I want to put the product name "pump.fun" in double quotes, because its meaning has gone beyond just a "token issuance product". Now, it has become the most direct, most effective, and possibly the only "lifeline" recognized by various chains. Whether it's a new chain or an old one, whatever narrative these chains are pushing, and whatever purpose the project parties behind these chains want to achieve, the final market situation presented to all of us is that as long as it's a chain, just pump it and let everyone have some fun.
ApeChain, the chain launched by the former NFT king Yuga Labs, was expected to gradually warm up and seek the support of the NFT community like the Abstract, or to launch a "black hole coin" $O with a strong art and meme vibe like the artists' Shape, or to focus on games related to Otherside like TreasureDAO(Magic).
The result is that I see Yuga Labs is also hungry, they chose "pump.fun" and launched the "pump.fun" product Ape Express.
So, is Yuga Labs' move successful? Based on everyone's reaction, it's not. Generally, people believe that those who still hold Yuga-related Non-Fungible Tokens (not only BAYC, MAYC, but also CryptoPunks have long been part of the Yuga ecosystem) are the "old money" in the crypto world, and these direct target audiences who are not short of money will rush in with capital and stage a vertical trend. But so far, the flagship $CURTIS of ApeChain has only reached a market cap of nearly $30M and then stagnated, and is now down by half from its peak.
The "one-day tour" is disappointing, although everyone's expectation may only be a "one-week tour" or a "one-month tour"...
"pump.fun" is popping up like mushrooms after the rain on various chains. On Aptos, there is pump.uptos:
On SUI, there is Move Pump (also supporting Aptos). In addition, hop.ag is also about to launch its own "pump.fun" product.
On Sonic (formerly Fantom), there is Degen Express:
dYdX only rose about 25% after former CEO Antonio Juliano announced his return, but immediately rose another 20% after dYdX Foundation CEO Charles d'Haussy's tweet that "the speakers at tomorrow's dYdX Day event will reveal secrets about the moat, Trojan horse, and flywheel." Many people speculate that dYdX is also going to do its own "pump.fun".
On the Fractal chain in the Bitcoin ecosystem, there is also a Satspumpfun that has been warming up for a long time and is about to launch:
This situation where each chain has a "pump.fun" can't help but remind me of last year's meme bull market. I thought the meme hype in the Bitcoin ecosystem had entered the IQ 50 stage and was about to end, but unexpectedly, the meme gameplay has spread to ETH, Solana, Polygon and other chains. Of course, except for ETH and Solana, which still have some signs of survival, the other "cross-chain memes" can basically be declared a complete failure.
So, will the various chains rushing to "pump.fun" be a "top signal" for meme coins?
I think this is just a "top signal" for the "pump.fun" type of hype-building gameplay, not necessarily a top signal for the meme coins themselves or the hype itself. Just like after the end of the meme bull market, the top meme assets like $ORDI still have a decent market cap and liquidity, but the assets whose only consensus point is "minting memes", after the hype of this gameplay itself loses attention, they don't have any consensus to support long-term value, so their demise is also foreseeable.
The meme coin track has been overly abused in its concept today. Initially, people's understanding of memes might have been "worthless and IQ 50", and in the $DOGE era, the understanding of meme coins might have been just equating them with that dog photo. But now, the top meme coins that have emerged in the market, such as $BITCOIN (Harry Potter), $SPX, $MOG, $JOE, have all withstood several rounds of major price fluctuations in testing the consensus on them. By now, I think there are not many players who still think these coins will go to zero, and this notion itself is a manifestation of the value of meme coins - the path or narrative to forming a solid value consensus is not a matter of superiority or inferiority.
Even if we look at Bitcoin, the value consensus of Bitcoin is also unrelated to technology, and Bitcoin's own culture and meme attributes are also very strong.
Hype gameplay, or hype trading, is definitely not long-lasting. Just like we might watch a lot of live streams when we're bored, today we'll watch someone playing games, and tomorrow we'll watch someone chatting, the live content that is popular every day may be different. But we will all be regular viewers of certain live streams, and the top anchors will have certain qualities outside of their live content that can stabilize their audience (community), and the community will also help the anchor make various live stream clips to attract more people to enter the live stream and become long-term regular viewers.
Vibrant meme coins are the same way. The community will spontaneously raid (promote their own coins) on Twitter, spontaneously create pictures/videos/songs and other content, and believe in the power of belief. Of course, if it's just a pure "we all believe it can break through the sky" argument, it's not enough to produce a top meme coin, because if everyone just wants to get out early, it's better to say that everyone believes the price can break through the sky.
Hype gameplay and hype trading will take turns on stage, but each time the market goes through a major wash, it will flow back to those coins with strong community performance. These coins can now open up a separate track, or can be seen as the top stream of meme coins, which is the word "Cult" that people often see now. The abstract content of "Cult" is just an external manifestation, the core power is that they can convince the market, their community is solid enough. Even when an abstract coin rises to the "Cult" level, we may feel that the coin is not so abstract anymore, because the more audience it attracts, the more the things it conveys will be gradually popularized to attract more people.
Meme coins are actually the market's best counterattack and "rectification" against "VC value technology coins" - perhaps Crypto is not strong enough to become a second stock market. It has already convinced the people of our generation, but it still needs to attract and convince more young people. Using light and fun content to update the public's serious impression of Crypto, and even one day, to expect a Pepe-like cultural symbol to emerge from Web3, is not impossible.
Who can say that Bitcoin is not one of the biggest cultural symbols of our generation?
