A Comparison of the Revival and Future of On-chain Trends from the Three Major Meme Launch Platforms

As a decentralized token issuance platform, Launchpad provides a valuable fundraising channel for innovative blockchain projects. These platforms are typically operated by blockchain projects or DEXs and are designed to help emerging projects issue tokens to the public through IDOs. This article will focus on meme (meme) launch platforms, which have unique characteristics: low market capitalization of listed tokens, close to 100% liquidity, main meme coin issuance, low user threshold, and higher potential wealth effect.

Core Functions of the Launchpad

1. Project Fundraising: Provide financing channels for new blockchain projects to obtain development and marketing funds through community token sales.
2. Token Distribution: Assist projects in distributing tokens to early investors at a lower market capitalization to attract user participation.
3. Traffic Acquisition: Use popular events or IPs as the theme for issuing tokens to gain significant attention.
4. Wealth Effect Creation: Once low market cap tokens gain market recognition, early participants may receive significant returns, promoting rapid community expansion.

Since the huge success of Pump Fun last year, Launchpad has become the first choice for many development teams and even public chains. However, with the exception of Pump Fun, most platforms do not work as intended. It is worth noting that the LetsBonk.fun launched by BONK, a veteran meme coin in the Solana ecosystem, has performed well recently, and the highest market value of many of its meme coins has exceeded $10 million. At the same time, the Virtuals Protocol of the AI Agent track has also doubled the price of its parent token $VIRTUAL in a week through new participation mechanisms and activities.

Now, let’s delve into comparing the differences and respective advantages of these three major platforms.

Pump Fun: The Absolute Mainstream of Meme Coin Issuance

Pump Fun is undoubtedly the birthplace of the meme frenzy in the second half of 2024. At its peak, the platform earned more than $7 million per day and maintained a steady income of around $1.5 million per day even as the current meme fever cooled. Since its launch, Pump Fun has generated more than $600 million in total revenue, making it the “money printing machine” of the cryptocurrency space.

It is worth noting that Pump Fun has adopted a different funding management strategy compared to most Solana native projects. Typically, projects would stake the SOL they earn or operate nodes to show support for the ecosystem. However, Pump Fun continuously sells the SOL it holds and converts it into USDC. Since 2025, the platform has sold SOL tokens worth $317 million, which is astonishing.

This approach not only looks unappealing, but combined with the previous live streaming controversy and lawsuit scandal, Pump Fun, despite its strong profitability, is not a key focus of support from the Solana Foundation.

In terms of token issuance, Pump Fun has become the preferred platform for meme coin issuance and is a major traffic entry point in this field. As a general platform rather than a niche lane, users can issue various themed tokens here, including animals, puns, news events, AI, and other concepts; almost anything imaginable can be transformed into a meme coin. Therefore, the platform does not particularly emphasize specific types of tokens but maintains openness, continuing to serve as the preferred platform for token issuance.

LetsBonk: The Authentic Path of Solana Veterans

Compared to Pump Fun, LetsBonk is significantly more orthodox in its eco-political stance. Its core advantage comes from the parent project BONK, which is the most representative meme coin on the Solana chain, and as an ancestral meme coin with wealth effect, BONK has been deeply cultivated in the Solana ecosystem for more than four years. In addition to the recent retweet support from Solana co-founder Toly, BONK has been active in various offline activities of Solana for a long time. Compared to Pump Fun’s continuous dumping of SOL, BONN’s community contribution is obviously more recognized.

In terms of platform mechanism, LetsBonk also shows a more selfless attitude, only charging a 1% transaction fee, and this income is used for:

• Platform operation and sustainable development
• Support BONKsol validators to promote DeFI ecosystem growth and protect the network
• The buyback and destruction of BONK tokens ( is about to launch a related dashboard ).

In addition, LetsBonk’s collaboration with Raydium’s LaunchLab further demonstrates its sincere support for the Solana ecosystem.

Currently, the token with the highest market value on the LetsBonk platform is Hosico, reaching 38 million USD. This token is inspired by a Scottish Fold cat named “Hosico”, which was born in 2014. This golden short-haired cat has nearly 2 million followers on social media due to its round face, big eyes, and adorable appearance, making it a globally recognized internet celebrity cat.

