MOODENG, SPX, GOAT... In this meme craze, the emergence of one large MC memecoin after another has gradually brought the name "Moonshot" to the attention of crypto players. This new product, which has been online for only a short time, has, through three months of quiet Build, become the "Binance of the meme world" in people's mouths, this mobile application that comes with the narrative of "buying meme with fiat", seems to have become the sluice gate of the meme track, and is seen by players in the circle as the key driving force behind the rise of all large MC memecoins.
On the other hand, the sudden explosion of Moonshot is so sudden that many meme players still know little about it. What did Moonshot do right in the months before its rise? Is it really the ultimate portal for money and traffic in the meme track, as people say?
How the large MC memecoin pusher was forged
Moonshot went online on July 18, and less than a week after its launch, Murad, who had not yet given a "meme supercycle" speech at Token 2049, tweeted specifically to introduce Moonshot, and attached a Moonshot interactive demo video. "I am not involved in this project in any way, but startups like Moonshot will drive the meme coin supercycle to become even more massive, their users don't need to know anything about wallets or blockchains, just one click, like paying to upgrade an iPhone game."
When Moonshot was first launched, it listed many tokens, but its influence did not go viral until it encountered MOODENG, whose market cap had not yet risen significantly. When MOODENG was listed, Moonshot did not specifically tweet about it. After MOODENG continued to rise, the Official Twitter kept updating the "post-listing gains". On September 26, Moonshot tweeted "Moonshot's highest trading volume day ever" and attached the MOODENG hippo emoji.
On September 27, Moonshot popped up a notification that MOODENG had achieved a 100x gain since its listing on the app, and also launched a "vote to rename Moonshot to MOODENG". On the other hand, the MOODENG Official Twitter also often recommended the community to use Moonshot to buy tokens on its homepage.
Dune data shows that from September 24 to September 28, as MOODENG's market cap quickly rose from around $100 million to around $300 million, Moonshot's daily fees quickly rose from around $3,681 to $24,000, and the number of daily trading users grew from 396 to 3,458.
At the time when MOODENG was driving Moonshot to "go viral", Murad was delivering his "meme coin supercycle" keynote speech at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, and was shilling $SPX6900. Starting in early September, SPX6900 had risen in market cap from less than $9 million to $900 million in a month, and Moonshot had already listed SPX6900 before Murad gave his speech, when its market cap was still less than $30 million.
Hitting one large MC memecoin after another has really given Moonshot a "listing effect". Meme coin projects also hope to be listed on Moonshot. The Ethereum-based meme coin APU, which had a market cap of around $60 million in early September, started to rise. When it had risen about 2.5 times to around $150 million, APU announced on October 6 that it would be listed on Moonshot, and would cross-chain from Ethereum to the Solana chain via Wormhole. Subsequently, APU continued to rise, with a market cap of $330 million as of the time of writing.
Although the "mutual achievement" with MOODENG has brought Moonshot rapid development, with daily fees quickly rising from $3,700 at the end of September to $32,000 last weekend, and the number of daily trading users rising from a few hundred to an average of nearly 4,000. But since MOODENG, Moonshot's user numbers have not grown significantly, and daily fees have also experienced a stage-by-stage decline. In the sentiment-driven meme market, what Moonshot brings to meme is more important than trading volume - heat.
Last week, the AI meme coin GOAT exploded, reaching a market cap of over $500 million. See the related reading "Behind the GOAT explosion, the hype expectation and hidden worries of AI meme | 100x Recap". Moonshot announced the listing of this coin when GOAT's trading volume surged and it started to climb from the bottom, accompanying GOAT from a market cap of less than $40 million to $500 million, once again witnessing Moonshot's "magic".
However, if viewed from the "listing effect", the trading volume on Moonshot is small compared to the total trading volume of meme coins. In the early hours of this morning, Moonshot listed the meme coin slop, and according to Dune data as of around 4pm, the trading volume of slop on Moonshot was $110,000, while according to Dexcreener data, the total trading volume of slop during this period was $46 million, which means that Moonshot contributed 0.2% of slop's trading volume.
From the trend line, it can be seen that after the news of listing on Moonshot, slop rose nearly 20% in half an hour, but after reaching a market cap of $50 million, it began to fall, and its current market cap is $25.48 million, close to halving from its high point.
