"What did CZ tweet again today?"

If you're asking this question, then it's clear that the BSC has been one of the few hot spots on the chain recently.

With CZ and the 'Big Sister' becoming increasingly active on Twitter, attracting attention + creating Memes is gradually coming to the surface; at the same time, relying on the powerful secondary traffic capability of the Binance APP, Binance Alpha is directly embedded in the app, which has also brought more heat to Meme trading.

In the context of an overall poor market, the BSC has a bit of a 'first-mover advantage' feel, and what it is grabbing is obviously the previous on-chain heat of Solana.

Traffic and transaction fee revenue are the anxieties and desires of every chain.

Under business anxiety, there will inevitably be competition between different chains, but in fact, different protocols on the same chain are also competing.

For example, Pump.fun and Raydium have each done a 'copy' of the other.

Pump.fun does AMM

More than 20 days ago, Pump.fun started doing Raydium's business, launching a self-built AMM pool in an attempt to divert the liquidity revenue originally belonging to Raydium.

Because users' transactions are first matched on Pump.fun's internal order book, relying on the platform's liquidity to complete the transactions; when the internal order book is full, the transactions will be routed to the external order book, which actually relies on Raydium's liquidity pool.

In this model, Pump.fun has always been a 'traffic provider' for Raydium, but is also subject to Raydium's rules as a result. Whenever the transaction flow goes to the external order book, Pump.fun has to pay a portion of the transaction fee, and this portion of the profit ultimately flows to Raydium's liquidity providers (LPs), with the current Raydium charging a 0.25% transaction fee on each transaction.

The motivation behind this is also very simple: in plain terms, Pump.fun as the traffic entry point has not fully reaped the benefits of the traffic it brings.

We mentioned at the time that in a poor market environment, not only are the 'cabbage farmers' in PVP, but the projects are also putting on a good show of mutual competition.

Raydium does Launchpad

And just today, Raydium's counterattack strategy has also surfaced.

According to a report by Blockworks, Raydium is launching a token launch platform called LaunchLab, similar to a direct fork of pump.fun.

Although Raydium's Official Twitter has not directly posted about this new change, no smoke without fire, this also seems to mean that the cooperation and tacit understanding between Raydium and Pump.fun is gradually being broken.

As a spectator, the perception is very obvious - since you've taken my business, then I can also take your business.

Raydium's motivation is also very simple, as the backend liquidity pool, why not take a step further to get the front-end traffic entry as well?

But the prerequisite for stealing business is to have the strength.

For token launch platforms like Pump.fun, copying a similar product is relatively simple, and the strength may not come from technology, but from capital.

Further reports indicate that Raydium still has about $168 million on its balance sheet, which provides the greatest confidence for cloning a Pump.fun, i.e. investing money.

And the anonymous Raydium core contributor quoted in the Blockworks report indirectly proves this point:

"The protocol started developing LaunchLab a few months ago, but shelved the project because it 'didn't want the team to feel that Raydium was competing directly with them'. After the emergence of Pump.fun's AMM plan, this so-called magnanimity seems to have dried up."

In other words, while Pump.fun was doing AMM, Raydium was already thinking about doing Launchpad.

This is more like an unintentional competition and a conscious action to take the business further.

The project parties are obviously more clear than the 'cabbage farmers' that transactions are the soul of the crypto business, and working on the various links around transactions is easier to reap the benefits.

Of course, the best thing is to have the ability to eat up the entire chain, from the entry point to the backend.

Internal war moat

The AMM pool is essentially an open source design, and a meme coin launch platform is not difficult to implement; since the two sides have no development barriers on the product, Pump.fun and Raydium could have done their respective businesses.

The only problem is, where are the moats of the two sides, and what do they rely on to win?

Pump.fun's moat is obviously in the traffic advantage brought by user habits. As a Meme coin launch platform, Pump.fun has firmly grasped the attention of a portion of users through its unique community culture and user stickiness.

And once this user habit is formed, it is difficult to easily transfer to other platforms. More importantly, Pump.fun's user ecosystem has the attribute of a traffic entry point, which provides it with continuous growth momentum.

On the other hand, Raydium's moat is built on the transaction demand for its liquidity pool. As one of the most important DeFi infrastructures on Solana, Raydium's ecological control power comes not only from its deep liquidity pool, but also from its position in the transaction network across the entire Solana chain.

In other words, Raydium's advantage is not just technological, but the dependence of the entire ecosystem on it.

However, the strength of the moat is not just a static existence.

In the current environment, Pump.fun and Raydium's respective moats also face different challenges:

Whether Pump.fun's traffic can continue to grow depends on whether it can constantly launch new features and new gameplay to attract users. Raydium, on the other hand, needs to maintain its lead in liquidity competition and further consolidate its ecological position through capital and technological investment.

Liquidity depletion, how many will participate in this internal war?

When the two protocols are busy competing with each other, a bigger question emerges:

How many users will actually participate in this internal war? Is there really enough market space and user base to support it?

From the current market environment, the crypto industry is in a downturn, with liquidity and user activity significantly lower than before. In this context, whether it's Pump.fun or Raydium, what they are competing for is actually a shrinking pie.

If there is no new liquidity injection, or if there are no more 'cabbage farmers' coming in, this competition is actually meaningless.

Whether it's BSC, Solana or other public chains, inter-chain competition and intra-chain competition are intensifying. The underlying driver of this competition is the industry's desire for traffic and transaction fee revenue. However, if the overall crypto market environment does not improve, this competition may ultimately be just a flash in the pan.

For the entire industry, the real breakthrough lies not in internal wars or inter-chain wars, but in how to enhance the overall attractiveness of the industry. Whether it's through innovative product forms, lowering user thresholds, or through broader education and promotion, attracting new liquidity is the key to solving the problem.