What is shaved is hair, what is burned is real gold, what is played is abstraction.

Written by: Joyce, Frost

BlockBeats Note: This article was written on July 1, as Pump.fun launched its livestream feature, right at the time when the phenomenon of 'livestreaming memes' was beginning to gain popularity. Recently, Pump.fun's official team has once again boosted the livestream function. On November 22, a jobless young man from North America livestreamed on Pump.fun stating he would not stop until the market value of his token (LIVE) reached 100 million. This livestream also became a featured selection on the Pump homepage. After reaching 100,000 dollars in the internal market, the LIVE token continued to rise, and later KOLs like gmony participated in real-time interactions online, ultimately pushing the market value of the LIVE token above 20 million dollars.

Left: LIVE token issuance guy livestreaming a head shave; Right: LIVE token price

After the 'livestream guy' exploded in popularity, a new wave of livestreaming surged on the Pump.fun official website, with various streamers using all sorts of tricks to raise the price of their tokens, gradually giving Pump.fun the appearance of 'the Kuaishou of the coin circle'.

Pump.fun is the most special product in this cycle. Since its launch more than four months ago, over 1.17 million tokens have been released on Pump.fun, with total revenue exceeding 50 million dollars. How to understand this number? Compared to the top traffic product Uniswap in the previous bull market, it is estimated that Uniswap Labs has an annual revenue of about 25 to 30 million dollars.

It can be said that Pump.fun is not a typical Web3 project. It does not have a complex token economic model or DAO governance mechanism, but with precise market positioning, Pump.fun has created a business market that guarantees profit. Under the dominance of the attention economy, many people interpret the sustained prosperity of the meme coin track as the advantage of short videos over long videos. In the era of 'universal coin issuance', can there still be latercomers to share in the profits? With the attention economy coupled with extreme PVP, what new tricks will meme coins play?

The person who burned himself to promote the meme coin is still livestreaming.

Do you remember the developer who burned himself to promote his meme coin a month ago? On June 27, last Thursday, he was livestreaming on Twitter.

This developer is named Mikol. On May 17, he launched a meme coin called TruthOrDare (DARE) on Pump.fun, at that time Pump.fun did not yet have a livestream feature, and could only post images in the comments. Mikol physically demonstrated the highlights of Season One to the community by livestreaming on Twitch, pouring isopropyl alcohol on himself while friends launched fireworks in his direction. Amidst the fans' gasps and the rise of DARE, his body caught fire, resulting in third-degree burns and a trip to the hospital.

The token DARE surged 12 times on the day Mikol was burned, only to quickly return to zero the next day. Mikol's story was reported by the crypto community media Decrypt, attracting much attention. In response to this heat, Mikol, lying in the ICU, recorded a video to the community stating that he would not give up operations, saying, "You will see a better me."

Issuing a meme coin and then trying to attract attention for a price increase is not just Mikol's approach. The Solana meme craze has brought in a large number of crypto newcomers and spawned many meme coins that are watched in seconds. In addition to Mikol's 'burn coin', there were also meme coins with names like 'LIVEWITHMOM' which livestreamed exposing private body parts to 'seek buys'.

Although the lifespans of these meme coins are extremely short, and very few have market values exceeding 1 million dollars, the combination of livestreaming with coin issuance has allowed many low-income individuals to find the key to wealth.

One week after this incident, Pump.fun launched its livestream function, and the community's first reaction was to advise coin issuers 'please do not self-immolate for profit.'

As Mikol's story attracted community attention, there were many who thought such behavior was too pathological and contrary to the initial spirit of crypto. Some even advised Mikol to find a good job after recovering. However, after his condition stabilized, Mikol opened a Twitch livestream from the hospital and simultaneously broadcasted on Pump.fun. As he wished, his return to streaming helped DARE surge again by 15 times.

However, that surge from the comeback only lasted for a day, and the price of DARE continued to decline, seemingly struggling to find upward momentum again. But from then until now, Mikol has often livestreamed with bandages, performing acts like eating raw eggs, dry swallowing cinnamon powder, and sharing his recovery routine. New members have also joined his "TruthOrDare family", showcasing skills like eating mustard and raw peppers.

Unless in very rare cases, it may be difficult for Mikol and his DARE to regain the previous level of attention. There are many more Mikols online, hoping to gain community attention through sufficiently abstract and impactful performances, allowing their memes to soar.

