turn something "without value" into something "with some value." In the crypto world, this is not a fantasy, but a business model. By January 2025, Pump.fun generated over $458 million in revenue, launching thousands of new coins daily, with peak daily revenue exceeding $7 million.

More importantly, it has won the attention battlefield and become synonymous with Solana memecoin culture. On crypto Twitter, issuing a token means using Pump.fun. It not only occupies the infrastructure but also firmly controls the cultural discourse.

However, the tragedy began with one of its most "innovative" features: live streaming.

The original intention was to allow token issuers to promote their tokens in front of the camera, but the situation quickly got out of control. Starting from November 2024, in order to gain attention, some began to engage in extreme behaviors during live broadcasts: simulating self-harm, threatening suicide, and abusing animals. The most severe incident involved a minor user threatening their family with a shotgun in front of the camera, all just to pump the price.

Pump.fun was forced to urgently close its live streaming function, but its reputation has been severely damaged. Weekly revenue plummeted by 66%, public opinion turned against it, and competitors began to seize the opportunity. Faced with declining revenue and competitive pressure, Pump.fun made a seemingly wise but actually fatal decision: to rescue itself through token issuance (ICO).

This ICO is technically considered successful—raising $500 million from over 10,000 wallets in just 12 minutes, plus $700 million in private placement.

However, a deeper analysis reveals the old problem reappearing: over 200 wallets have maxed out the $1 million limit, and the top 340 buyers have consumed 60% of the share. All tokens sold are fully unlocked, with only a 48 to 72-hour transfer restriction period set.

Nearly half of the participants funded their wallets within 24 hours - this may suggest an organized buying strategy, or it may simply reflect retail investors' strong interest in this issuance.

The token price initially surged 75% to $0.007, but the enthusiasm quickly faded. Within weeks, it dropped by 60%, continuously hitting new lows, displaying a typical "death spiral" trend. The tokenomics itself is also very aggressive, with only 33% allocated to public and private offerings, and 67% controlled by the project team, with an unclear distribution timeline. Of this 33%, 18% is specifically reserved for private placement shares for institutional investors.

Despite users generating nearly $750 million in revenue for the platform, there were no immediate community rewards; meanwhile, private investors dumped $160 million worth of tokens on the exchange, creating significant selling pressure.

The last straw was when co-founder Alon Cohen publicly announced that the long-promised airdrop "will not happen in the foreseeable future."

For months, the project has hinted that the upcoming issuance of rewards "will be more generous than anyone in the industry," creating huge market expectations. However, at the moment when community trust was most fragile, they announced the cancellation of the airdrop. The token price plummeted by 15% within 24 hours. It's not that the airdrop itself is so important, but the cost of broken promises is extremely fatal.

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The Rise of Let'sBONK

While Pump.fun keeps stepping on landmines, Let'sBONK is quietly building everything that competitors lack: transparency, community orientation, and clear communication.

Currently, Let'sBONK's daily income has reached 1.3 million dollars, while Pump.fun is only 254 thousand dollars, a difference of 5 times. On an annualized basis, Let'sBONK's monthly income amounts to 434.92 million dollars, while Pump.fun is 267.25 million dollars.

From nearly zero in May to a stable breakthrough of one million dollars in daily revenue in July, Let'sBONK's revenue has been steadily rising. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's income has plummeted from a peak of over 7 million dollars in January, falling back to the levels of September 2024.

Since the ICO, the PUMP token has lost 60% of its market value, while BONK has remained relatively stable, maintaining a market value of 2.1 billion USD. Let'sBONK allocates 1% of its weekly revenue to repurchase BONK, supporting this ecological token that predates the platform and has an existing foundation.

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Attention Economy

Pump.fun once seized the opportunity through network effects—developers issue tokens there because traders are there; traders are there because the hottest memecoins are launched there. This flywheel effect is spinning faster and faster, seemingly unstoppable.

But attention is fragile. It is not like the moats of traditional businesses—economies of scale, switching costs, regulatory barriers—once trust collapses, user mentality can disintegrate in an instant. A live-streaming incident gave users reason to try alternative platforms. Let'sBONK immediately became the "clean" choice, a platform without historical baggage.

