Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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The team behind the memecoin launchpad pump.fun began restricting UK users this morning.



The move came days after the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority tagged pump.fun as unauthorized. Most firms need the regulator’s approval to do finance-related business in the country. It&#8217;s apparently the platform&#8217;s first public restriction, despite facing past criticism for its fast-and-loose approach to moderation.



Notably, pump.fun — which allows users to launch Solana-based tokens for around $2 — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-suspends-livestream-feature">took down</a> its livestreaming feature last week after a number of violent and disturbing streams went viral.



The site’s UK block doesn’t represent a ban per se, Shardspace co-founder Avaunt <a href="https://t.me/c/2346547958/380">said</a> in the Lightspeed Telegram chat. Rather, pump.fun likely never properly registered and complied with the UK’s crypto guidelines, and the regulator is just now holding it accountable.



Pump.fun has some apparent links to the UK. When the then-nascent platform was exploited by former contractor Jarett Dunn in May, he was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-dot-fun-exploiter-arrest-london">arrested in London</a>. Dunn, a notorious online troll, did make a seemingly-serious <a href="https://x.com/jarettdunn/status/1792219540060864549">claim</a> that pump.fun is linked to a UK-based entity called Baton Corporation.&nbsp;



“Pump is not legally based in the UK,” the platform’s pseudonymous founder alon told me in a text, but they declined to elaborate further.



Zooming out for a second though, it’s somewhat surprising a pump.fun restriction took this long in the first place. The UK is no crypto libertarian paradise — for example, prediction market favorite Polymarket is already unavailable there. The UK’s financial regulator <a href="https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-finds-crypto-ownership-continues-rise-it-delivers-plans-regulate-crypto#:~:text=In%20the%20first%20year%20of,websites%20and%20over%2050%20apps.">claims</a> to have taken down “over 900 scam crypto websites and over 50 apps” since October 2023.



“Thought IP [address] restrictions were pretty common in this industry lol not quite sure why [everyone is] freaking out,” Tom, anonymous contributor to Raydium, told me in a text.



Pump.fun has been the most popular app on Solana — and at times in all of crypto — for much of this year. With that popularity will inevitably come scrutiny, especially when users are beheading chickens on livestream in hopes of making a token’s price go up. If Gary Gensler’s SEC tenure were to continue past this year, it’s hard to imagine the SEC wouldn’t have taken some sort of action against pump.fun, too.



How the fallout from pump.fun’s livestream snafu settles will be something to watch. Perhaps regulators will be able to do what criticism or backlash never could — slow down a startup that has already <a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun">generated</a> $283 million in revenue in its first year of existence.



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Pump.fun restricts access for UK users

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The Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun faced backlash over the weekend after a number of violent and unsavory livestreams on the platform started making the rounds on social media. By Monday afternoon, its livestream feature had been temporarily deactivated.&nbsp;



The offending streams ranged from token launchers threatening to commit violent acts unless a coin’s price goes up to racist or disgusting content meant to create viral shock value and juice the token’s price. This all happened as pump.fun booked staggering $14.3 million in revenue on Saturday, according to a pump.fun dashboard, nearly tripling its previous high.&nbsp;



Pump.fun is no stranger to edgy content. The site has drawn comparisons to the anonymous forum site 4chan for its often-unhinged content and lax approach to moderation. Before this current wave of disturbing livestreams, pump.fun had a large number of racially insensitive or pornographic tokens, none of which are subject to content moderation.



But as disturbing livestreams went viral on X, pump.fun’s anonymous founder alon wrote that the platform would work to protect users from seeing “repulsive/dangerous content.” In a separate thread, alon <a href="https://x.com/a1lon9/status/1860036153249787911">said</a> pump had taken down a stream of a user threatening to shoot their dog unless a token’s market capitalization increased, noting that the platform has now <a href="https://x.com/a1lon9/status/1860653405837963528">taken</a> down “hundreds of streams.”



A little after 2:00 p.m., pump.fun disabled livestreams on the platform&nbsp;altogether. In a blog post shortly after, pump.fun cited “unprecedented growth” as the key challenge to content moderation before adding that livestreams would be paused “for an indefinite time period.”



This feels like an inflection point for a platform that has separated itself as the most viral application on Solana, booking nearly $250 million in revenue since launching. Largely on the back of memecoin activity emanating from pump.fun, Solana has seen <a href="https://x.com/smyyguy/status/1861038014253666417">record</a> demand for its blockspace, which in turn has lined the pockets of the validators who run the blockchain’s software.



Leaders in the Solana world largely cast memecoins either as a stress test for the network or as an emerging, if currently unserious, financial use case for memes. Even among those who oppose crypto being used for what is essentially gambling, it’s frowned upon to tell users or developers what they should or shouldn’t do with blockchain technology.&nbsp;



Multiple crypto posters shrugged off the pump.fun criticism, pointing out that every large social tech platform has had its warts with content moderation.&nbsp;



But as Solana and crypto hopes for a shift to the mainstream, some are calling for a reckoning with memecoins’ downsides.



