The crypto launchpad world is intensely competitive. Platforms are carving out market share in this nascent ecosystem. Pumpfun has been a standout performer.
Its metrics show the kind of sustainability and pressure that mark a platform destined for dominance: daily volumes hover between $150 million and $250 million, with serious spikes hitting between $80 million and $400 million; these are figures in which both Pumper and Pumper are embedded.
1/ The launchpad wars are heating up.
While dozens of copycats fight for scraps, @pumpdotfun continues to print fees and dominate flow.
But real threats are emerging – from @raydiumprotocol's LaunchLab to startup token markets on @believeapp. Here's what’s happening🧵 pic.twitter.com/QqqhylpAPJ
— defi_kay_ (@defi_kay_) May 28, 2025
What makes these numbers impressive is that they yield serious revenue for Pumpfun, with this firehose bombarding us with over $1 million in daily fees. Pumpfun could be paying for all three of the essential ingredients for any successful platform: up to 4 percent in fees that go to the Pumper, up to 10 percent in slippage that go to PumpSwap (see below), and potentially even more, depending on how the bonding curve evolves.
Yet, as is typical in rapidly expanding markets, success has attracted lookalikes—and numerous failures. Launchpads that mimicked early success have appeared across chains such as Tron, Base, and Solana, only to die within days because they offered no innovation or user trust. Among these, only Four Meme on BNB has done anything of note, and that’s mostly thanks to Binance’s promotional power and the appeal of Binance CEO CZ memes. This serves as a useful reminder. In this space, distribution trumps design. Having the right connections and community support is the make-or-break of any project.
Emerging Competitors Take Smarter Approaches
Many early launchpad clones failed quickly, but new companies are taking smarter, more sustainable approaches to seize the burgeoning opportunity. Take Raydium, for instance. Its LaunchLab right now offers what you might think of as layered infrastructure: the base modules and starting blocks that allow its partners and clients to set up their own launchpads—all with enough variation that the client launchpads are distinct from one another, yet they all run on Raydium’s foundational technology. This way, Raydium doesn’t try to run the whole show itself; it leverages partnerships and powers a decentralized launchpad ecosystem.
At the same time, Believe aims at a somewhat different target: startup coins. It is attempting to do for crypto fundraising what Y Combinator did for software startups. Instead of relying on venture capital, which has all but dried up in the current market, Web2 entrepreneurs can turn to Believe to launch their own tokens. These tokenomics-heavy projects are mostly still in the early stages of development and carry significant risks. Some of them might succeed and do so in a way that benefits the people who buy the tokens early on. But many more will fail, and those token purchasers will be left holding the bag.
Meteora, a partner behind Believe, is responsible for big launches such as the TRUMP and MELANIA tokens. This makes Meteora not just a partner but also a player of sorts in the cryptocurrency space, and it can lend some heft to Believe’s ambitions — Subtitle: Behind the scenes, Believe is powered by funds raised through the recent meteoric rise in cryptocurrencies.
The Battle for Frontend and User Attention
Even though Pumpfun currently leads the market, its principal weakness may lie in its frontend experience. The company has seen that much of the discovery and a healthy slice of the trading of tokens now occurs outside of its own interface—on places like DEXscreener, trading bots, and wallets such as Phantom. If Pumpfun now cedes the whole user journey to these other platforms, then it is in danger of becoming a backend service—just the plumbing that enables these other platforms to do useful things. In that scenario, it is fairly easy to see how Pumpfun could become an enabling platform that eviscerates its own monetization prospects.
To fight this danger, Pumpfun intends to incorporate livestreaming into its platform. By crafting a crypto-native Twitch-like appearance, Pumpfun aims to merge token launches, content creation, and speculating trading into one bound-together social ecosystem. This audacious direction tries to gather eyeballs and build a token speculating culture, which could indeed link up traditional web2 audiences and web3 crypto fans.
The competition is tough. LaunchLab uses its partner networks to distribute its product, and Believe has found a new way to push startup narratives and fresh token supply. Meanwhile, Jupiter/Meteora operates quietly—but very effectively—across many fronts. For Pumpfun to be the leader in this space, it needs to get to really know and engage with its community; enhance its tooling, which is not a trivial matter; and take back control of the user experience.
This confrontation has transcended memecoins. Now, it is about who gets to control the next wave of tokenized attention and new asset creation, which people often refer to as NNAs. This is not a state of play in which you either win or lose; it is one in which you can either expand the overall narrative or control the distribution pipeline or frontend experience and, by extension, the way in which users encounter the assets. The platforms that do either will be the winners of the next round.
At present, Pumpfun holds the title, but the competitive terrain is changing fast. The enormous revenue potential in this slice of the economy is drawing not-so-sudden-death competition from would-be leaders anxious to claim their share of the token launch market. The burning question is: Who will be left standing in this all-out contest for the future of token launches?
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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