Pump.fun's junior, the perfect partner of MoonPay
What many people don't know is that Moonpay and Pump.fun are actually "brothers from the same school", both incubated by Alliance DAO, and have gone further down the path of "crypto new retail". In a podcast, Alliance DAO founding partner QW mentioned that Moonshot's market opportunity lies in the fact that "there are not enough retail gambling scenarios in the market".
Of course, seeing the direction is not the only reason for Moonshot's success, what sets it apart from its senior Pump.fun is the effort it has put into the user experience.
One of Alliance's incubation principles is: when developing crypto products, you can't just focus on the blockchain technology itself, but need to compare with those already very mature and user-friendly traditional Internet applications, to ensure that your product can also provide the same smooth and simple user experience. Alliance DAO founding partner Imran Khan once tweeted that the competitors of crypto products are not only other crypto applications, but the user guidance experience of traditional Web2 applications.
The day after Moonshot went online, it reached a cooperation with MoonPay, and Moonshot's highlights such as "fiat purchase, Apple Pay payment" are all thanks to MoonPay's functionality.
In terms of fees, the additional fees paid by users on Moonshot include two categories, one is the fees charged by Moonshot official during the transaction process, and the other is the fees charged by the partner MoonPay during the deposit and withdrawal process. The former covers network fees (gas fees) and management fees, with a 2.5% fee (between $0.3 and $6.25) for transactions under $250, and a 1% fee for transactions over $250.
As for the fee structure of the latter, MoonPay, please refer to the official documentation. The deposit and withdrawal fees for using PayPal are 4.5% and 3.4% respectively. MoonPay has also been exploring the Apple Pay payment functionality since 2022.
In addition to MoonPay, the non-custodial wallet Turnkey is also a partner of Moonshot. In an article published by Turnkey, it is introduced that after logging into Moonshot, Turnkey will create a non-custodial wallet in the background, and users can easily verify transactions using email or biometric authentication (such as Face ID).
Alliance DAO, which has incubated Pump.fun, is in charge of the product direction, MoonPay is responsible for the payment side, and TurnKey is responsible for the wallet side. The "first app that allows you to easily trade meme coins with Apple Pay" has made a stunning debut, and it is a natural progression.
The official documentation of Moonshot lists the listing criteria, which do not specify the exact requirements, but mention that "in general, the 24-hour total trading volume of the token needs to reach around $1 million". Moonshot has listed many coins in the early stage, including MAGA, SCF, SPX6900, MUMU, and other low-profile meme coins, and its "breakout work" is MOODENG.
Clearly, in terms of product experience, Moonshot has met the ideal standards of Alliance, and Imran even proudly stated that the founders of many consumer startups have already taken Moonshot's user guidance experience as a benchmark or model for them to learn from.
The fiat meme track already has competitors
As a newcomer in the payment track, Moonshot has ridden the wave of the meme bull market. Moonshot has used fiat payment as a breakthrough to further simplify the threshold for users to buy meme coins. Moonshot's success lies not only in providing a more efficient trading experience, but also in offering a new path for mass adoption in the industry.
The fiat meme sub-track will not leave Moonshot to walk alone, and the market has also seen a fiat meme payment product that benchmarks Moonshot: Prerich.
Prerich is an application that simplifies on-chain transactions, and has proposed a similar slogan to Moonshot: "Buy memecoins with ease!". Prerich provides a user-friendly interface similar to Robinhood, supporting users to conduct fast and efficient on-chain transactions. Users can also log in with email and credit card. Prerich's unique meme-themed design interface is also one of the factors attracting community users.
However, Prerich's listing effect is far inferior to Moonshot, and it has not produced any large MC memecoins like Moondeng and GOAT. In addition to the differentiated meme icon marketing, Prerich still needs to continuously list large MC memecoins to surpass Moonshot.
As long as the meme frenzy in Crypto does not stop, innovative products in the payment track will also continue to emerge. In fiat payment, Moonshot has opened up an even greater mass adoption imagination space after taking the lead.
As the Binance of the Meme world, Moonshot has not only brought huge liquidity and wealth effect to the on-chain meme, but its product is also quietly changing the way future entrepreneurs operate by being closer to the Web2 model.
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