“Pump Fun is going to become a massive reputational stain on the crypto industry, on par with FTX,” Chainlink community liaison Zach Rynes wrote on X. Tech lawyer Preston Byrne also pointed out that the platform “does a lot very incorrectly from a social media law” perspective.



Up until now, pump.fun’s playbook has largely been to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-pump-dot-fun-memecoin">make light of criticism</a> through trolling. With livestreams disabled, it appears this particular round of backlash hit home. It remains to be seen whether this will make any difference for traders in the so-called memecoin trenches.



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Pump.fun suspends livestream feature amid backlash

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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Charlie Munger once said: “Show me the incentives and I&#8217;ll show you the outcome.”



So if you’re launching a memecoin on pump.fun, your incentives are: reach a token market cap of $100k, upon which $17k of liquidity is deposited into the Raydium DEX to kickstart a trading pair.&nbsp;



Then, here are the outcomes: nudity, <a href="https://x.com/AltcoinGordon/status/1860627600097366129">stray gun shootings</a>, threats of <a href="https://x.com/beausecurity/status/1860859118124138610">suicide</a>, threats to harm <a href="https://x.com/maver_y/status/1860927674408943717">pets</a>, <a href="https://x.com/JoeyMooose/status/1860891432560545913">school</a> children, <a href="https://x.com/danielgothits/status/1860879008000295267">family</a> members and alleged stunts involving the <a href="https://x.com/crypto_bitlord7/status/1860611480871481766">consumption</a> of faeces in a dog cage.



This list just about sums up the banal grasps for attention in the world of memecoins. Thanks to pump.fun’s in-built <a href="https://x.com/pumpdotfun/status/1826754623354650939">livestream feature</a>, that race for attention to the bottom is being laid bare on full display.



Attention is the currency of memecoins, so it’s a somewhat unsurprising outcome.&nbsp;



This state of affairs has sent a call for regulation or a ban on the memecoin launcher trending across Twitter. Already, there are fake images of a <a href="https://x.com/arbitrumalex/status/1860895686239105288">Polymarket</a> predicting the odds of a pump.fun ban, and the <a href="https://x.com/Sartoshi0x/status/1860878433112207755">SEC</a> seizing the pump.fun website.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe84IwqlZeT_-S2fnB-lVkBMMVacXlaSsD9RGUB4riKqhXpvZHtegdv8Zqqw4eZ6ryfy7sqWRDaNWQvebMbB2ISSBj5IY3Y0MrCCNzQHKoyatxmnkXIYY_0dR6qDrzIaiGy8wqKLw?key=Qn2QTSsT43W7zLeZrpL_r554" alt=""/></figure>



Over the weekend, pump.fun founder Alon <a href="https://x.com/a1lon9/status/1860036153249787911">acknowledged</a> the problem and claimed that the platform’s team of moderators are “working around the clock” to quash the “illicit content.” But given the rate of <a href="https://dune.com/jhackworth/pumpfun">thousands</a> of memecoins being deployed daily, that’s going to be easier said than done.



Realistically speaking though, what could a regulator do?



US regulators, for example, could pressure internet service providers to block the pump.fun DNS domain, but a VPN could easily skirt the ban.&nbsp;



As for the tokens themselves, they live on the Solana blockchain. Regulators could technically pressure validators to block the transactions the same way the US Treasury applied <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916">sanctions</a> on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ny-fed-tornado-cash-report">Tornado Cash</a> in 2022, which takes us down the MEV supply chain rabbit hole once again.



There’s an ironic parallel here to the longstanding problem facing Big Tech’s social media platforms. If illegal content is posted on Facebook, who should be held legally liable — the user or Facebook?



Within the US, free speech proponents have argued that <a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230">Section 230</a> of the 1934 Communications Act legally protects platforms’ illicit user-generated content.



That logic, consistently applied, may shield pump.fun from regulatory pressure, though it will certainly not shield it from the forces of market competition.



Pump.fun’s success has already been mimicked dozens of times. There is makenow.meme on Solana, sun.pump on Tron, and “<a href="https://warpcast.com/proxystudio.eth/0xa01e9beb">Clanker</a>,” a kind of AI-powered equivalent of pump.fun on Base, through which memecoins can be deployed into a Uniswap v3 pool for free with a Farcaster tweet.



Clanker was launched slightly more than two weeks ago, and already has collected about <a href="https://x.com/dwr/status/1860499493239586828?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1860499493239586828%7Ctwgr%5E7ad59c570ca653d32722d42e71d64f8a42c8918b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmembers.delphidigital.io%2Ffeed%2Fclanker-bases-pump-fun">$4 million</a> in fee revenues, according to Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero.



But whether it’s the regulatory hammer or market competition, pump.fun has plenty of incentives to quickly nip such a problem in the bud.



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Pump.fun looks to self-regulate gory content

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Trendy new apps don’t tend to last long in crypto — except, apparently, for pump.fun.



After a tame September, memecoins have returned to prominence in recent days, with the Solana-based launchpad seemingly leading the way.



The app, which seemed past its heyday just weeks ago, has recorded 12 straight days of at least $900,000 in revenue, according to a Dune <a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun">dashboard</a>. The last time it pulled that off was *checks notes* never. MOODENG, a pump.fun token based on a viral baby hippo from a zoo in Thailand, seemingly kicked off the recent memecoin rally, in which traders seem to be skipping out on traditional memes to trade pump.fun coins.