This is like when Myspace lost to Facebook. Myspace had features and scale but lost the cultural narrative. Facebook became the platform for "real users", while Myspace became synonymous with junk information, chaotic interfaces, and marginalization. Realizing the crisis of survival, Pump.fun launched a nearly desperate counterattack.

First, they raised the token buyback ratio from 25% of daily revenue to 100%. While this means that about $254,000 is used for buybacks daily, far exceeding Let'sBONK's daily buyback of $13,000 (only 1%), it also represents that Pump.fun is using all of its revenue for buybacks rather than for platform growth.

Secondly, they launched a 30-day incentive program that rewards PUMP tokens based on trading activity. However, initial feedback indicates that this strategy has not reversed the competitive landscape.

The problem lies not at the tactical level, but at the strategic level. No amount of buybacks or incentive programs can restore lost trust, nor can they recapture the attention of users who have already shifted their focus.

The reward mechanism of Pump.fun is solely based on trading volume, while Let'sBONK has established a truly user-interest-aligned ecological reward system.

The BONK reward program allows users to lock up their assets for 6 to 12 months and receive a proportional share of the revenue generated from the ecosystem of products such as BonkBot and BonkSwap. The longer the locking period, the higher the multiplier. The better the product performance, the more returns for users. This is not about "spending money to make people trade", but about "paying to allow users to co-build".

Users (including project parties) can obtain "Bonk Points" through trading, purchasing, or issuance of tokens. These points are expected to be redeemable for physical goods or rights in the future, further incentivizing active participation. The gamified growth experience makes users feel that they are participating in a larger mission.

While Pump.fun is still exploring ICOs and experiencing delays in airdrop fulfillment, Let'sBONK has already provided a structured reward system for core users. In the crypto world, capital will always flow towards better incentive mechanisms.

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A Bigger Picture

In traditional industries, market leaders often remain in their positions for decades. General Motors dominated automobile manufacturing for half a century, and IBM controlled enterprise computing for almost as long. However, in the digital market, the cost of switching for users is nearly zero, and a dominant position can vanish in just a few months.

An investigation has revealed that Dylan Kerler, co-founder of Pump.fun, was involved in a "pump and dump" scheme in 2017—precisely the behavior that Pump.fun claims to eradicate. In an industry built on trust and memes, the collapse of credibility equals a survival crisis.

The success of Let'sBONK is not because they built a fundamentally superior product, but because they entered the market at the moment when Pump.fun's reputation was most vulnerable. In the attention economy, timing is often more critical than technology.

The winner-takes-all logic of network effects is starting to reverse. Once users begin to migrate to Let'sBONK, the flywheel that helped Pump.fun rise also starts to reverse. Developers follow the traders, and traders chase the hottest projects, causing the platform to decline at an accelerated pace.

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Does Pump.fun still have a chance to turn things around? Although its market share has significantly shrunk, it is not yet at the point of being out.

They do have some advantages: the $1.2 billion in financing has bought them time and provided them with the capital to experiment and outlast competitors. Their platform has supported hundreds of thousands of project issuances without crashing—this is particularly important in an environment where other new platforms are prone to failure under pressure. Even with a decline in market share, they still generate over $250,000 in revenue daily, approaching $100 million annually, along with a substantial capital reserve, keeping their foundation solid.

They are the pioneers of this category. Transforming token issuance from programming into a few clicks of the mouse has earned them lasting brand recognition. The first-mover advantage is not something that simply disappears.

Recent actions also indicate that they have not given up: Pump.fun 2.0 has added real-time data updates and one-click trading; the repurchase ratio has been increased to 100%; and user incentives have been launched. These are not signs of surrender, but a counterattack.

The most likely scenario is not a complete collapse, but market fragmentation. There are rarely permanent monopolists in the crypto space. More likely, Let'sBONK will become the main platform, dominating the issuance and revenue, while Pump.fun will transform into a niche platform with loyal users, occupying a place through its interface, functions, or ecosystem.

But to truly turn the tide, Pump.fun must not only solve technical issues or rely on money to retain users, but also rebuild trust and regain cultural dominance. This means achieving a transparent and community-centered token economic structure, and it may even require a complete overhaul of the leadership to completely break free from past controversies.

The French court has long understood a principle: when a king loses legitimacy, no amount of gold and silver or ceremonies can restore dignity. Only a new ruler can earn the old respect. Sometimes, for the continuation of the kingdom, the crown must be passed to a newcomer.

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