The Power Shift of Solana Ecosystem Meme Coin Platform

An astonishing power shift is unfolding in the Solana ecosystem. The former king Pump.fun has now been replaced by the newcomer LetsBONK.fun, marking a significant transformation in the realm of Solana meme coin launch platforms.

Pump.fun reached a daily revenue of up to 7 million USD at its peak, with a total revenue of 677 million USD within a year and a half, equivalent to extracting 1.2 million USD daily from the Solana ecosystem. However, as it indulged in this capital feast, an emerging force named LetsBONK was quietly rising.

On a weekend in July 2025, history was rewritten. LetsBONK surpassed Pump.fun with 15,600 token issuances against 11,500, capturing a market share of 49.8%, exceeding the latter's 40.9%. Even more notably, LetsBONK has had 135 tokens "graduate," 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 sophisticated wealth harvesting mechanisms in the crypto world. It leverages the fervor of meme coins to establish a comprehensive revenue system: users are required to pay SOL as fuel when creating tokens, and when the token's market value reaches a specific threshold to "graduate", they must also pay additional transaction fees. This mechanism has absorbed 6.4 million SOL (worth $780 million) within a year and a half, making it the second-largest seller of SOL in the Solana ecosystem, only behind FTX/Alameda.

What is even more concerning is that these huge profits have not been reinvested into the ecosystem, but are continuously exchanged for USDC and flowing out of the system, like an unrelenting wealth extraction machine. In June 2025, when the market share was eroded to 57.5% by emerging platforms, Pump.fun surprisingly announced the launch of its ICO with a valuation of $4 billion, planning to issue a total of 1 trillion PUMP tokens. However, less than 5% of the addresses on the platform could earn more than $1,000, and the vast majority of participants actually became victims of this capital game.

In contrast, LetsBONK represents a whole new value system. It launched on April 26, 2025, attracting 800,000 users within just 24 hours, generating a trading volume of 300 million dollars, and giving birth to 2,700 new tokens. The success of LetsBONK stems from its value revolution deeply rooted in Solana's genes:

1. Ecological feedback mechanism: The platform will use 1% of the transaction fees to enhance network security, buy back and destroy BONK coins, and support ecological construction. In July 2025, it further commits to using 50% of its revenue to purchase and destroy BONK coins, directly benefiting the community.

2. Creator Economy Revolution: The platform founder personally supports high-quality projects, such as investing in the GLONK project and publicly holding positions, driving its market value to soar to 18 million dollars.

3. Developer Gravity Field: Attract innovative projects such as DeleGate.fun by hosting hackathons and other activities.

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

However, the journey of LetsBONK has not been smooth sailing. Its platform coin $LETSBONK has experienced a significant drop from a market value of $30 million to $4 million, indicating that enthusiasm alone cannot sustain the ecosystem. Meanwhile, Pump.fun still has a cash reserve of $600 million, which could launch a subsidy war at any time.

This game is essentially a contest between two routes of crypto-capitalism: the financialization route represented by Pump.fun vs the ecological route represented by LetsBONK. The former attempts to completely financialize the platform through ICOs, while the latter is dedicated to nurturing real application scenarios and technological innovation.

Currently, the scale of history seems to be tilting towards LetsBONK. With the public support of the Solana founder for BONK, and LetsBONK's single-day trading volume exceeding 86 million USD, we seem to be witnessing the rebirth of the crypto spirit – from extraction to symbiosis, from monopoly to co-governance, from financial games to ecological co-construction.

In this rapidly changing situation, the new king LetsBONK is reshaping the future of the Solana ecosystem. And all of this reminds us: in the blockchain world, pure profit-driven motives will eventually be overturned; only projects that return to their roots and serve the community can stand the test of time.