Author: Cookie, BlockBeats

The industry's largest meme issuance platform, pump.fun, is publicly raising $1 billion at a valuation of $4 billion, which can no longer be considered news. In the current downturn of the meme coin craze, with fewer and fewer new tokens emerging, both the Chinese and English circles have expressed concerns that the issuance of tokens by pump.fun will siphon off a large amount of liquidity, believing this will punctuate a period of meme coins.

As a phenomenon-level application layer leader in the crypto space, pump.fun has been an industry-level minting machine for a considerable period. However, as liquidity and narratives retreat, pump.fun is also trying to find ways to transform, such as learning from traditional internet platforms to create platform-native internet celebrities for traffic. So now, does pump.fun still hold a $4 billion valuation?

$4 billion valuation, is it worth it?

Pump.fun's total historical revenue is currently about $758 million, making it one of the most profitable projects in the Web3 space. According to DefiLlama data, pump.fun's income over the past 30 days is $41.61 million. Projects with income above this are either stablecoins and their related projects (Tether, Circle, and Tron) or DEXs (PancakeSwap, Hyperliquid), and no Solana ecosystem project is its competitor.

Based on the recent 30-day revenue multiplied by 12 to annualize, it is approximately $500 million, corresponding to a price-to-sales ratio of 8 times for the $4 billion valuation, which is not very outrageous when calculated this way. Of course, the voices of market skepticism are more about 'current pump.fun cannot support this valuation' rather than 'the glorious period of pump.fun cannot support this valuation.'

The income of pump.fun fluctuates according to the overall market conditions of meme coins. The peak periods for the 'graduation rate' of newly issued tokens on pump.fun were mid to late November last year and mid-January this year, with weekly graduation rates reaching 1.67% and 1.62%, which are currently double.

Correspondingly, the average daily income during these periods is at least over $4 million, which is basically 3-4 times the current level, and there are even cases of daily income exceeding $10 million. The daily number of newly issued tokens is also at least over 50,000, which is currently double.

Whether pump.fun chooses to issue tokens at peak or now, it will definitely be criticized. If it is at the peak, then it would not have the current valuation, and people would accuse them of destroying the meme coin bull market. If it is now, people would criticize them for adding fuel to the fire, extracting liquidity and exacerbating the downturn in the meme coin market. But considering it from another angle, will meme coins ever have the same fervent market as before, or will they end up like inscriptions, never to rise again? Additionally, bull markets have their way of passing, and bear markets have theirs. As the project party of pump.fun, the things they are doing in the current poor market environment show us that they may have hopes of revitalizing the meme coin market and maintaining their leading position with some kind of moat when a possible meme coin bull market returns.

The understanding of the Chinese and English circles is diverging

In the Chinese circle, aside from the ongoing major discussion topic of 'token issuance' surrounding pump.fun, people generally focus either on how pump.fun's token issuance might drive up some 'platform concept' meme coins, such as $alon related to founder @a1lon9 or mascot $cupsey, or they are more concerned with new platforms like letsbonk.fun.

There are two interesting viewpoints. The first comes from KOL Crypto Weituo @thecryptoskanda, who believes that pump.fun's 'mass media' attribute is unique, and it is the king in capturing the attention of the short-duration younger generation users.

Although @thecryptoskanda's viewpoint is accompanied by some controversy, there is indeed a very interesting phenomenon formed between meme players and traditional media. Players trading meme coins, in their pursuit of profit, have inadvertently turned into some of the most efficient 'journalists' in the world. Meanwhile, traditional media reporters, who may not trade coins at all, often report on various happenings in the crypto world, unintentionally becoming 'ambassadors' for meme coins.

The second viewpoint comes from @memekiller365's comments on @brainletcto's recently released 'meme war map'. As $SPX has continuously risen from the bottom over the past month and recently reached a historical high, veteran meme coins are now in a competitive stance with new meme coins born from platforms like pump.fun and letsbonk.fun, with each side rallying its own forces.

What about the English circle? The English circle does not have a very distinct version of understanding; it is still about playing and having fun, with the show going on. However, they are paying more attention to the live streams on pump.fun, and some community tokens from pump.fun also give the impression that, in the current market environment, pump.fun has slowed down.

From 'fast-paced casino' to 'slow-paced media'?

Gainzy, an Israeli, is currently the hottest streamer on pump.fun and recently had to frequently hide in bomb shelters due to the ongoing conflict.

In the past month, more and more clips of Gainzy's live streams have gone viral in the English circle. As the heat rises, the price of the live stream tokens released by Gainzy has also been increasing.

In May, pump.fun founder Alon commented on Gainzy, saying, 'He single-handedly revived Ethereum, pump.fun live streaming, and hair removal clinics,' calling him 'the Ansem of the last bull market.'

So Ansem asked (jokingly), 'Do you know who Gainzy is?' With over 12,000 votes, 34.8% of respondents still chose 'I don't know.' Even now, the Chinese circle may still mostly be at the Ansem stage regarding the stars of the pump.fun ecosystem, indeed not familiar with Gainzy.

Who is Gainzy? According to a tweet by @StarPlatinumSOL, Gainzy resigned in 2017 to work full-time in the crypto space, first getting involved in controversy as a dev for a Rug project called Obsidian during the ICO bull market. Later, he created a trading bot and sold it in 2018.