Kaito AI, which uses AI to analyze online sentiment, <a href="https://x.com/_kaitoai/status/1843195759434531250">said</a> Monday that memecoin mindshare is now at a yearly high. 



A majority of the 10 largest memecoins are down on the week, according to CoinGecko, while pump.fun had its most consistent week and a half of revenue yet — indicating that traders are passing up the likes of dogecoin and pepe in favor of pump.fun’s cute animal pictures du jour.



Crypto’s online hype machine has already kicked in. Murad Mahmudov, a longtime crypto public figure who’s shifted from bitcoin maximalism to memecoins, went <a href="https://x.com/MustStopMurad/status/1843014105273389405">viral</a> for a podcast segment explaining why memecoins will “Outperform Everything” in 2025. Su Zhu, most famously the co-founder of collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, <a href="https://x.com/zhusu/status/1842551529997504665">weighed</a> in that “[i]nstitutional allocation to memecoins is likely to be the story of q4 2024.” Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1843260976206082216">said</a> he sold his MOODENG allocation and donated the proceeds to support anti-airborne disease technology.



And — stop me if you’ve heard this before — a rapper who’s a few years past her last top hit released a pump.fun memecoin.&nbsp;



Not everyone was feeling quite so upbeat.&nbsp;



“If you are finally joining the influencers that missed out and are just now joining memes in Q4, congrats, you are exit liquidity for everyone who was early,” wrote based16z, a popular crypto poster.



For anyone who’s been following over the past six months, it feels like crypto is stuck in something of a pump.fun Groundhog Day. The meme market pumps, similar players play similar roles in the online drama, and some industry watchers — myself being one of them — fall into believing that the pump.fun top is finally in.



But enough time has passed for crypto to wise up. Bet against pump.fun, which has already booked over $120 million in revenue roughly 10 months after launching, at your own peril.



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Pump.fun tops $900K revenue for 12 straight days

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Memecoins are entering a so-called “supercycle phase” — a fitting choice of words when you need to scream into the ears of unsuspecting investors that something of epic proportions is coming.



That’s the thesis of a somewhat viral <a href="https://youtu.be/6nqzwdGxTGc">Token2049</a> talk by Murad Mahmudov titled “The Memecoin Supercycle,” to which a growing contingent of Crypto Twitter seems to be subscribing.



Embrace memecoins, argues Mahmudov, because memecoins give you hope, fun, identity, a sense of belonging, emotional connection, a way to reduce loneliness and a way to engage in collective artistic expression and an imagined reality.



Let’s back up for a second here.



Based on <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/meme-token">CoinGecko</a>, the entire memecoin market is $53 billion, about 2.3% of the entire $2.3 trillion crypto market cap. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-pump-dot-fun-memecoin">Pump.fun launched</a> in January 2024, and about <a href="https://dune.com/hashed_official/pumpdotfun">2.3</a> million memecoins have been created since then.



How many of these memecoins have been “successful” for investors?



Not many, is the answer. Based on August data by <a href="https://x.com/Adam_Tehc/status/1824994679265349802">@Adam_Tehc</a>, 64.7% of pump.fun traders on Solana lose money or breakeven at best. Only 3% make more than a thousand dollar profit, and a rare few of 0.0028% wallets are hitting the $1 million moonshot on memecoins.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcQsSuXzpMETIbsynFe0NTEsuMEbiGiZdkCfchgztgK8rJM-Jtj_oNpqJMPhdGLVSuN0hfBuI553uhmlmV0ri6xMSmisy4EiBbwqztU1rn-bgNXqUyvO8LTke-stE1KC3w5yJbgB1-lQTe2ux8SdYv5NK_d?key=mfn73cL5xdusnrfBtAxlGg" alt="" style="width:551px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/crypto__kermit/status/1825109763966787894/photo/1">@crypto__kermit via Twitter</a></figcaption></figure>



Part of the argument for “why memecoins” is because the VC-backed altcoin alternatives are terrible.&nbsp;



There’s admittedly a grain of truth there. Most VC-backed tokens have seen a down-only chart from their CEX listings, they’re rid with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-eigen-tokens-transparency">fishy insider investor tokenomics</a> and many of their products haven’t panned out (about 18% of crypto companies that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-solana-venture-capital">raised in 2022</a> have shut down, according to <a href="https://x.com/reganbozman/status/1841218868787978255">Lattice Fund</a>).



But the solution, I think, is to get these things right rather than dive headfirst into memecoins and throw the baby out with the bath water.



Recall that the history of the internet for instance, is littered with dead companies that collectively raised billions of dollars. In her <a href="https://www.amazon.sg/Bull-History-Boom-Bust-1982-2004/dp/0060564148">recollection</a> of the dot-com bubble, journalist Maggie Mahar estimated that by February 2002 — two years after the peak of the bubble — about 100 million investors lost ~$5 trillion in the stock market.&nbsp;



Today, the internet is indispensable. Suffice to say, we did not arrive there by doubling down on speculative use cases.



