More than a week ago, DEX Screener quietly launched Moonshot, a meme launch product interface.
Simply put, Moonshot allows players to check out the popular new memes on DEX Screener. In addition, players can also issue their own meme coins on DEX Screener. Once Moonshot was launched, many players came in to experience it.
After the new product was released, the community had high expectations for it. A community member said, "Moonshot relies on Dexscreener and uses its huge user base to provide more detailed token trading information to early trading users of Meme coins. The unified token details page design also reduces the user's learning cost and helps new and old users get started faster."
However, what’s interesting is that when Moonshot was “using its own strengths to attack the opponent’s weaknesses”, it found that its opponent Pump.fun didn’t seem to be so easy to defeat.
「Pump.fun knockoff」
Moonshot is not the first meme launch platform. pump.fun was born in January 2024. Its founder is Alon (@a1lon9). After chatting with Qiao (@QwQiao) of Alliance, Alon launched pump.fun with the help of Alliance. The original product idea actually came from Suki (@tradergirlsuki), a former member of Pantera.
Subsequently, pump.fun quickly occupied the market share of the meme launch platform with its excellent operation and god-disk manufacturing capabilities. The first meme deployed on Pump.fun was TEST, and it was TEST that made Pump.fun earn more than 5 million US dollars and officially entered the community's field of vision.
It is reported that there were several meme coins with astonishing growth on the pump.fun platform. Among them, the token named "bert" achieved a tenfold increase in just 15 minutes after opening, causing a sensation in the market. Another highly-watched project "WEI" attracted investors with its unique background story. WEI claimed to be an AI-generated girl and said she liked the Solana ecosystem very much. This abstract setting pushed its price up three times in just half an hour.
The success of the pump.fun platform is inseparable from its innovative technical mechanism. The platform uses the Bonding Curve and the automatic migration to AMM (Automatic Market Maker) mechanism to greatly simplify the issuance process of Meme coins. An industry analyst said: "Pump.Fun actually opened up the last mile of issuing Memecoin. This innovation greatly lowers the issuance threshold, allowing ordinary users to easily create their own Meme coins."
In addition to technological innovation, pump.fun also added entertainment features such as live streaming to the platform, combining Meme coin transactions with entertainment. This move not only enhances user stickiness, but also provides a new channel for the spread of Meme coins. However, as time goes by, many players gradually find that the Memecoin issued on pump.fun has gradually become PVP and is no longer a god disk. The market needs new pioneers.
It's not easy to beat Pump.fun
In May this year, a team launched a meme launcher based on the base chain, We.Rich. The platform almost replicated some of the features of pump.fun, and even had a lot of gold dogs. But just two weeks after the launch of We.Rich, the popularity of the platform began to gradually wane, and it has never reproduced the grand occasion when it was first launched. A month later, the We.Rich launcher ran into trouble. As of press time, its Telegram group had only 217 users, and most of them were inactive. Industry insiders pointed out that the project's operations were almost stagnant.
After DEX Screener launched its new platform Moonshot this month, the platform quickly received negative reviews from users, who said it was "not as good as pump.fun." Some users criticized it for its slow action, which led to the official Twitter account being impersonated.
Some netizens discovered that there were multiple fake accounts pretending to be "Moonshot" on the Twitter platform, including some high-imitation accounts with a large number of fans, some of which have even accumulated about 11,000 fans.
DEX Screener then posted a message on social media X saying: "Moonshot does not have an X account, don't be fooled."
In addition, crypto user @cryptoleon_eth said that "moonshot pvp is serious and he lost $200 in 2 hours." This Moonshot user bought 7 different meme coins on Moonshot, each for $20 to $30. However, these tokens fell rapidly after the purchase, resulting in serious losses. It was soon discovered that although the names of the meme tokens on Moonshot were interesting, the rug phenomenon was very serious.
