During the May Day holiday, a MEME coin launchpad called boop.fun emerged out of nowhere.
Its token BOOP surged by up to 309% within an hour of listing, reaching $0.5 at one point and skyrocketing its market value to $500 million. Notable figures such as Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and Jupiter founder Meow appeared in the project's investment lineup, and the project landed on Binance Alpha just six days after launch, with tremendous momentum.
However, behind the excitement, boop.fun has been embroiled in controversy due to its "group buying" Airdrop mechanism and founder's background. After such a high-profile debut, can it maintain its moment of glory?
An Ambitious Challenger to Pump.Fun
boop.fun directly targets the "overlord" of MEME launches on Solana, Pump.Fun, but with a more aggressive approach.
Unlike Pump.Fun's minimalist fee model, boop.fun builds a more ambitious "incentive flywheel" around its native token $BOOP: rewards upon launch, staking rewards. Once a MEME coin successfully "launches externally" (establishes liquidity on Raydium), creators and token holders can share 1 million $BOOP daily rewards; additionally, users staking $BOOP can proportionally enjoy token Airdrops from new projects and platform transaction fee dividends.
In token model design, boop.fun has also put considerable thought: $BOOP total supply is 1 billion, with 50% used for platform incentives and project "graduation" rewards, 15% airdropped to active MEME community users, 10% reserved for the team, with the remainder allocated to liquidity, treasury, angel investors, and staking rewards pool.
However, as its popularity soars, boop.fun has also faced waves of doubt. Can its "fully buffed" design keep the flywheel spinning?
Image source: boop.fun official website
Founder's Halo Crumbles
boop.fun founder dingaling has long been viewed as a star in the crypto industry, with investment footprints across 43 projects, not only a notable Non-Fungible Token whale but also self-claiming to be PancakeSwap's founder. However, with boop.fun's high-profile launch, doubts about him quickly fermented...
Yesterday, Meta Era founder Vito posted on X platform, directly pointing at a "mysterious founder" through a "fictional story". He stated that this founder rose to prominence in the Binance ecosystem, operated a project that looked impressive but ultimately went to zero, and is now launching a new platform on Solana to overturn MEME gameplay. Vito sarcastically remarked: "Then still crossing back to Binance Chain, surviving on Binance Alpha."
CZ subsequently appeared in the comments to "add insult to injury", also using "fictional" as a pretext, pointing out that a former employee was once fired for insider trading, yet years later self-proclaimed as a "certain founder, CXO". He emphasized that Binance only has CEO, CTO, CMO, CFO, COO, CCO, with no other "C something O".
Although both marked it as purely fictional, the community quickly pointed its spearhead at boop.fun founder dingaling, believing the allusion was obvious. Crypto KOL AB Kuai.Dong noted that currently on Twitter, only dingaling claims to be "PancakeSwap founder, Binance CRO".
Meanwhile, community users pointed out that dingaling has always been adept at following a "replication-based entrepreneurship" path: when Uniswap was hot, he launched PancakeSwap; when Opensea was popular, he created LooksRare; now he's launching boop.fun on Solana to challenge Pump.fun.
Airdrop? Or Web3 Pinduoduo?
boop.fun's Airdrop activity is divided into two methods: social Airdrop and degen Airdrop. The following table explains the two Airdrop methods:
For social Airdrop, users must bind their X account and issue tokens, with Airdrop defaulting to 30-day lock. To unlock early, users must rely on the performance of issued tokens: successful launch can reduce 10 days, with market value reaching $200k, $500k, $1.25M, $5M each unlocking 5 days.
In other words, if users want to immediately claim Airdrop, they must launch a meme coin with an initial market value of $5 million. This incentive design has sparked extensive controversy in the community, with users joking: "Is this an Airdrop? It's more like a Web3 Pinduoduo scam."
Many KOLs directly voiced their concerns. Crypto KOL AB Kuai.Dong stated that while Boop allocated large Airdrop quotas to many KOLs, some even reaching 500,000 BOOP, the design essentially incentivizes bloggers to "harvest followers" for Airdrops. He frankly said: "No one wants to issue tokens to harvest community for Airdrops, this design is a bit like PUA for KOLs."
Community member @kunlun web3 also criticized that this mechanism has multiple issues. First, Boop incorrectly assumes many KOLs would risk issuing tokens for Airdrops. More critically, if no one is willing to issue tokens, the Airdrop can only be unlocked after 30 days, by which time BOOP's price might have lost support.
Additionally, boop.fun's staking rewards mechanism is also questioned for its utility. Community user @BTCOld 8 believes that while the incentive looks attractive, "once platform project heat declines and token quality drops, such dividends will lose meaning."
boop.fun emerged with a challenger's attitude, constructing a seemingly ambitious MEME gameplay to reshape the track with aggressive incentive mechanisms. However, Web3 has never lacked imitators. Can Boop.fun's flywheel truly spin community enthusiasm, or will it quickly fade like LooksRare? Is it a fleeting success or a true game-changer?