Those who naturally attract high traffic have already begun issuing coins. From Jenner to Mother, Father, and others, the celebrity coin wave has allowed the issuing teams and early followers to earn significant profits. Although figures like Vitalik have expressed opposing views on this phenomenon, it is difficult to stop the trend in the crypto community of "entertaining to death".

Perhaps it can be considered that the influx of newcomers into the crypto community this time comes from the "sinking market". The meme coin market is still vast, but unlike the meme coins of DOGE, PEPE, and others that had some connection to the crypto community back then, the current meme coin craze points to a new direction, in the sinking market outside of the crypto community.

The crypto market is undergoing a transition from PGC to UGA.

The emergence of the meme craze has many practical reasons behind the industry's development. Indeed, the attractiveness of crypto narratives in this bull market is not as compelling as before. Compared to the opaque distribution of chips and grand narratives that fail to materialize like 'value coins', newcomers are more willing to consider memes as their first experience entering the crypto space.

Behind this is an increasing number of users seeing through the ultimate PVP logic. Regardless of how the narrative changes, it is merely to create a sufficiently ponzi-like scheme for the next person to take over. The market does not lack people issuing coins; it only lacks those who can tell the story of issuing coins well. Since the community's consensus has become that "the essence of value coins is also a type of air coin", why not just issue coins directly? The birth of Pump.fun is just in time.

The emergence of Pump.fun allows users to publish their own meme coins with extremely low cost (0.02 SOL) at the click of a button. Meme coins go through takeoff and collapse within a few hours, with over 10,000 tokens published daily on Pump.fun, accounting for over 80% of the total token supply in the Solana ecosystem. Recently, Pump.fun's daily revenue has been between 450,000 and 1,000,000 dollars, with total revenue exceeding 50 million dollars since its launch a few months ago.

As pointed out in an analysis report released by Youbi Capital in May, the surge of low liquidity assets is an inherent response to the current cycle's insufficient liquidity in the market, while there is also a potential metaphor indicating the sharp increase in the number of issued coins due to the transition from PGA (Professional Generated Asset) to UGA (User Generated Asset), leading to an increasingly fragmented consensus.

However, new opportunities still exist.

Three days ago, DEX Screener launched the token issuance platform Moonshot. On its first day, it released over 7000 tokens. At the same time, Solana received community recognition for launching the feature to trade tokens on Twitter called blinks. Combining these two hot topics, the meme coin SC surged over a hundred times in two days, indicating that the market wants a piece of the token issuance platform cake, and users also expect new stories following Pump.fun.

After all, the history of crypto technology has unprecedentedly and greatly lowered the speed and threshold for asset issuance and trading, and its potential application market is still very large. As long as the community's demand for "monetizing attention" remains, there will still be narratives to tell in the crypto market.

What would happen if livestreaming occurred in Web3?

In traditional internet, the development of the 'attention economy' industry has taken about 20 years, transitioning from forums and post bars to graphic microblogs, and then to short video livestreaming. Such a trajectory is also playing out in the crypto space.

On May 29, Pump.fun announced the launch of its livestream feature. For a site focused on making money off meme coins, users indeed had no need to watch livestreams. However, as a form of communication with the highest information carrying capacity, most scene-sense, and emotional impact, combined with asset issuance functions, it is a promising application scenario in terms of the attention economy.

Simplifying commercialization to the extreme.

The commercialization path of Web3 is fundamentally different from traditional internet, but the typical cases of Web2 in the attention economy can provide some insights for the crypto industry.

Taking Kuaishou as an example, in 2013, less than two years after its inception, Kuaishou decided to transition from a GIF-making tool to an internet community, where users produce content on Kuaishou, recording and sharing their lives and creativity through short videos, interacting with fans. Unlike new platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou's user positioning is 'the average person in society', mainly consisting of young people from second and third-tier cities.

In 2014, YY streamers with a loyal fan base in the sinking market entered Kuaishou, when Kuaishou's monthly active users were 1 million. By the end of 2016, Kuaishou's monthly active users surpassed 64 million. During the rapid growth of Kuaishou in these two years, YY streamers occupied four of the top streamer spots on Kuaishou.

Kuaishou has maintained the characteristics of the sinking market community, not signing popular celebrities or providing traffic support. The fair algorithm mechanism has encouraged the vigorous development of UGC content. Compared to products at the same time, Kuaishou stood out with its unique "decentralized community" model.

