Open Source Sickle 29 - Looking Back at Pump and Bonk One Month After ICO, Why Did This Happen?
A month ago, Pump ICO, the entire network was FUD, only I was bullish (Original post). As a result, the comment section was scolding me as an "advertising dog" and "paid shill"
Now Pump's market share is back to 80%, Bonk has dropped to 3%, surpassed by Bags, and the argument is meaningless
We'll step out of our stance and look back at some of my views from the results, which may still be meaningful for future project parties and P enthusiasts 👇
*Note: The discussion is about Pump and Bonk platforms themselves, not the coins they issued, please do not argue
"Mass Media Says": Compared to Pump, Bonk is like a traditional radio station
I agree with what @ed_x0101 and @Michael_Liu93 said, meme funds have no loyalty. But this precisely explains why Bonk didn't win
People born in the 80s and 90s should still remember Chinese media before smartphones: Central TV - Provincial TV - Local TV stations, news broadcast precisely at 7 PM every night
Media people at that time = eating from the government, everyone relied on approval slips for income, economic interests were in the hands of deputy directors managing ad placements, focusing not on traffic but political risks
Doesn't it look like BSC and BONK's "two saints" strategy?
Traffic concentrated on key official figures, only those endorsed by the two saints could take off, making Tom and Bonk shell bear excessive endorsement responsibility.
On one side, they need shills to attract Devs, on the other side, afraid of being exploited like "BNBCARD" with the first sister. The result is high market-making costs, new markets not coming. As a mutual aid disk, unable to achieve circulation rate, can only shout those few, ultimately price collapses, trapping everyone
"Giving traffic" and "shill marginal effect" are themselves contradictory: shouting collapses one, not shouting also collapses
Why do I say Pump is mass media?
My statement was ridiculed by many, but please read through:
Mass media, or self-media, allows more traffic players to monetize, without needing anyone's endorsement
What Pump did was turn itself into a true traffic portal
Look at their Official Twitter, it's like Facebook's 9GAG, their job is to create/select network-wide memes, creating an interactive space in the comment section. First-generation traffic matrix accounts grew from 9GAG comments, while angles and CAs grew from Pump's comment section, like $tokabu
Each tweet casually gets 200-300k views, several times Letsbonk's. At peak, @theunipcs also had several reaching this, but by clearly giving community chicken blood
Bonk is doing market cap, Pump is cultivating Dev and KOL groups
Pump and Alon don't need endorsement, because traffic players like Threadguy, Gainzy, Rasmr, Yenni, Scooter can casually involve some drama and be seen as angles
They can be scum, you can distrust them, as long as Pump's meme portal traffic exists, these traffic players are still around, contradictions exist, comment section is active - Pump's traffic cost is proven significantly lower than Bonk's
Spread and endorsement are two different things, spread only needs attention, not credibility
Just as few people now want to be TV hosts, centralized broadcast systems will inevitably be replaced by decentralized mass media
Ponzi is useful, "community" is useless
Bonk is a typical "community rises, community falls"
Mechanism almost identical to Pump, but product completion far inferior, so can only rely on three selling points: buyback burn, staking $SOL, obtaining Solana "official support".
Essentially trying to create a "community first" image through these forms, to win money from Solana's loyal community, and tell a Bonk flywheel DeFi logic:
$Bonk rises → Bonk platform buyback burn → Further push $Bonk
Why was the result a failure?