Other notable tokens on the platform include the eponymous token Letsbonk and Grassiot. Initially considered the official platform token, Letsbonk had a market cap of $30 million on its first day of launch, but has now slipped to around $4 million as a number of new tokens distract the market.

The popularity of Grassiot stems from the purchase, destruction and repurchase operation of TOM, the founder of BONK, in short, the token rally through the attention of the founder. However, Grassito’s market cap has dropped from a peak of $13 million to around $4.3 million now after TOM clarified that it was only buying as a personal supporter and was not an insider or developer, while also revealing that it also owns tokens such as Hosico and LetsBonk.

Virtuals Protocol: An Innovative Attempt in the AI Track

Virtuals Protocol was originally built on the Base链上 as an AI Agent launch platform and has recently expanded to the Solana ecosystem. Its business model is relatively simple: users need to consume VIRTUAL tokens to create and trade tokens on the platform. However, as the AI frenzy subsides, the number of tokens launched on the platform has decreased from over 100 daily at its peak to less than 10, facing significant challenges.

The platform has recently rolled out an important update. The Virgen Points system serves as an important mechanism to encourage users to participate, and is used to obtain pre-TGE token allocation permissions, especially the “giga AI Agent launches” ( large AI agent launch ). These points directly affect the user’s eligibility to participate on the platform.

The AI agent was launched with a fully diluted market cap of 336,000 $VIRTUAL ( of about 232.58k USD), and all Virgens received equal early access through Virgen Points. The allocation is determined after the 24-hour points bidding period, and if the funding target is not reached, the tokens will not be minted and all $VIRTUAL and points will be returned in full.

Ways to earn points include:

• Trenchor Points: Earn by trading Sentient and Prototype Agent tokens.
• $VIRTUAL Points: Earned by holding $VIRTUAL tokens
• Yap for Points: Earn points by creating content related to the Virtuals Protocol
• $VADER Stakers: Earn by staking $VADER tokens

Participation process:

1. Staking Points:

   • Participate by committing Virgen Points to earn up to 0.5% of the total supply of tokens.
   • The final allocation depends on the proportion of an individual’s committed points to the total committed points.
   • Over-commitment can increase the chances of receiving the maximum allocation.
   • If the Genesis Launch is successful, only the points used for distribution will be destroyed and the rest will be refunded

2. Invest $VIRTUAL tokens:

   • Invest up to 566 $VIRTUAL to ensure maximum allocation
   • If participation exceeds expectations, the allocation will be diluted, and excess tokens will be returned.

3. Claim Tokens:

   • After the successful Genesis Launch, claim the purchased tokens on the Agent page.
   • If the startup fails, all points and $VIRTUAL will be fully refunded.

Overall, the Virtuals Protocol is creating a more precise and loyal launch platform, which is essentially similar to the recent point-based new token activities of some platforms, aimed at promoting deep user engagement in the ecosystem. For investors optimistic about the Virtual system, there are three ways to participate:

1. Directly purchase $VIRTUAL tokens to go long
2. Directly purchase $VADER token to go long
3. Participate in platform activities

The first two strategies are simple in logic, and both $VIRTUAL and $VADER have seen significant increases recently. If users choose to participate in the activity, they need to first accumulate points. One risk hedging strategy is to hold $VIRTUAL in the wallet while shorting the same amount of tokens on a centralized exchange. This allows users to participate in the activity while avoiding potential downside risks, but the downside is that additional capital is needed for shorting, which reduces capital efficiency.

Summary and Outlook

Looking at the three major platforms, each has its advantages and concerns:

• Pump Fun maintains its lead with strong traffic entry and high profitability model, but frequent cashing out and negative events have raised doubts about it.
• LetsBonk has gained recognition through its strong community foundation and eco-friendly policies, but the distraction of attention between the platform token and secondary tokens is a challenge it faces.
• Virtuals Protocol lays out a new track in AI with an innovative points mechanism, but the issuance of tokens continues to decline, and whether user enthusiasm can be sustained remains unknown.

From a long-term development perspective, the next wave of excitement in the Launchpad track will depend on “value realization” and “community resilience”: which platform can balance short-term popularity with long-term ecological construction, and which projects can provide real utility rather than hollow narratives, will all be important indicators for market testing.

For investors, in addition to focusing on platform traffic and token price fluctuations, it is more important to deeply study the core risks and upgrade potential of each platform mechanism in order to find truly valuable long-term investment targets among the many options.