In 2017, Kuaishou was the first to seize the benefits of livestreaming, becoming the world's largest single livestreaming platform. According to Kuaishou's prospectus, from 2017 to 2019, the company's revenues were 8.3 billion, 20.3 billion, and 39.1 billion yuan respectively, with livestreaming revenue at 7.9 billion, 18.6 billion, 31.4 billion, and 17.3 billion yuan, accounting for 95.18%, 91.63%, 80.31%, and 68.38% respectively. It is clear that livestreaming was Kuaishou's core business and its foundational color at that time.

After its rapid development, Kuaishou had to adjust its content ecology. After all, traditional Web2 companies need to undergo commercial transformation, and in this process, only those content producers who have high audience consumption levels, meet traditional social values, and survive in fierce competition can remain until the end.

Looking back, rather than saying Kuaishou has done well in the sinking market, it is more accurate to say Kuaishou has targeted the new hand market of the attention economy track. Similarly, the coin issuance platform targeting crypto novices does not need to consider "commercial transformation".

In traditional internet giants, whether content platforms or shopping platforms, they seek to show users 'here are good things worth watching/buying' because only content that is recognized and loved by more users holds commercial value and can bring profits to the platform. But Pump.fun does not need to commercialize; its profit model is extremely simple and pure. It only needs to showcase 'here are enough coins and traders.' As long as there are transactions, Pump.fun can make money.

Currently, although Pump.fun has opened comments and livestream functions, users log onto Pump.fun primarily to complete the buy or sell step, while discussions about meme coins mainly occur on Twitter. Meme coin developers with livestreaming ideas mostly opt for platforms like Twitch and Kick for promotional livestreams.

On the Pump.fun interface, users can only select based on the number of comments and the market value of tokens. If there were a livestream section, would a 'livestream miracle coin' emerge on Pump.fun?

Human nature games and regulatory challenges.

Currently, some meme display platforms have emerged, such as Game.com, which just surpassed 7000 Twitter followers, providing paid listing token services. By paying 0.8 SOL, one can publish their issued meme coin on this platform to gain more attention.

And the Pump.fun team seems uninterested in exploring more on their existing services. After all, a small team with revenues exceeding 40 million dollars in half a year, with stable daily income of 600,000 dollars, indeed lacks the motivation to innovate the product or narrative, and simply positioning itself as a 'tool' is already sufficient.

With more newcomers entering the crypto space, perhaps livestreaming could serve as a differentiating tag for other coin issuance platforms like Moonshot.

However, the previous failures of several x to earn projects in Web3 have shown that no matter how sophisticated the design, it cannot challenge human nature. On June 13, a user launched a meme coin themed around a sheep wearing a hat on Pump.fun and also livestreamed at the same time. But shortly after the livestream began, the comment section was still discussing the sheep's movements, while the sniper who bought the token at launch quickly sold most of their tokens at a high price, causing the token price to plummet.

After the token crash, the meme coin issuer explained in the comments, "My token balance remains unchanged and can be verified through solscan. If I were just looking to make quick money, why would I livestream my sheep but not sell my tokens?"

Not selling might be because the token hasn't yet been listed on Raydium; by the end, this token never reached a market value of 60,000 dollars. The issuer has never livestreamed his sheep again.

Moreover, regulatory issues are also something these platforms need to pay attention to. If the livestream format is combined with asset issuance, various extreme and vulgar behaviors will inevitably emerge to attract attention. When Pump.fun announced the launch of the livestream function, the community's biggest concern was how the platform would review extreme content. When issuers release some pornographic or more extreme inappropriate behaviors, should Pump.fun intervene to prevent potential criminal activities?

Conclusion

Returning to those meme coin issuers mentioned at the beginning of this article, one can feel the content ecology of early traditional internet short video platforms. After several years of development, these platforms have explored highly lucrative business models.

As a content format providing an "immersive experience", livestreaming allows people to realize how simple the aggregation speed of "traffic" can be, while tipping, e-commerce, and other traffic monetization channels have also enabled content creators to have some ability to counterbalance platform capital.

In the crypto sector, the platform's control dissipates in an instant. Yet attention remains the core driving force propelling the entire market forward. What kind of story would unfold if livestreaming occurred in Web3? Can the extreme utilization of traffic find new forms of expression in a decentralized environment?

Looking back over the years, amidst the continuous rupture and reconstruction of consensus, the crypto industry has seen countless projects transition from "innovation" to collapse. The emergence of Pump.fun is just a beginning.