Written by: Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On May 13, on-chain data analyst Adam posted Dune panel data on X, showing that in the past 24 hours, LaunchLab's token issuance platform (including third-party platforms built on LaunchLab such as Letsbonk.Fun) had 198 graduated tokens in the past 24 hours, surpassing Pump.fun's 171 graduated tokens.
Adam commented that this is the first time Pump.fun has faced true competition.
Historical Grievances
The feud between Pump.fun and Raydium has long existed.
In Pump.fun's early design, token issuance required two stages - "internal market" and "external market" - after token issuance, it would first enter the "internal market" trading phase, which relied on Pump.fun protocol's own Bonding Curve for matching. When the trading volume reached $69,000, it would enter the "external market" trading phase, at which point liquidity would migrate to Raydium and create a pool for continued trading.
However, on March 21, Pump.fun announced the launch of its own AMM DEX product PumpSwap. Since then, Pump.fun tokens would no longer migrate liquidity to Raydium when entering the "external market", but would instead be directed to PumpSwap - directly cutting off the traffic flow to Raydium and reducing its trading volume and fee income.
In response, Raydium announced on April 16 the official launch of its token issuance platform LaunchLab, allowing users to quickly issue tokens and automatically migrate liquidity to Raydium AMM when it reaches a certain scale (85 SOL). Clearly, this was Raydium's direct counterattack against the aggressive Pump.fun.
Odaily Note: For details, please refer to 'Data Analysis: How Dependent is Raydium on Pump.fun?' and 'Raydium Strikes Back at Pump.fun, Who Will Laugh Last in the Meme Comeback Season?'
LaunchLab's "Killer Move"
Although LaunchLab's token issuance function is similar to Pump.fun, its biggest feature is not in the issuance stage itself - LaunchLab's architecture supports third-party integration, allowing external teams and platforms to create and manage their own launch environments within the LaunchLab ecosystem. In other words, third parties can rely on LaunchLab's underlying technology (with the key point being that liquidity pools remain in LaunchLab and Raydium) to launch independent token launch frontends.
The official LaunchLab interface shows that there are already over ten third-party token issuance platforms built on LaunchLab, including the recently popular Bonk community token issuance platform Letsbonk.Fun - in fact, most of the graduated tokens in the current LaunchLab ecosystem come from Letsbonk.Fun.
In short, LaunchLab's strategy is to use third-party platforms like Letsbonk.Fun to attack Pump.fun with a "wolf pack" strategy, and the current trend shows that this strategy is already showing initial success.
Additionally, Raydium launched an incentive program ahead of Pump.fun to provide incentives for issuance and trading activities on LaunchLab and related third-party platforms.
According to the latest official disclosure, Raydium has distributed approximately $2.8 million (about 950,000 RAY) in rewards to traders on LaunchLab and Letsbonk.Fun, with current daily incentive releases around $110,000.
Pump.fun Forced to Respond
Perhaps feeling the momentum of LaunchLab's "wolf pack", Pump.fun was finally forced to give up part of its cake to attract more user retention - last night, Pump.fun announced the launch of a "creator income sharing" mechanism, where token creators can receive 50% of PumpSwap platform's trading revenue. From now on, as long as a token generates trading activity, the creator can continuously receive income. The official stated that this mechanism aims to encourage more quality project parties to participate in ecosystem construction.
Meanwhile, another small incident occurred last night - Pump.fun's X page briefly blocked Letsbonk.Fun founder Tom and some Raydium contributors, but it's unclear what exactly happened...
Will the Meme Issuance Track See a Reshuffle?
As shown in the graph, for most of the time since mid-2024, Pump.fun (green part) has dominated the Meme issuance market in the Solana ecosystem, until recently emerging platforms like LaunchLab (purple part) and Boop (blue part) began to gradually occupy a certain market share.
For any market, competition is not a bad thing for ordinary users, as more intense competition often forces existing interests to give up more profits and provide better user experiences - like the recent battle between JD.com and Meituan.
From an ordinary user's perspective, we might better look forward to LaunchLab continuing to make efforts and see more new players like LaunchLab emerge.