First, Bonk manages the disk but doesn't understand the disk
Memecoin is essentially a mutual aid disk, also Sol's split disk. Each meme helps Sol dissolve bubbles
However, Bonk mistakenly treated it as $Bonk's split disk. Actually, buyback burn is essentially a dividend variant, mother coin price rise will only create more bubbles. Bonk's peak was only 2M total profit, even full buyback can't support a 2 billion disk, this flywheel doesn't stand
Originally as a mutual aid disk, it only needed to constantly find ways to pull out small large MC memecoin to maintain activity. Result was Bonk's "community first" tied to a big truck, turned into a disk with sunk costs. One big break below position, directly double-killed and collapsed
Second, Bonk itself was brainwashed by "community"
Bonkguy always mentions community, but I think he doesn't understand what "community" means to project parties
When I say "community" is useless, I mean people who praise you in public domain but are actually opponent's disk are useless
Meme and dividend disks are originally zero-sum scenarios. In zero-sum scenarios, talking about "PVE" and "community" is self-deception. Here, "community" is 100% opponent's disk
The most puzzling operation is encouraging Chinese CTOs. If finding ways to list on exchanges to cut external liquidity is PVE, then knowingly Sol meme is unlikely to list, letting CTOs with no market-making ability and globally most "crab mentality" is purely throwing people into fire
Bonk's momentum collapse is directly related to those Chinese CTOs' drama
The cruel fact is: most projects' "communities" are meaningless. If Devs truly believe in "community" and "long-term contributors", falling into "dividend" "buyback" such noble-sounding "token utility" traps will only make themselves bleed faster and be cursed harder later
Real community is people with aligned interests: casino owners, gamblers, brokers, acceptance merchants. They're not here to huddle, but to make money. What you need to do is not make them touched, but let them continuously make money, not become your opponent's disk
Firmly Believe Pump Won't Airdrop
Only three types of people are useful for Pump:
- Long-term P enthusiasts who persist in betting
- Traffic players who personally shill
- Continuous disk-issuing Devs of all sizes
These people have aligned interests, thus subsidy is necessary:
- Give net loss P enthusiasts airdrops based on losses and historical fees, subsidize kill rate, let them continue playing
- Give traffic players shill incentives, correspondingly give code farmers code rations
- Create cabal market value fund, occasionally buy in second-stage ignition, forming market-making costs (market-making costs, spread costs) that competitors can't match
So even if Pump has tweeted, I believe they won't and shouldn't do that kind of "sunshine universal" "reward long-term users" airdrop, or even do 100% buyback. Any predictable buyback itself won't produce directional meaning for secondary market, at most "finding reasons" in rising range
This money can be used in other ways
Insights for P Little General and Project Parties
For Project Parties:
1. The key to the platform is the comprehensive launch cost. Players already at the table can mobilize resources for small large MC memecoin, but the moat lies in how to distribute traffic based on Web2 attention. This is why today's Pump increasingly resembles an MCN
2. SOL's on-chain narrative has been exhausted: The SOL platform war has actually destroyed all on-chain issuance narratives: AI, ICM... Any fair launch based on Bonding Curve and AMM no longer feels different to players. Bonk is already the ceiling for resource players
3. If you're still creating a platform on SOL, it's recommended to give up directly. This is currently the most expensive track network-wide, without question. An ordinary person cannot survive
4. If your product is a trading product, for the sake of effortless revenue, do not create expectations of universal airdrops
For P Little General:
1. Platforms that endorse "Dragon One" and "Dragon Two" concepts will certainly die
2. But if this platform wants to operate on Sol, it must pull out an objectively valued "Dragon One" with a market cap of 5-10M. However, after Bonk/Launchcoin's failure, these Dragon Ones' ceiling will become lower. Do not linger in battle
3. Remember "no PVE, only PVP". MEME cannot be shorted with 50x leverage contracts. You can do ultra-short-term diamond hands, but must set stop loss, absolutely do not continue fighting after downward expansion
4. Do not engage CTO, do not engage CTO, do not engage CTO. Do not be used as a gun by the platform
5. P Little General is at the food chain's end, must find a way to become a KOL, must get to the table
Finally
Hope everyone does not just see "stepping on one and praising another" in this text
Bonk did not successfully challenge Pump, not because of insufficient level or resources. They did very well, but positioned themselves as Sol's launchpad. Facing Pump in the current market, even over-performing can only achieve this
Pump and Bonk's competition on Sol is asymmetric, like top T72 tank operators encountering drones in the Ukrainian battlefield. Compared to 99% of projects in this industry, Bonk is not "failing". For us, what's more important is understanding why, in order to identify ourselves, to better retreat when facing difficulties, stop losses in time, and precisely replicate
