Power Transition: The Throne Struggle of the Encryption World

"The king is dead, long live the king."

This sentence echoed in the Palace of Versailles in 1774. Louis XV had just passed away, and the nobles immediately turned to the new king. This is not cold-bloodedness, but rather a survival instinct.

The French are well aware of a truth about power: power never belongs to anyone. It is like water, always seeking new vessels. This statement is not mourning the deceased, but acknowledging the new ruler. The monarch of yesterday may become just a page in history today. The change comes swiftly, ruthlessly, and inevitably.

Power requires this indifference. The empire rises on the bones of its ancestors. The new rulers inherit the old throne. This cycle repeats itself. And now, in the memecoin Launchpad space on the Solana chain, a new version of this ancient ritual is being played out.

A month ago, Pump.fun held 88% of the market share, but now it is down to 13%, while the emerging challenger Let'sBONK has captured 86% of the market.

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This is not just another manifestation of the "volatility" in the encryption world. It is more of a typical case of an empire's collapse: when you forget that attention is the ultimate moat, even the greatest first-mover advantage can instantly vanish.

The Rise and Fall of the Pump.fun Empire

To understand the decline of Pump.fun, one must first understand its former strength. Founded in January 2024 by three young individuals in their twenties, it revolutionized the issuance logic of meme coins with a single sentence: "Upload an image, give it a name, click a few times, and you can issue a coin for less than $2, without any code."

It satisfies a fundamental impulse: to turn "worthless" things into "valuable" things. In the encryption world, this is not a fantasy, but a business model. By January 2025, Pump.fun generated over $458 million in revenue, launching thousands of new coins daily, with peak daily earnings exceeding $7 million.

More importantly, it has won the attention battlefield - becoming synonymous with Solana memecoin culture. On Crypto Twitter, issuing coins is almost synonymous with using Pump.fun. It not only occupies the infrastructure but also firmly controls the cultural discourse.

However, the tragedy began with one of its most "innovative" features: live streaming.

Originally intended to provide a promotional platform for coin issuers, the situation quickly spiraled out of control. Starting in November 2024, in a bid for attention, someone engaged in extreme behavior during a live broadcast: simulating self-harm, threatening suicide, and abusing animals. The most severe incident involved a minor user threatening family members with a shotgun on camera, all just to inflate the coin's price.

Pump.fun was forced to urgently shut down its live streaming function, but its reputation has already suffered a heavy blow. Weekly revenue plummeted by 66%, with public opinion turning against it, and competitors seizing the opportunity. In the face of declining revenue and competitive pressure, Pump.fun made a decision that seemed smart but was actually fatal: to save itself by issuing tokens (ICO).

This ICO can be considered a technical success - it raised $500 million from over 10,000 wallets in just 12 minutes, in addition to $700 million from private placements.

However, a deeper analysis reveals the re-emergence of an old problem: over 200 wallets are filled to the $1 million limit, with the top 340 buyers accounting for 60% of the share. All tokens sold are fully unlocked (no lock-up), with only a transfer limitation period set for 48 to 72 hours.

Nearly half of the participants only funded their wallets within 24 hours—this may suggest an organized purchasing strategy, or it could simply reflect strong interest from retail investors in this issuance.

The token price initially surged by 75% to $0.007, but enthusiasm quickly faded. It dropped 60% within weeks, continuously hitting new lows, exhibiting a typical "death spiral" trend. The tokenomics design is also very aggressive, with only 33% allocated for public and private sales, while 67% is controlled by the project team, and the allocation schedule is unclear. Of this 33%, 18% is specifically reserved for private placement shares for institutional investors.

Despite users generating nearly $750 million in revenue for the platform, there are no immediate community rewards; meanwhile, private investors have sold tokens worth $160 million to the exchange, resulting in significant selling pressure.

The last straw was when co-founder Alon Cohen publicly announced that the long-promised airdrop "will not happen in the foreseeable future."

For months, the project has been hinting that the upcoming rewards "will be more generous than anyone in the industry," creating enormous market expectations. However, at the most vulnerable moment for community trust, they announced the cancellation of the airdrop. The token price plummeted by 15% within 24 hours. It's not that the airdrop itself is so important, but the cost of breaking a promise is extremely deadly.

The Rise of Let'sBONK

As Pump.fun continuously steps on mines, Let'sBONK is silently building everything that its competitors lack: transparency, community orientation, and clear communication.

Currently, Let'sBONK's daily income has reached 1.3 million USD, while Pump.fun is only 254,000 USD, a difference of 5 times. On an annualized basis, Let'sBONK's monthly income amounts to 434.92 million USD, while Pump.fun is 267.25 million USD.

From nearly zero in May to a stable breakthrough of one million dollars in daily revenue in July, Let'sBONK's revenue has steadily increased. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's revenue has plummeted from a peak of over 7 million dollars in January back to the levels of September 2024.

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Since the ICO, the PUMP token has lost 60% of its market value, while BONK has remained relatively stable, maintaining a market value of $2.1 billion. Let'sBONK will allocate 1% of its weekly revenue for the repurchase of BONK, supporting this ecological token that predates the platform and has an established foundation.

