Memecoins appear to be enjoying a second life.
Pump.fun earned $521,150 on April 24, making it the second-highest profitable day ever.
What is pump.fun? This protocol allows anyone to quickly distribute memecoins by providing their name, ticker, and JPG image for a fee of less than $2. Users do not need to provide seed liquidity.
The platform was first launched on Solana but has expanded to some Ethereum Layer 2 like Blast and Base. In theory, anyone can distribute tokens to these networks, but while there are usually some technical skills required to do this, Pump.fun makes the process very easy for anyone.
Pump.fun also attempts to prevent lug pulls as any tokens released on the protocol will have no pre-sales or allocations to team members. Instead, tokens are instantly traded on a bond curve where users can buy and sell them. When a token reaches a certain market cap, a certain amount of liquidity is deposited into the underlying DEX and burned. For Solana, when the token reaches a market cap of $69,000, $12,000 of liquidity will be deposited into Raydium.
The entire concept of Pump.fun applies to the memecoin era we seem to be living in. The platform achieved over $5 million in revenue in less than two months. Daily profits peaked in early April, when Memecoin’s popularity was still at its peak, but profits slowed throughout the month.
Memecoins also seemed to be declining in popularity by April. The GMCI MEME index peaked at 385 at the end of March, but fell to 237 in mid-April, suggesting that the value of meme coins was declining. To be fair, the index has remained well above levels seen earlier in the year, with the index starting below 100 starting in 2024. So memecoin was still retaining a lot of its profits, but its growth was stagnant.
Things weren’t all that bad for Pump.fun, as it continued to make $120,000 a day during the downturn. But in the memecoin space, things may turn around again. First of all, Pump.fun’s increasing revenue means more people are launching Memecoin on the platform. The GMCI MEME index exceeded 300 again last week and showed a slight rebound.
So while the prosperity of the memecoin sector seemed to be waning at the beginning of the month, it appears to have received a second life last week.
This is an excerpt from The Block’s Data & Insights newsletter. Dive into the numbers that make up the most thought-provoking trends in your industry.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet delivering news, research and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor in The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the cryptocurrency space. Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget is an anchor LP of Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to provide objective, impactful and timely information about the cryptocurrency industry. Below are our current financial disclosures.
© 2023 The Block. All rights reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not provided or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice.