Memecoins do not pretend to try to create a socially innovative product, and that has been wrapped up in a marketing spin to be portrayed as a kind of investor advantage.



But failed crypto projects at the very least net socially important lessons and knowledge that is being taken and applied forward in the industry.&nbsp;



We know that algorithmic stablecoins are probably not a good idea, given the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/one-year-since-terra">spectacular collapse of Terra</a>.



We know from the meager improvements in costs from decentralized storage solutions like Filecoin (relative to centralized competitors like AWS) that data is not likely to be the breakout use case for DePIN.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf5c3ldVjEXVZsXdevlFQ7S2h2m-XsBHthqJYVBqfYz9-bl5RwlD1FCdyoX0ltr_i6sB8LfkygdG4CoLjO9MinHk3IhHhjPhUWcXhWuYbix8xUPHv0Wn50g8gRWKh_x1homGvC9Tl5q31nj_yHE0xce_EfQ?key=mfn73cL5xdusnrfBtAxlGg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/dunleavy89/status/1833167137633866157">MV Global</a></figcaption></figure>



We know that from the downfall of Axie Infinity, the next wave of blockchain-based games are not likely to be based on play-to-earn mechanics.



The point here, really, is that we don’t know the exact recipes for what will and won’t work until entrepreneurs (and, unfortunately, many hoaxsters along the way) give it a go. That is — after all — the whole point of a permissionless market: to allow an archipelago of experiments to flourish simultaneously.



If memecoins do indeed see a “supercycle,” it does beg the giant question of: So what? What has the blockchain industry proved to themselves, as well as outsiders and regulators, aside from the perennial need that people gamble?



Crypto wasn’t designed to make you rich. If that happens along the way, congratulations! But crypto was here to set you free.



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Who cares about a memecoin supercycle?

Jeff Albus

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Howdy!



As brat summer recedes from view, I wanted to open my reporter’s notebook and give you all a glimpse into some Solana-related threads I’m interested in following over the next few months.



Here, in no particular order, are six questions that I think are worth keeping an eye on:



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Six Solana questions defining the rest of 2024</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Has pump.fun really run out of road?</h3>



Solana’s <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/solana">price</a>, DeFi <a href="https://dune.com/obchakevich_research/sunpump-vs-pumpfun-compared">volumes</a> and validator <a href="https://dune.com/21co/solana-key-metrics">revenue</a> have all stumbled in the past couple weeks, and conventional wisdom seems to be casting blame on declining interest in memecoins. For better or worse, memecoins — particularly ones traded through the launchpad pump.fun — have been behind much of Solana’s boom in onchain volume over the past several months.&nbsp;



But, the thinking goes, the longshot odds of memecoins paying dividends, paired with a Justin Sun-backed competitor to pump.fun on the Tron blockchain, have left Solana’s memecoin ecosystem in a vulnerable state. It is undeniable that pump.fun’s revenue and number of token launches have fallen noticeably <a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun">below</a> their May, June and July levels.&nbsp;



I have my doubts about this story, however. In its downtrodden state, pump.fun is still booking $300,000-$400,000 in daily revenue, and so-called Sun Pump is seeing a <a href="https://dune.com/obchakevich_research/sunpump-vs-pumpfun-compared">fraction</a> of its transaction volume. Pump.fun’s success as a business should not be undersold, even if the poor saps are only on track for $120 million in annual revenue (instead of $200 million). You could think about pump.fun’s relevance this way: When pump.fun was first coming out, it would sometimes be lumped into <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/293128/fantasy-top-and-pump-fun-break-into-top-ten-crypto-protocols-by-fees-generated">headlines</a> alongside Fantasy.top. When’s the last time you heard anything about Fantasy.top?



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">How strongly-held are the SEC’s beliefs?</h3>



The suddenness of SOL ETF applications may only have been matched by the speed of their demise.&nbsp;



Things seemed full-steam ahead for potential <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-files-for-solana-etf">spot Solana ETF issuers VanEck</a> and 21Shares until the Cboe exchange suddenly removed 19b-4 forms from its website. The removal of the 19b-4, which must be approved by the SEC for ETFs to trade, came after the SEC privately reiterated its belief that SOL is a security, The Block <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/311937/sec-talks-etf-issuers-concerns-solana-security-source">reported</a>. If SOL was outright declared a security, it’s generally assumed that it would become difficult for US-based investors to actually buy the asset.&nbsp;



Granted, this isn’t a change of heart from the SEC, which is still publicly alleging in its Coinbase lawsuit <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-didnt-say-sol-isnt-a-security">that SOL is a security</a>. But as the US presidential election nears and the very-public FTX fiasco recedes from view, I’m curious to see whether political tides cause any shifts in the SEC’s stance.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Who will win the restaking race?</h3>



Ethereum restaking bloomed to become a several-billion dollar sector in the past year. With Solana’s continued growth in mindshare relative to Ethereum, it only made sense that we would see teams try to launch similar infrastructure on Solana.



