Power Transition of the Solana Ecosystem Meme Coin Launch Platform

In the Solana ecosystem, a power struggle is unfolding over the launch platform for meme coins. Once sitting on the throne, Pump.fun is now facing a severe challenge from the emerging platform LetsBONK.

Pump.fun generated $7 million daily at its peak, with a total revenue of $677 million over 18 months. This amounts to extracting $1.2 million daily from the Solana ecosystem. However, just as it reveled in this capital feast, a new competitor named LetsBONK quietly emerged.

On a weekend in July 2025, history was rewritten. LetsBONK surpassed Pump.fun with 15,600 token issuances compared to 11,500, capturing a market share of 49.8%, exceeding the latter's 40.9%. More notably, LetsBONK also produced 135 "graduated" tokens, marking the arrival of a new era. This is the first time since January 2024 that Pump.fun has lost its dominance on the Solana chain.

The business model of Pump.fun is considered one of the most ingenious wealth extraction mechanisms in the crypto world. It leverages the fervor of meme coins to construct a perfect blood-sucking system: when users create tokens, they must pay SOL as fuel, and when the token's market value surpasses a specific threshold to "graduate," they must also pay an additional transaction fee.

This mechanism drained 6.4 million SOL (worth $780 million) within 18 months, making it the second largest seller in the Solana ecosystem. More disturbingly, these enormous gains were not reinvested back into the ecosystem but were continuously exchanged for USDC and flowed out, resembling an unrelenting wealth siphon.

In June 2025, when Pump.fun's market share fell to 57.5%, it announced the launch of an ICO with a valuation of $4 billion, issuing a total of 1 trillion PUMP tokens. This plan, touted as "giving back to early users," actually concealed a harsh reality: less than 5% of addresses on the platform made over $1,000. The vast majority of participants became victims of this capital game.

At the same time, the emerging platform LetsBONK is leading a revolution in values. It adopts an ecological feedback mechanism, injecting 1% of transaction fees into a triple flywheel: part is used to enhance network security, part is used to buy back and destroy BONK tokens, and the remaining funds are used to support ecological construction. In July 2025, the platform updated its commitment to use 50% of its revenue to purchase and destroy BONK tokens, directly benefiting the community.

LetsBONK has also driven a revolution in the creator economy. The platform's founder personally supports high-quality projects, such as investing in the GLONK project and publicly holding positions, which stands in stark contrast to the indifference shown by Pump.fun. In addition, LetsBONK attracts innovative projects like DeleGate.fun through activities such as hackathons, proving that ecological incentives can foster real technological innovation.

The rise of LetsBONK reflects three major paradigm shifts that the crypto world is undergoing: the evolution of values from extraction to contribution, the product philosophy shift from bubbles to flywheels, and the governance revolution from monopoly to co-governance. This transformation has been recognized by the capital markets, with several industry experts believing that the era of pure meme coins has ended, and value capture is the direction for the future.

However, the road ahead for LetsBONK is not smooth sailing. Its platform token $LETSBONK experienced a decline from a market value of 30 million dollars to 4 million dollars, indicating that enthusiasm alone cannot sustain the ecosystem. On the other hand, Pump.fun still has a cash reserve of 600 million dollars, ready to launch a subsidy war at any time.

This competition is essentially the ultimate game between two routes of crypto capitalism. Pump.fun represents the path of fully financializing the platform, while LetsBONK is dedicated to building real ecological value. When the founder of Solana publicly supports BONK and when the daily trading volume of LetsBONK exceeds 86 million USD, we can clearly hear the sound of the old order collapsing.

This is not just a replacement between platforms, but a rebirth of the spirit of encryption—from extraction to symbiosis, from monopoly to co-governance, from financial games to ecological co-construction. On the Solana chain, a new era is beginning, and the core of this transformation lies in: when code injects faith, when finance returns to the community, the original intention of blockchain will be re-emphasized.