Attention Economy

Pump.fun once gained an advantage through network effects—developers issue tokens there because traders are there; traders are there because the hottest memecoins are launched there first. This flywheel effect spins faster and faster, seemingly unstoppable.

But attention is fragile. It is not like the moats of traditional businesses—economies of scale, switching costs, regulatory barriers—once trust collapses, users' minds can disintegrate in an instant. An incident during a live broadcast gave users reason to try alternative platforms. Let'sBONK quickly became the "clean" choice, a new platform without historical baggage.

It's like when Myspace lost to Facebook. Myspace had the features and scale, but it lost the cultural narrative. Facebook became the platform for "real users," while Myspace became synonymous with spam, a chaotic interface, and marginalization. Realizing the existential crisis, Pump.fun launched a nearly desperate counterattack.

First, they increased the token buyback ratio from 25% of daily revenue to 100%. While this means that about $254,000 is used for buybacks each day, which is much higher than Let'sBONK's daily buyback of $13,000 (only 1%), it also means that Pump.fun is using all of its revenue for buybacks instead of for platform growth.

Secondly, they launched a 30-day incentive program that rewards PUMP tokens based on trading activity. However, initial feedback indicates that this strategy has not changed the competitive landscape.

The problem lies not at the tactical level, but at the strategic level. No amount of buybacks or incentive programs can restore lost trust, nor can they recapture the attention of users that has already shifted.

The reward mechanism of Pump.fun is solely based on trading volume, while Let'sBONK has established a truly ecosystem reward system that is tied to user interests.

The BONK reward program allows users to lock up their funds for 6 to 12 months and receive a proportional share of the revenue from products in the ecosystem such as BonkBot and BonkSwap. The longer the lock-up period, the higher the multiplier. The better the product performance, the more returns users receive. This is not about "spending money to make others trade," but "paying to allow users to build together."

Users (including project parties) can obtain "Bonk Points" through trading, purchasing, or issuing tokens. These points are expected to be redeemable for physical items or benefits in the future, further incentivizing active participation. The gamified growth experience makes users feel as if they are participating in a larger mission.

When Pump.fun was still exploring for ICOs and missing airdrop payouts, Let'sBONK had already provided a structured reward system for core users. In the encryption world, capital will always flow towards better incentive mechanisms.

A Bigger Picture

In traditional industries, market leaders often sit firmly on their thrones for decades. General Motors dominated automobile manufacturing for half a century, and IBM controlled enterprise computing for almost as long. However, in the digital market, the cost of switching for users is close to zero, and a dominant position can vanish in a matter of months.

An investigation revealed that Dylan Kerler, co-founder of Pump.fun, was involved in a "pump and dump" scheme in 2017—exactly the behavior that Pump.fun claims to eradicate. In an industry built on trust and memes, the collapse of credibility equates to a survival crisis.

The success of Let'sBONK is not because they built a fundamentally superior product, but because they entered the market at the most vulnerable moment of Pump.fun's reputation. In the attention economy, timing is often more critical than technology.

The winner-takes-all logic of network effects is beginning to reverse. Once users start migrating to Let'sBONK, the flywheel that propelled Pump.fun's rise also starts to reverse. Developers follow traders, and traders chase the hottest projects, accelerating the decline of the platform.

Does Pump.fun still have a chance for a comeback? Although its market share has significantly shrunk, it has not reached the point of being out of the game.

They do have some advantages: the $1.2 billion in financing has bought them time and provided them with the capital to experiment and outlast their competitors. Their platform has previously supported hundreds of thousands of project launches without crashing—this is especially important in an environment where other new platforms easily fail under pressure. Even with a decline in market share, they still generate over $250,000 in revenue daily, approaching $100 million annually, coupled with a massive capital reserve, leaving them with a solid foundation.

They are the pioneers in this category. Turning token issuance from programming into a few clicks of the mouse has earned them lasting brand recognition. The first-mover advantage doesn't just disappear.

Recent actions also indicate that they have not given up: Pump.fun 2.0 has added real-time data updates and one-click trading; the buyback ratio has increased to 100%; and user incentives have been introduced. These are not signs of surrender, but rather a counterattack.

The most likely scenario is not a complete collapse, but rather market fragmentation. There are rarely permanent monopolies in the encryption field. What is more likely is that Let'sBONK will become the main platform, dominating the number of tokens issued and revenue, while Pump.fun will transform into a niche platform with loyal users, securing a place through its interface, features, or ecosystem.

But to truly turn the tide, Pump.fun must not only solve technical issues or rely on financial incentives to retain people, but must also rebuild trust and reclaim cultural high ground. This means achieving a transparent, community-centered token economic structure, and may even require a complete leadership overhaul to thoroughly escape past controversies.

The French court has long understood a principle: when a king loses legitimacy, no amount of gold and silver or ceremonies can restore dignity. Only a new ruler can earn the old respect. Sometimes, for the continuation of the kingdom, the crown must be passed to a newcomer.

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