As 2024 draws to a close, each Web3 crypto enthusiast has their own annual keywords. For the author, the keywords for this year should be "Highlight" and "Lost". Solana made a strong comeback after the FTX collapse; Base saw a surge in user growth; the TON ecosystem matrix caught people's attention; the AI Agent track is seen as the focus for 2025. Unfortunately, BTC ecosystem building and coin prices are far from meeting market expectations in 2024, and ETH is languishing. However, the explosion of the MEME track and new assets this year has activated a massive frenzy of on-chain liquidity, which has permeated most of 2024.
2024 - MEME New Assets are the "Self-Redemption of Retail Investors"
Trends are undergoing profound changes: "Capital narratives are gradually becoming ineffective". With the evolution of Web3 sovereignty awareness, a series of new launch protocols such as Friend.tech, Pump.Fun, Four.meme, Moonshot, Flap, and We.RICH are triggering a new Paradigm Shift. These protocols lower the participation threshold, allowing everyone to become a project party, thereby bringing more opportunities and choices.
This wave not only gave birth to a large number of "Highlight"market cap projects (such as: Wif, Bonk, Bome, Mew, etc.), but also made MEME assets the main theme throughout most of 2024, sweeping the market with exponential growth.MEME assets are gradually becoming the core carrier of decentralized value flow, from the projection of emotions and culture.
However, the increase in choices also comes with a loss of direction. The accumulation of countless 100x tokens and multi-million dollar market cap new assets makes it easier for us to get "lost" in information overload, not only missing potential wealth opportunities, but also ignoring the in-depth thinking on the core value assets of Web3. This "noise effect" makes the market easy to indulge in short-term speculation, while ignoring the key to the long-term sustainable development of the ecosystem: value creation and user consensus strengthening.
The "Highlight" Market Cap of the MEME Track is Driven by "Bonding Curve"
Bonding Curve is a type of AMM automated market maker algorithm. Most people encounter AMM on the traditional market making mechanism (x⋅y=k) of Uniswap, where K is a constant, and the quantity and price of the two tokens always maintain value parity. Traditional AMMs need to establish a liquidity pool to obtain the supply relationship parameters, while PumpFun, Friend.teach, Four.meme, Moonshot, and Flap use the Bonding Curve mechanism, which can issue assets at low cost without the need to build a liquidity pool, without liquidity crisis, without impermanent loss, and without worrying about liquidity providers draining the pool and running away.
More importantly, Bonding Curve provides higher flexibility and composability, allowing diversified customization of supply and value relationships through linear, logarithmic, exponential, reciprocal, and mixed curves, such as: Friend.teach (y = x^2 / 16000) basically determines the appreciation space for minting tokens
In essence, Pump.FUN still follows the x * y = k pricing principle, which is also the reason why it can seamlessly add liquidity to Ratdium and start the next round of high point assault when the amount of SOL deposited for minting reaches 85, or $69,000.
Similarly, Four.meme, which is backed by Binance, also realizes a similar process through Bonding Curve. As long as the market cap reaches $44,444, the platform will add a badge display for it, and when the Bounding curve reaches 100%, it will be listed on PancakeSwap. But with the "resource moat" of Binance, Four.meme provides more community assets with a KOL matrix and promotion resources, as well as the expectation of airdrop points, further enhancing user stickiness.
The Two-Sided Nature of Bonding Curve: Gambling Tool or Value Engine?
Whether it's Pump.FUN or Four.meme, the process of reaching the market cap standard to migrate to DEX for liquidity is taking advantage of the predictability of Bonding Curve, so that most market investors can clearly know the pressure points of the assets, which is somewhat like a "zero-sum game".
But the author believes: the essence of finance lies in cyclicality. There are no assets that will rise forever, and Bonding Curve is just a part of the tool. It makes the market more transparent and calculable, while forcing project parties to think about how to operate the full chain from asset issuance to ecosystem application to value realization.
Although many launch protocols have already created very high protocol revenue, with Pump.FUN's total revenue exceeding $300 million, the survival rate of the tokens they issued is only 1.3%. Perhaps we should think more about where these assets should ultimately go and what kind of financial value they should play?
2025 Will Be the Best Time for Web3 Bull Market Innovation
The author believes: each new asset issuance is accompanied by huge wealth opportunities. The birth of BTC opened the era of digital assets, followed by the endless innovations of Altcoins, NFTs and DeFi, creating countless wealth myths. However, the sustainable development of assets is the key to long-term success. Now, the sixth digital asset revolution - Bonding Curve has arrived.
The future application of Bonding Curve will no longer be limited to asset issuance and trading, but will extend to new asset portfolios, lending optimization, liquidity management and capital efficiency improvement. Just as the previous DeFi bull market sparked an overall prosperity in the industry, we can expect to witness a new DeFi battlefield led by Bonding Curve in 2025.
