Robinhood launched not long ago,

and I’ve already witnessed the “one hundred battles” firsthand.
Some are established old projects, bringing back accumulated users and assets to make a comeback, calmly sitting there fishing without panic, quietly continuing to skim.
Others are no-background “ordinary” teams that go all-in on AI: UI, contracts, front end, marketing copy—all in a single chain. In just a few days, they build a functioning launchpad, then jump in with red eyes to fight it out.
This is probably the unique charm—and a bit of absurdity—of the AI era.
Are launchpads really this low-barrier? Did you get it wrong!!
I know it’s not that hard, but can’t it be less so simple?!!!
There are more launchpads than project teams!!!!
More project teams than trading users!!!!
How are we supposed to play?!
In the past, what used to require a full team took a long time.
Now, small workshops can complete everything in a short time.
When everyone can quickly build these capabilities, the features themselves stop being a moat.
AI can copy products, but it’s hard to copy attention, liquidity, and trust—and even harder to copy the user habits a platform has accumulated over time and the CA that comes out running.
What a launchpad truly competes for is never just who can get more people to mint with one click, but who can capture that default “mental shortcut” entry.
If you’re hungry, everyone taps Meituan.
If you’re broke, you look at the reserve funds.
If you’re sleepy, you’ve got the habit of grabbing a one-shot.
If you need refueling, it’s D\*Pengtai….
Same logic: when a project figures out how to mint, and when a player wants to surf on-chain, what will they get used to? What will their reaction be?
A smart Dev won’t stay loyal to a platform just because it has a few extra features.
They’ll go to places with real buyers, to places with sufficient liquidity, to places where trading wear-and-tear is lower—and they’ll also go to places that are willing to provide resources, traffic, and hope.
Dev teams of different sizes make completely different choices.
Taking BSC as an example, my own observation is that teams with scale—wanting to grow into a bigger market cap—tend to care more about liquidity and trading-volume wear-and-tear, so they lean toward platforms like Four with lower trading wear-and-tear.
Projects with a private domain and that are small and “white-box”—able to continuously bring in deals—are more likely to be attracted by Flap’s creator fees. As long as trades keep happening, the creator’s fees keep accumulating, while the costs of volume-scrubbing from trading users and the projects’ own internal/external markets may not feel obviously measurable.
So, the real competitiveness of a launchpad is never about dominating with the same set of parameters for everyone. It’s about whether it captures the particular batch of project teams and liquidity that fits it best.
Project teams bring good assets; good assets attract trading; trading brings liquidity and fees. The successful “golden dog” that runs out then pulls in more and bigger Devs; wallets, bots, the ecosystem, and the community will also prioritize integrating platforms with real trading.
Once the “snowball” starts rolling, latecomers may be jealous and copy its interface, curve, even the entire set of contracts—but they can’t copy the default market that has already formed.
Yes, it’s true that trading doesn’t have the “Dao,” but at least it makes you sit down and think about another question.
When minting itself becomes increasingly simple—when UI, curves, migration, and fee models can all be quickly copied—where can launchpads still evolve?
I increasingly feel the answer might be hidden after graduation.
Most launchpad optimizations focus on the few dozen minutes before and after a project goes live:
How to be created faster, how to complete cold start more conveniently, how to get it launched, how to play up the first wave of trading volume.
But for a project that truly wants to do something big, “getting launched” isn’t the endpoint—maybe it’s only the beginning.
Emotions need to be maintained, content updated, data tracked, market cap monitored, and the cadence controlled. How to pull in funds, how far the project has gotten—then it still requires constantly thinking of ways to stabilize holders and explain.
So I’m thinking the next-generation launchpad might not be only about one-click minting, but about trying to help Devs continuously operate and run the project. It could be an idea from the user in a single moment, to help him complete the initial project positioning, pages, plans, and this kind of mode.
If launchpads have already been flooded and made generic by AI, then in the next round of competition, maybe it won’t be about who mints more coins every day, but about who can turn the entire project operation from a short-lived launch into something that can be continuously coordinated—helping the project grow better.
So in Robinhood launchpad competition, it’s still far from the time to rank seats.
The Dragon #1 at the end might not be the one that launched first, and it might not be the one with the most features, or the one minting the highest number of coins per day.
This race might only be just beginning.
If any launchpad project teams see this, I’d like to ask one more question.
After the coins are sent out, what value does your launchpad still have?
Whether the launchpad can continue to participate in the project afterward—that’s the next stop that launchpads themselves haven’t solved yet.