LetsBonk Blasts Off to 64% Market Share as Launches and Graduations Hit Record Highs

There’s a new leader in the Solana memecoin launchpad space and it goes by the name LetsBonk. In the past few weeks LetsBonk has exploded in popularity among Solana degens, decisively taking the mantle as the leading Solana launchpad away from Pump.fun, for now at least.

LetsBonk surged from just 5% of the market a month ago to around 64% today, as measured by tokens launched. Over the same period Pump.fun’s market share has collapsed from 90% to just 24%.

Last week saw approximately 150,000 tokens launched on LetsBonk, an increase of 14% over the previous week. On July 18 alone the platform saw a daily record of 26,600 tokens created.

The number of tokens graduating — that is, tokens that attract enough capital to be listed on mainstream Solana decentralised exchanges such as Raydium — has also surged on LetsBonk and now far outstrips Pump.fun. 

As of July 18, LetsBonk had 79% market share of graduating tokens, compared to Pump.fun’s 18%. On July 16, LetsBonk saw a record 282 tokens graduate, a 20% increase over its previous daily record.

Unsurprisingly, this surge in LetsBonk’s popularity has also seen it surpass Pump.fun’s trading volume — recording around US$179 million (AU$272.8m) in daily volume on July 18, compared to Pump.fun US$52 million (AU$79m). For context, a month ago LetsBonk was averaging under US$10 million (AU$15m) in daily volume, while Pump.fun was well over US$100 million (AU$152m).

This surge in volume has translated into a big increase in LetsBonk’s trading fee revenue, with the platform generating over US$8 million (AU$12m) in fees in just the past week, around twice the fee revenue Pump.fun generated.

Related: Solana Memecoin Platform Pump.fun Faces X Suspensions Amid Regulatory Speculation

Pump.fun Token Plummets In Price Following Launch

The bad news for Pump.fun extends to its recently launched utility token PUMP. Following PUMP’s launch last week, which saw all the available tokens sell out in just 12 minutes, the token has struggled. In the days following the launch, PUMP’s price surged 72% to a high of US$0.006878, driven largely by token buy-backs from the PUMP team. 

Since then though, the buy-backs have slowed and the token price has tanked. PUMP is now down 45% from its all-time high and after plummeting 15% on Tuesday, it hit an all-time low of US$0.003602 — less than what it sold for during its initial coin offering (ICO).

The price drop seems to be related to Pump.fun’s significant loss of market share to LetsBonk, but there are also concerns in the community that there’s still no announced date for PUMP to be airdropped to early supporters.

Related: Pump.fun Presale Dump: Nearly 60% of PUMP Buyers Have Already Offloaded Tokens, BitMEX Finds

In the official announcement launching PUMP, which was posted to X two weeks ago, the PUMP team said the airdrop was “coming soon”. Since then, though, the communication around the airdrop has been vague and cryptic.