Jito and Solayer appear to be the two serious contenders in becoming the EigenLayer of Solana. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solayer-solana-restaking-platform-live">Solayer got its platform to mainnet</a> first, while <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jito-releases-code-for-solana-restaking-network">Jito has open-sourced its code</a> (I’ve also been told semi-recently that the project expects Jito Restaking to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-jito-restaking-solana">launch by the end of the year</a>).



So far, Solayer only boasts a little more than 30,000 restakers delegating roughly $30 million worth in restaked assets. It also only has an initial four AVSs live to use the restaking service, so it’s still early innings.&nbsp;



I bet we’ll see more Solana restaking announcements soon, particularly as pertains to what I <a href="https://x.com/whosknave/status/1823785407928053890">call</a> the restaking arms race: These platforms need protocols to build on top of them. Which one can draw a more vaunted lineup?



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Will Firedancer go to mainnet?</h3>



It’s been years since Jump Crypto started working on the Firedancer Solana client — which is written in C, rather than Rust — and will supposedly be much more performant than the Agave and Jito-Solana clients that are currently on offer.&nbsp;



Having multiple clients <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-didnt-say-sol-isnt-a-security">will make Solana more decentralized</a> and eliminate risks that stem from having essentially one validator client at the moment (Jito-Solana is very similar to the Agave client). Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has also <a href="https://thedefiant.io/news/blockchains/anatoly-yakovenko-previews-solana-post-firedancer">said</a> he’ll stop saying Solana is in mainnet-beta once Firedancer ships.



The client is <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-eyes-2025-firedancer-rollout-depin-activity-surges">reportedly</a> slated for a 2025 release, but the lead-up could be a big deal too: In a best-case scenario, this could look similar to the excitement the Ethereum community ginned up around its 2022 “Merge” to proof-of-stake.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">How will Solana’s new DAOs work?</h3>



Native token airdrop season appears to have wound down for the moment, leaving several projects sitting on large treasuries while figuring out how these tokens are to be used — which in many cases seems to be for governance.



Some projects, like Jito, are already forging ahead with Ethereum-like DAOs using “one token one vote” governance. Drift is toying with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/metadao-is-making-markets-into-its-government">MetaDAO’s futarchy model</a> for market-based governance, but it also has a more traditional DAO.&nbsp;



In general, I’d be curious to see whether the Solana ecosystem will innovate past the status quo for Ethereum DAOs, which, as anyone who’s followed or participated in them will tell you, aren’t the most functional of organizations. Or, since DAOs are widely unpopular and present potential legal risks, will Solana projects eschew them altogether?



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Solana’s next narrative?</h3>



Blockchain ecosystems need convincing narratives to tell investors and developers what their purposes are. A lack of clear narratives can lead to grumpiness and internecine conflict, which is arguably something we’re seeing play out in the Ethereum world right now with its squabbles over <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1827583576751181961">DeFi</a> and foundation <a href="https://x.com/gphummer/status/1828265674315350277">spending</a>.



For the past several months, memecoins drove a rise in SOL’s price and onchain metrics. Professional investors grew more <a href="https://www.gsr.io/reports/is-solana-eft-next/">bullish</a> on the token, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-spot-solana-etf-filing">issuers filed for SOL ETFs</a> and Solana clawed itself out of the hole caused by FTX’s deep integration with the ecosystem.&nbsp;



But if memecoins and ETFs were to become dead in the water, it’s currently unclear what the next narrative pivot might be. In any event, there are a few testing grounds where these narratives might form: Colosseum’s Radar hackathon, Solana Labs’ second incubator cohort and most importantly, the Solana Breakpoint conference.



I asked Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz this question on a recent <a href="https://x.com/Lightspeedpodhq/status/1830967779970695349">episode</a> of the Lightspeed podcast, and he seemed unperturbed.&nbsp;



He distilled his thoughts later in an X post: “[S]olana&#8217;s narrative is simple: simple, fast, cheap place to build cool shit,” he <a href="https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1828993250545545445">wrote</a>.&nbsp;



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In&nbsp;</h2>



The memecoin launchpad pump.fun recently passed $100 million in revenue, according to a Dune <a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun">dashboard</a>.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdNuES7JbOyhmHSRgpefUYSMvm5P5iX9ciUSX1wOAJS5R9SBPrvkn2ZNuhILweCwDW5hGD5Ikv8vqIhpftrml4oLUaZkOzLYe98Dx8J019X0_qGk0GuJ2hSZ_MAzxoTHsbJwd8YBCrAofgttMBifgxyTsS7?key=ROEkojjD1oxtbr8CoYioIw" alt=""/></figure>



Pump.fun <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/having-fun-pump-fun">makes its money</a> on swap fees and Raydium seeding. Even with its revenue recently stalling a bit, pump.fun achieved this milestone remarkably quickly. As a reminder, the platform launched in January.&nbsp;



Alliance DAO’s Qiao Wang wrote on X that he asked AI chatbots if there has “ever been a startup in history that went from conception to $100m revenue in half a year.” No one could give him an answer, Wang said, adding: “imagine if more web2 founders heard this extraordinary story. they’d pivot from ai to crypto tmrw.”