Gainzy was also one of the earliest KOLs to promote FTX, with commissions reaching as high as $50,000 in a month at its peak. Before his live streams on pump.fun, he was a sponsored streamer by Rollbit, but controversy arose when he promoted $RLB while secretly dumping it.

ZachXBT also criticized Gainzy at the time, 'Why did you tweet that you bought $400,000 of $RLB and then aggressively dump it less than a day later?'

Gainzy initially became popular because he was blown away by ETH, and then he went on a tirade against Vitalik and the entire Ethereum Foundation, calling them SB. This live stream occurred on May 8. Following this live stream, ETH began to rise, and the English circle jokingly claimed that Gainzy helped solidify ETH's bottom, saving Ethereum.

His live streams do not involve chain sweeping or dog fighting; he simply smokes one after another and shares his views on cryptocurrencies. From the style of his streams, he resembles a 'CSGO streamer Eggplant' who has made money but still lives like a grassroots streamer. As his popularity grew, figures like Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz and Yuga Labs co-founder Garga.eth joined him for live streams.

The latest pump.fun streaming star is @rasmr_eth. Like Gainzy, he is also a major KOL, with nearly 110,000 followers on Twitter and over 10,000 followers on Twitch. The brother started off with a presentation like Steve Jobs, explaining in detail why he wanted to bring his talents to pump.fun.

$rasmr briefly surpassed a market capitalization of $15 million after issuance but has now dropped below $6 million.

There are rumors that pump.fun paid Gainzy and rasmr to live stream on pump.fun. This rumor cannot be confirmed, but the importance of live streaming to pump.fun can be seen from the $1 million streamer incentive that started at the end of May.

In addition to these streaming stars, the $HOUSE token, which surged at the end of April, has also brought new influencers like @Fapital3, @bigtonebigtone, and @Primed25. In the previous 'meme war map', $neet, a small coin with a current market cap of less than $5 million, could be included precisely because of the strong support from the aforementioned three.

'TYBT', short for 'Thank you big tone', was one of the hottest memes on pump.fun last month. However, big tone has recently taken a break, only appearing in small groups and occasional Twitter Spaces.

Since the beginning of this year, many platforms for Web3 live streaming have emerged, but pump.fun is undoubtedly the most internet-savvy among all Web3 live streams. While people's impressions may still linger in the chaotic pump.fun live streaming era, pump.fun now seems to be trying to move away from the early wild growth and is strategically cultivating its own traffic matrix system. Now, pump.fun even gives a surreal feeling of PVE, with major coins like $FARTCOIN exceeding a market cap of $1 billion, and smaller coins like $neet and $chillhouse below $10 million, with no infighting between communities, frequent interactions, and strong unity.

(As of this article's publication, the market capitalization of $chillhouse has surpassed $10 million, peaking at nearly $18 million.)

Pump.fun founder Alon also seems to have shown considerable attention to these emerging small coins. In an interview with Decrypt, he specifically mentioned $neet, as this coin organized an offline 'no work' protest in Wall Street using creator incentives provided by the platform. After the official account of the coin tweeted their thanks, Alon retweeted it.

$chillhouse has swept through various pump.fun live rooms and KOL's Twitter DMs with its viral slogan 'Thoughts on chillhouse?', becoming one of the hottest memes in the pump.fun ecosystem recently. It's simply absurd, like a group of drunk people scribbling on the street. Alon also retweeted related tweets about $chillhouse.

'Refusing to work' $neet and the viral absurdity of $chillhouse are both quite moving perspectives for young people. Pump.fun still has the best nose for Z generation subculture in the crypto circle, which serves as a 'soft moat' for them.

Of course, from creator incentives to streamer incentives, the criticism of pump.fun in the market has never ceased. Many players believe that pump.fun is struggling to do business and has finally decided to take out some money to subsidize. However, from the perspective of the project party doing business, a hot market filled with golden dogs is of course the best, but during quieter times, they must also think of ways. Recruiting influencers, promoting newcomers, and building their own traffic matrix are necessary to initiate the next wave of market frenzy. After all, a market full of golden dogs always starts with one or two leading dogs. As meme coins have developed to this day, a catchy meme or directly transported memes from Web2 have limited stimulation to players' consumer desires and are unlikely to inspire players to imagine much space (it's hard to squeeze through).

So what to do? The current answer from pump.fun is to capture the identity of young people ($house, $neet), not relying solely on hot topics or fleeting meme coin production, and to try to support some meme rhythms that resonate with young people through continuous memes ($chillhouse) and live commerce that caters to the tastes of crypto degenerates.

Conclusion

I do not believe that the issuance of tokens by pump.fun will be the end of meme coins; it may be a phase-ending event, but it will never be the end of meme coins. We seem to like blaming the failure of a sector on a particular project, like Blur destroying NFTs. But if a sector can be destroyed by a single project, it indicates that the sector has long been dead.

There are countless young people in the world who wish to change their fate, and cryptocurrency is so far the most enduring and relatively appealing place for the youth. The stock market is not short of narratives, as people naturally trust the stories written by elites. Meme coins will not die because grassroots people must also have their own stories to change their fate.

As the tide recedes, I hope pump.fun's 'media' can go further. When 'coin stocks' attracted attention from the crypto circle and became a playground for elites, the wild yet youthful crypto flavor of pump.fun became much more endearing.