Pump.fun may have loftier goals than building an L1
The startup should try to “redefine how crypto and media interact,” Mert Mumtaz said
Soho A Studio/CryptoFX/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
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Earlier this week, Blockworks first reported that pump.fun has plans to raise $1 billion at a $4 billion valuation via a token sale.
The potential b-nut would add to a likely already sizable war chest for the memecoin launchpad, which has generated over $700 million in revenue since launching last year. Some have speculated that the fresh funds could go toward the rollout of a pump.fun blockchain, which would capture some of the trading fees that currently go to Solana.
In this week’s Lightspeed podcast roundup, Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz said launching a layer-1 without taking any other swings at growing pump’s business would do little else but increase the business’ take rate, which is another way of saying increase its profit margins. Mumtaz thinks this would be money poorly spent.
“Do you think that they would raise a billion dollars if what they cared about was increasing their margins from, let’s say, 80% to 85%?,” Mumtaz mused. “If I’m their VC, I’m going to say, ‘What the fuck are you doing? That’s extremely boring.’”
Rather, the Solana infrastructure CEO said, pump.fun’s fresh billion could de-risk new moonshot ideas to diversify the core business — which is lucrative but obviously quite captive to the whims of memecoin traders. (In fairness, a world does exist where pump.fun both develops new business lines and grows its margins on a new L1, but we’ll leave that aside for now).
That’s the big question for pump.fun: Can it find a second pitch? Pump could try to take the same path as Jupiter, which went on an acquisition spree, adding a memecoin frontend, NFTs, lending and more after coming to dominate the Solana swap market.
“Historically, what you’ve seen in crypto M&A is that it has kind of lacked discipline,” Blockworks Research head of research Ryan Connor said on this point. “Seeing what pump does purchase and if it’s synergistic to the business is going to be pretty critical.” Connor added that pump may have to deal with significant legal costs if it tries to expand its reach more globally.
If pump.fun tries to internally develop its next big idea, streaming may be the top contender. The platform brought back livestreaming earlier this year after facing content moderation issues in an earlier version. It has tried to create something akin to Twitch with memecoins on this latest iteration, notably onboarding the anonymous trader gainzy, who has gone viral for irreverent rants in between pulls from a vape.
Whatever it looks like, my podcast guests seemed to think pump.fun’s next move would involve something more inspired than creating yet another L1.
“I think a much more attractive proposition is: ‘Look, we’re literally going to redefine how crypto and media interact, right? We’re going to look at the entertainment and social aspects of this business and really take big shots and go for the next 10 to 100x,’” Mumtaz said.
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