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



Smart contracts&#8230;who needs &#8217;em? Not you, according to Helius’ Mert Mumtaz. On Sunday, he <a href="https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1830142290268156377">posted</a> a late-night thread on X explaining “Solana has a program-based model vs. an interface model — meaning you can leverage a ton of existing programs to write client code only.” In other words, you can handle NFTs, tokens, transactions, token-gating, minting, bots and more using just Javascript, without ever touching Rust or deploying a smart contract.



Pushing back, @ajki76 <a href="https://x.com/ajki76/status/1830285318802792694">challenged</a>, “So, what are they building onchain, considering you said &#8216;most cases don&#8217;t require building programs at all?’” Mert <a href="https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1830285451019898940">clarified</a>, “The smart contract already exists and is onchain — I’m saying you can use the existing ones without needing to create a new one.”



@kind3r.sol <a href="https://x.com/GDamigeana/status/1830189432411988293">confirmed</a> that this aligns with their experience: “I&#8217;ve been doing this for the past 2.5 years. Just deployed my first 3 lines of code Rust program a couple of weeks back out of necessity. But 99.99% of the interactions you can do by using existing (mostly open source) programs and compose their instructions in a single transaction.”



It&#8217;s a question of efficiency vs. creativity. Why burn time writing complex smart contracts when you can just as easily stand on the shoulders of existing onchain programs? Though as @DanMulligann rightly <a href="https://x.com/DanMulligann/status/1830400065799688468">asked</a>, “but does that encourage any sort of innovation or more of the same shit?”



— Jeffrey Albus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Matty Taylor, co-founder of Colosseum:


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcIIw6OId3Xlrtbx1fKuWzzTJJfFpkJpVLDeyh4IBMJIwONaiRn8XzJ1u-hDy0S9W8bMhfyOVOFA_vZJnu8awMuh4auxfQKxGurupu_jt4rvKOPM9KTVhCdht3KsnKY0uplL415zMolchVQ-3U6m_mamN5H?key=ROEkojjD1oxtbr8CoYioIw" alt=""/></figure></div>


.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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6 key Solana developments to keep an eye on

Today, enjoy the Lightspeed newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to the Lightspeed newsletter</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Howdy!



A heartfelt thank you to all the Gen-Zers who showed up to defend my subject line choice on social media yesterday. A certain Blockworks co-founder asked me to explain what “skibidi gyatt ohio” is on a Zoom call yesterday, which was definitely not on my 2024 bingo card.



We are not serious people. Anyways:



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Solana dev platform blinks.gg spikes on pump.fun</h2>



Things were going well for blinks.gg co-founder Amir Banihashem. After spending years working on a Solana developer tool that struggled to gain traction, he appeared to be catching his break.&nbsp;



Dialect and the Solana Foundation had released an embedded Solana transaction flow for X called blinks, and Banihashem realized his visual programming platform — named Space Operator — could be used to create the blink widgets.&nbsp;



He uploaded a <a href="https://x.com/blinks_gg/status/1824558439407948214">video</a> of himself creating a Blink with the “no code” builder in under two minutes that drew over 120,000 views. Shortly thereafter, Banihashem listed a blinks.gg token on pump.fun — a move he characterized to me as making the project “community driven.” Banihashem said he owns 2.5% of the token, and blinks.gg has <a href="https://x.com/blinks_gg/status/1827232238179914220">said</a> it will share revenue from the platform with holders of its token and NFTs.



The unusual software go-to-market strategy drew the attention of a developer relations engineer at Solana client developer Anza named Rex St. John, who cast doubt on the project to his more than 100,000 X followers. Banihashem then did a livestream where he used blinks.gg to create a “Rex” NFT collection in an attempt to demonstrate the project’s authenticity.&nbsp;



Thousands tuned into the live stream, Banihashem said, but the NFT collection crashed after just 16 mints — doing little to prove the project wasn’t a scam.&nbsp;



“Remember this is version 0.2,” a confused-looking Banihashem said on the <a href="https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1jMKgBWYXbgxL">stream</a>. “It’s just a fucking baby.”



St. John and blinks.gg have since <a href="https://x.com/rexstjohn/status/1827382355532902513">settled</a> the misunderstanding, and blinks.gg’s pump.fun-based GTM strategy appears to be gathering steam. The token’s price has climbed over 100% in the past 24 hours with nearly $2 million in trading volume, according to DEX Screener. Its Telegram chat has added 500 users over the past couple of days, <a href="https://t.me/blinks_gg_group/129573">according</a> to a channel admin.



Is the community there for a novel software platform or only to make a quick buck? Time will tell.



Space Operator was meant to be a Solana equivalent for a visual design software popular with architects called Grasshopper (Banihashem has an architecture degree and previously founded an apartment rental startup in Boston). Despite a Solana Foundation grant and years of work for an idea hatched in 2021, Space Operator’s learning curve was just a bit too steep, and it never took off, Banihashem told me.



Now, with a pump.fun token and the simplicity of Blinks, blinks.gg already has six times the number of X followers as Space Operator.



