Written by: shushu
In May this year, Pump.fun launched the live broadcast function for the first time, but it did not gain the expected popularity. In November, the official once again vigorously promoted the function and successfully led to the craze of "live broadcast with meme". However, within a week, Pump live broadcast gradually began to get out of control. Due to the platform's poor content review, the broadcasters did not hesitate to make all kinds of extreme behaviors in order to attract attention, and even posed a direct threat to others, putting this killer application of the Solana ecosystem into legal and regulatory risks.
From "Coin Circle Kuaishou" to "Coin Circle Dark Web"
If the token market cap doesn’t reach 1 million, he’ll shoot his dog.
If the token market value does not reach 1 million, he will hang himself.
A young couple beats their 3-year-old child every 4 minutes until the token market cap reaches a certain target.
A 12-year-old said he would kill his entire family with a shotgun if the token market value did not reach a target.
Nude live broadcasts, human-animal battles, locking oneself in a cage like a dog, and even child and pet abuse, Nazi imitation and other extreme and bottomless content frequently appear. In the past few days, a wave of vulgar live broadcast coin issuance has been set off on Pump.Fun, attracting attention and discussion in the industry. Someone in the community joked that "this year's two Killer Apps, one has been caught by the FBI, and the other will be caught by the FBI soon."
Another community user commented, “Not an expert on Section 230 law, but I have worked on social media platforms under T&S, which is exactly what the CEOs of Facebook, Twitch, TikTok, etc. were dragged before Congress and fined hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Section 230 is Section 230 of the United States Communications Decency Act (CDA), a law passed in 1996 that allows network operators (regardless of size) to moderate user speech and content as they see fit. It is considered one of the important laws on Internet content management and platform responsibility, and an important cornerstone in shaping the modern Internet.
Although there are no completely corresponding legal provisions in China, the (Cybersecurity Law) and other regulations have also put forward stricter requirements for the content review of Internet platforms. For example, when domestic platforms find illegal or vulgar content, they must take the initiative to assume the responsibility of review, otherwise they may face high fines or suspension of service.
Pump.Fun, as the fastest growing and most recognized crypto platform in this cycle, is currently experiencing the same problems as traditional Internet platforms: traffic or bottom line.
It started with a live broadcast that is still going on
Pump.Fun launched the live broadcast function at the end of May this year, but it has always been a product function within a small circle and has not triggered a breakthrough effect.
Until last week, Pump.fun officially promoted the live broadcast function again. In the early morning of November 22, an unemployed young man in North America said in a live broadcast on Pump.fun that he would wait until the market value of his token (LIVE) reached 100 million before going offline. This live broadcast was also selected by Pump and placed on the homepage. After the internal market reached 100,000 US dollars, the LIVE token continued to rise. Later, KOLs such as gmony participated in the online real-time interaction, and finally pushed the market value of the LIVE token to more than 20 million US dollars.
At present, this guy has been live streaming for 89 hours. At the same time, the price of LIVE also rises and falls with the different operations of this person in the live broadcast room. For example, when this guy went to the toilet, the LIVE price plummeted, and the audience thought he was going to end the broadcast; at the same time, he also interacted with many KOLs on Twitter and opened Spaces, and many people gave him advice and taught him how to do things.
Gradually, more and more similar live imitations appeared on Pump.Fun. As mentioned above, if the market value is less than X, then X will happen. In order to attract more attention and fill up the internal market and launch successfully as soon as possible, the theme and live content of meme coins must be as eye-catching as possible.
Brother LIVE burned the pool, shaved his hair, and did all kinds of weird things during the live broadcast. At the beginning, when no one knew that he would sleep during the live broadcast, the community was still talking about how LIVE would be deified if this person died suddenly during the live broadcast.
When live streaming, a medium that can maximize the display of all emotions, is combined with a platform that can issue assets with one click without any censorship, so many absurd scenes will appear, which are very suitable as story materials for (Black Mirror).
The live broadcast lasted for more than 80 hours (he slept in the middle, so it can’t be considered continuous live broadcast in the absolute sense), but the market value returned to 4M. LIVE fell more and more, and the community began to think about how this guy should end.
FBI！Open the door！
As more and more people began to call on Pump.Fun to shut down its live streaming function, Pump.Fun's revenue hit an all-time high.
Therefore, the existence of the vulgar live broadcast content mentioned above has found legitimacy - it can make money.
In the comments section of Pump.Fun, some people are trying to divert traffic to do peripheral business. In response, an ecosystem manager said, "Real mass adoption has already been achieved. Most adoptions in this industry start from the gray area...VC Bros, no matter what you want to promote, it must first be in line with human nature."
The so-called conforming to human nature is nothing more than some vulgar and bizarre live broadcast gimmicks, or even worse, gray industries such as pornographic transactions and terrorist crimes, but they are regarded as the future of an industry. Does this industry still have a future?
Lvdong once said in an article (Pump.fun is becoming the "fast hand in the cryptocurrency circle") that Pump.Fun's attention economy will create a "live broadcast god", but at the same time, we must also pay attention to regulatory issues, such as how the platform reviews extreme content, and when the issuer publishes some pornographic or more extreme inappropriate behavior, whether Pump.fun should intervene to prevent possible criminal behavior.
Unfortunately, the current Pump.Fun does not do anything in this regard.
If Pump.Fun continues to allow this chaos, it will not only damage its own credibility, but will also have a negative impact on the entire crypto industry.
The platform's control power cannot be dissipated because of decentralization, and the attention economy is not an excuse to break the bottom line. From one-click coin issuance to "live broadcast with meme", Pump.Fun is a model of commercial innovation of crypto products, but now the vulgar live broadcast has been torn open, and those supporters who are used by Pump.Fun and trample on values will eventually become the abyss that swallows Pump.Fun.