Interestingly, Moonshot's product model is jokingly called the "MS model" (Moonshot model) by community users. This model is causing widespread discussion and concern. Its characteristics are:
Make a small cake: Project parties tend to launch token issuance activities with smaller scale and higher threshold.
Driving out the “rural folks”: The “rural folks” here refer to retail investors and small investment institutions, who are considered to be the foundation of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
One takes all: Large institutional investors (commonly known as "dog dealers") gain more market share and profits.
The MS model has made some adjustments based on the original ecosystem of Pump.Fun, but these changes seem to be more subtractions than additions. The main impact of the MS model is to "kick out some dog dealers", that is, to reduce the participation of certain large investors. This change may be aimed at creating a fairer market environment, but it may also affect the liquidity and activity of the market.
In the development of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, LaunchPad (broadly speaking, a token issuance platform) has played a vital role. From the early Uniswap to the now-popular pump.fun, the success of these platforms presents a strategy of "surrounding the city from the countryside", uniting the majority of ordinary user groups to ultimately achieve the prosperity of the platform.
However, there are also voices that believe that the MS model may be the result of a natural evolution of the market, reflecting investors’ demand for more mature and professional projects. Supporters believe that this may help eliminate some lower-quality projects and improve the professional level of the entire industry.
The meme launch platform race heats up, and a diversified competitive landscape begins to emerge
After the Moonshot launch, despite the shortcomings of the mechanism and the constant controversy, retail investors' attitude towards the Meme coin launch platform showed a clear two-sidedness. When the Meme coin market was hot, retail investors generally favored these platforms; but when the market cooled down, they criticized the platforms for "being ugly". However, the Meme coin launch platform still frequently creates "magic plates", attracting retail investors to scramble to bet. They are one of the most eye-catching existences in the dull market.
As a platform that relies on the Dexscreener user base, Moonshot represents the power of "grassroots innovation" in the cryptocurrency world. Dexscreener is a popular cryptocurrency market analysis tool with a large number of active users. Moonshot takes advantage of this user base and provides ordinary investors with a low-threshold way to participate in the creation and trading of Meme coins.
At the same time, the meme launcher platform has become increasingly popular in the crypto-entrepreneurship circle. On June 22, 2024, a meme launcher named Lmao posted its first tweet and received nearly 10,000 views. Lmao was founded by Suki, the former Pantera quantitative leader.
Interestingly, Suki is also the original creator of the product design of pump.fun. Because Suki rejected the investment from allicedao, Wanqiao of allicedao plagiarized Suki's idea and told it to the current pump.fun team, which was incubated by alllicedao. The product form of pump.fun in the first two months was almost the same as her own idea.
This time, Lmao created by Suki is not only a meme coin launch platform, but also has strong social attributes. Meme players can freely chat and exchange their views on memes. The vision of Lmao is to allow everyone to issue coins.
Unlike pump.fun, which ignores the security of user assets, Lmao attaches great importance to the security of user assets. On May 17, pump.fun was attacked, and the attacker was able to participate in the meme coin released by the platform through a loophole. The attack was caused by a former employee who used his privileged position in the company to steal about 12,300 SOL. This greatly increased users' concerns about the security of their assets. Lmao has strictly managed the rights of engineers, and the security of users' assets can be guaranteed, which is in sharp contrast to the attitude of pump.fun.
The Lmao platform, founded by top North American fund traders, represents another development path. They brought their rich financial experience into the Meme coin field, and are expected to bring a more standardized and professional operating model to the market.
However, for now, despite the controversy and security issues in the community regarding pump.fun’s role in the Meme market, it seems that it will take time for emerging platforms to subvert its position. Some investors have reviewed pump.fun’s past successes and believe that it is still the most competitive Meme coin launch platform on the Solana chain. Pump.fun has temporarily maintained its market leadership with its first-mover advantage and user base, but as more and more players in the track continue to increase, what interesting changes will occur in the meme launch platform? It is worth our further attention.