In our interview, Banihashem didn’t seem to have a super firm idea where blinks.gg would go.&nbsp;



“We’re just going one step at a time,” he concluded when I asked him how the platform would make money.&nbsp;



He seemed more enamored with the kinds of new possibilities his platform could create. Banihashem likened Space Operator to lego blocks that let token or NFT creators build without the guidelines that launchpads require. He added that there is still some work to be done in making Solana’s global computer as easy to access as a personal computer. What if creators could sync files to Solana as easily as they can upload files to Google Drive, for instance?



Blinks.gg’s team of three developers now has a lot of hype for a platform that still has some warts. It will be interesting to watch whether the pump.fun go to market will prove to be prescient or ill-advised.



— Jack Kubinec



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In</h2>



Just a few days after launch, Drift’s new Bet prediction market is having a huge volume day:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="901" height="406" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png" alt="" class="wp-image-91171" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=901 901w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-52.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 901px) 100vw, 901px" /></figure>



More than $20 million has been bet on Bet today, which bests Polymarket, according to a Dune <a href="https://dune.com/bigz/drift-bet">dashboard</a>. It’s unclear what exactly drove the volume spike, and it’s also worth noting that only 630 bets have been placed today — meaning the average bet has been over $30,000. Most of this betting volume appears to have gone to the US presidential election popular vote market.&nbsp;



That market is boosted for five times the typical amount of Drift loyalty points, called FUEL.&nbsp;



It’s a notable infusion of liquidity, but Polymarket has still seen ten times the number of bettors today, so I’m not quite ready to hand Bet the prediction market crown. Drift did not return a request for comment on where the betting volume came from by press time.



— Jack Kubinec



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



If you’re still waiting for <a href="https://x.com/3orovik/status/1828613764804988953">Solana Summer</a>, you might want to check your <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lk7xwlDkZ4M">calendar</a>. We’re less than a month away from autumn — starting September 22nd, to be exact — and it’s becoming increasingly clear that this much-hyped &#8220;season&#8221; has not been the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYdRWC6MCgM">sunshine-filled rally</a> many had hoped for.



As @expensive_io <a href="https://x.com/expensive_io/status/1828055076142981480">put it</a>, “Solana Summer 2024 transformed $SOL into a stablecoin.” Ouch.



To be fair though, crypto is a <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/immersive/strange-new-worlds/">weird planet</a>. It never seems to have autumns or springs. It’s either a scorching summer or a freezing winter. Even so, I think it might be time for us to start workshopping a new name for whenever line-go-up.



@TheCryptoGuy210 <a href="https://x.com/TheCryptoGuy210/status/1828615146693935262">suggests</a>, “More like Solana Fall.” I get what you&#8217;re saying, but no thank you, sire. &#8220;Fall&#8221; is a bad vibe (unless, of course, we&#8217;re planning on falling upwards?) @PuppaCoin <a href="https://x.com/PuppaCoin/status/1828643863096942633">suggested</a>, “SOLANA SEPTEMBER MAYBE?” Nice try, Puppa. But you know September is still part of Summer, right? And anyways, just shoot me now if the (alleged, but also definitely going to happen) bull run only lasts one single month.



Jupiter Exchange’s @SolJakey may have had the best idea. He <a href="https://x.com/SolJakey/status/1824154273862783265">posted</a>, “SOLANA SUMMER was a myth. It’s the SOLANA cycle.” Strong. Only foreseeable problem with that is the potential trademark overlap with the concatenated rave/gym monstrosity known as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoBBRXRTDQc">SoulCycle</a>. Don&#8217;t worry though, they&#8217;ll never catch us on those stationary bikes.



Maybe the real Solana Summer was the friends we made along the way. Or maybe… it’s still out there, hiding just beyond the horizon. CUE THEME SONG, ROLL CREDITS.



— Jeffrey Albus



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Diogo Costa, head of marketing at Renzo:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="562" height="854" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png" alt="" class="wp-image-91172" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png?w=562 562w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png?w=197 197w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png?w=169 169w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png?w=172 172w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png?w=144 144w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-53.png?w=53 53w" sizes="(max-width: 562px) 100vw, 562px" /></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Blinks.gg is using a pump.fun token to springboard a developer platform

Michael McSweeney

Today, enjoy the Lightspeed newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox.&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to the Lightspeed newsletter</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Howdy!



The &#8220;Grimace&#8221; token allegedly put out by McDonald&#8217;s turned out to be a scam, unfortunately.



If you’re having a tough week, just remember that somewhere out there is a wallet holding tens of thousands of DJT, RTR, and now GRIMACE tokens. Anyways:



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Magic Eden announces token, expansion beyond NFTs</h2>



Magic Eden’s newly-created foundation confirmed a forthcoming airdrop for its ME token this morning — but the whole thing felt like a marketing ploy for the new branded wallet.&nbsp;



There’s not yet public information on when the airdrop will happen, how it’s being distributed, or if and when Magic Eden will take a “snapshot” of users’ Diamonds holdings to divvy up the token. Magic Eden Foundation director Matt Szenics declined to comment on distribution and tokenomics when I reached out, saying more info would come at a “later time.”



What we do know is that the token can only be claimed in the Magic Eden wallet — and users are being not-so-subtly <a href="https://x.com/ElizabethOls0n/status/1826624705476133176">encouraged</a> to download it.&nbsp;



In a press release, the Magic Eden Foundation <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/me-foundation-announces-me-to-be-adopted-by-magic-eden-as-its-official-ecosystem-token-302228210.html">said</a> the token would “incentivize people to use the open source protocols adopted by ME Foundation” — seemingly a reference to the smart contracts undergirding Magic Eden, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nft-marketplace-user-rewards-program">which the foundation now owns</a>.



We’ve more or less known a Magic Eden token was coming since January, when the platform introduced a points program to track users’ loyalty. Turning points into token allocations has become the most popular way to carry out airdrops — and has spawned a cottage industry for “points farmers.”



NFT Price Floor founder Nicolas Lallement told me he thinks Magic Eden using its token generation event (TGE) as a way to boost wallet downloads is a “smart play.” He added that Magic Eden’s wallet and token releases are part of a broader “vertical integration” trend among large platforms — Uniswap, with its native token, wallet, and mobile app, is another example.



(I’m sad to say, I got personally suckered into Magic Eden’s wallet advertisement — I just added the wallet to my browser extensions this morning.)



In any event, there’s a more interesting development lurking beneath the TGE announcement: In multiple press interviews, Magic Eden said it has broader ambitions than just NFTs, and the new wallet will allow for token swaps.&nbsp;



Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu told me Magic Eden is still primarily an NFT platform, but the app needs to “skate where the puck is going” to onboard new crypto users.&nbsp;



To read between the lines a bit: NFTs just aren’t what they once were, and any retail-focused crypto app needs to reckon with the dominance of memecoins during this current market cycle.&nbsp;



Or you could look at it this way: Magic Eden is the largest NFT platform by trading volume, <a href="https://www.nftpulse.org/marketplaces">according</a> to NFT Pulse, and it’s going to start allowing users to trade tokens. It’s hard to imagine Pump.fun has plans to add NFT trading.&nbsp;



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In</h2>



Crypto trivia of the day: Can you identify this price chart?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="958" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png" alt="" class="wp-image-90826" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=436 436w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=366 366w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-41.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



This particular August bloodbath belongs to ORE, the proof-of-work currency that resumed mining on Solana earlier this month. From the start, some users complained that there wasn’t enough reason to hold onto mined ORE, and sure enough, miners appear to be dumping it.&nbsp;



This makes it less worthwhile to mine ORE since you have to spend a bit of SOL to land transactions, a fact that miners seem to be coming to grips with: Active miners have <a href="https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/zpencer/ore-mining-stats-Netn7P">dropped</a> by thousands over the past two weeks, according to a Flipside dashboard.



Still, the currency’s developer Hardhat Chad has spun off a company meant to develop use cases for ORE, including a game that we spoke about on the <a href="https://x.com/Lightspeedpodhq/status/1824839840677912843">Lightspeed podcast recently</a>. We’ll have to see whether use cases can reverse ORE’s fortunes.&nbsp;



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



It’s the Elon Musk/Pump.fun crossover event you (probably) didn’t know you were looking for.



Fun fact, apparently: Turns out that Noland Arbaugh of Neuralink fame <a href="https://x.com/ModdedQuad/status/1826476644946891153/photo/1">might be</a> a Pump.fun fan —&nbsp;or, at least, he visited the site and kept his browser tab open.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Come and join me, we may learn something. Maybe someone can teach me how to keep less than 50 tabs open. <a href="https://twitter.com/petersonacademy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@petersonacademy</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jordanbpeterson</a> <a href="https://t.co/NPAyBBy6xx">pic.twitter.com/NPAyBBy6xx</a>&mdash; Noland Arbaugh (@ModdedQuad) <a href="https://twitter.com/ModdedQuad/status/1826476644946891153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



As reported by Wired earlier this year, Arbaugh is the first user of Neuralink, the Elon Musk-backed brain implant startup. Arbaugh suffered a serious spinal injury in 2016, leaving him paralyzed.



But the implant has allowed him to perform multiple functions via Neuralink’s computer interface. As he told the publication: “I’m constantly multitasking when I’m in sessions or when I’m playing around. I’ll throw on an audiobook or throw something on my TV and then play a game at the same time. It takes very little brain power. What I’m thinking the whole time is just where I want the cursor to go.”



I guess we can add Pump.fun to that list.



Lightspeed’s intrepid reporter Jack is out there <a href="https://x.com/whosknave/status/1826611997057925542">asking the real questions</a>, but for now we’re left with the tantalizing possibility that memecoin trading is the true use case for the human/machine interface.&nbsp;



As expected, Crypto Twitter dove on Arbaugh’s post. His replies are full of calls to buy their preferred sh*tcoin and suggestions that he launch his own token. Naturally, they wanted to know what he’s buying (if at all).



User wahndo perhaps summed up the mood best: “he’s just like me for real.”&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Brandon Tucker, core contributor at GolfN:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="566" height="766" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png" alt="" class="wp-image-90827" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png?w=566 566w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png?w=222 222w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png?w=190 190w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png?w=193 193w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png?w=162 162w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-42.png?w=59 59w" sizes="(max-width: 566px) 100vw, 566px" /></figure>



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