The Pump Dump and BonkFun's Rise

As we all know, memecoins have surged this cycle — a phenomenon fueled and formalized by Pump.fun.

Defining this category has brought Pump an impressive $780M in revenue in just 18 months. Still, little of that windfall appears to have been reinvested back into the ecosystem. When whispers of a $600M ICO at a $4B valuation began circulating in June, sentiment began to shift. The platform’s need for additional capital – despite its massive revenues – sparked fresh scrutiny. Where many once saw ambition and growth, some now saw signs of an operation optimizing more for extraction than ecosystem building.

This came to a head in early July when platforms hosting the ICO leaked the raise's dates, triggering an exodus from Pump. That week, BonkFun, the launchpad of Solana's oldest memecoin BONK, had its market share flip Pump's for the first time. And, since then, Bonk, and now Zora, have continued eating away at the launchpad market, with Bonk now commanding 81% of total market share and Zora flipping both for tokens launched.

As we know, trust is everything in crypto. The whole industry was built on trustless systems to ditch extractive middlemen. But Pump's recent decline shows the twist: even trustless tech needs operators you can believe in. Trust goes beyond not “rugging” — it's crafting loops where the platform's wins boost user wins too. Bonk and Zora seem to understand this, building setups where hot tokens lift their entire ecosystem, revenues circle back to holders, and the platform culture works together with economic structures that create flywheels.

Trust as the Best Technology

This trust here doesn't come from better "technology" or new launch mechanisms. Pump, Bonk, and Zora all use launch and liquidity mechanisms that have been in crypto for a long time. It's the financial and social tactics each platform employs that set them apart. Let's take a closer look.

BonkFun

BonkFun operates on mechanics identical to Pump, built on Raydium's LaunchLab with the same bonding curve (an automatic pricing mechanism where token prices increase as more are bought) and graduation mechanics Pump had before transitioning to PumpSwap.

But from the get-go, Bonk engineered its platform to economically align with its ecosystem, putting its revenue to work with:

• 50% going to buy and burn BONK (over 250K SOL to-date, almost $50M total with ~$25M in direct buyback & burns)
• 15% funding additional rewards for BonkSOL stakers (contributing almost 40K SOL to the validator)
• ~7.5% buying back GP (Graphite), a BonkFun ecosystem token
• 4% amassing a Strategic BONK Reserve.
• Another 4% supporting other ecosystem initiatives.

In other words, while Pump's profits often seem to immediately offramp, Bonk’s loop back into its ecosystem for continued support.

But beyond the platform economics, BonkFun's community captured the spirit of Solana Twitter during a critical moment where users were looking for Pump alternatives. The platform leveraged long-standing Bonk community figures who had built followings through bold, public displays of conviction.

BonkGuy gained fame turning $16K into $18M by longing BONK — gains which remain unrealized and have undergone multiple 50-80% drawdowns since he first opened the position in 2023 (it’s still open). SolPortTom, BonkFun's founder and a longtime Bonk vet, garnered attention inside the community when he bought 1% of the Bonk-launched, Grok-themed token ANI's supply to demonstrate commitment to the hottest ecosystem tokens.

For BonkFun, the community confidence solidified in early June around one memecoin in particular. USELESS, launched on the platform and promoted by BonkGuy, began its run from ~$10M market cap to six figures by mid-June. As Pump's ICO buzz heated up, it began surging again and, by July 7, when Pump's ICO dates got leaked and Bonk flipped Pump's market share, USELESS had surged to reached $300M. While invigorating for early holders, the price action also validated to broader circles that BonkFun could produce runners, the best kind of marketing. Soon after, another Bonk-issued token, GP (Graphite Protocol), surged from ~$5M to over $200M in July, proving USELESS was no one-off.

Hot tokens, buzzy figureheads, and building community enthusiasm enabled BonkFun to catch fire throughout July as traders left Pump behind.

Zora

Similar to Bonk, Zora started heating up in early July. The platform hosts memecoins under different names – "creator coins" (built around user profiles) and "content coins" (built around individual posts). Unlike some of its Solana-based competitors, Zora takes a different approach to trust-building, leveraging familiar design language, notable figureheads, and approachable branding to do so.

Operating on Base and championed by the chain's largest personality, Jesse Pollak, the platform has had large organic success recently. Its Instagram-inspired interface makes token creation feel like content creation, with a coin created for every post and profile. Each content coin pairs directly with its launcher’s creator coins in AMM pools, channeling trading fees (around 50% routed back to creators as ZORA) back to fuel a feedback loop akin to Bonk's revenue burns and buybacks.

As a result, in mid-July, every Zora creator coin seemed to surge simultaneously. Further, Zora's rise coincided with Ethereum's outperformance — lining Zora up as the best place for Ethereum-aligned speculation.

The Cultural Trust Loop

Memecoin launching platforms aren't just another piece of crypto infrastructure, they're capitalizing on wider cultural trends.

This week, there were some interesting conversations across Crypto Twitter regarding the levers of entertainment, trust, and trading — forces I see memecoins existing at the intersection of. 

While Kyle Samani sees conflict between the safety of entertainment and the risks of active crypto trading, I see potential for memecoins to turn this tension into a strength through cultural alignment.

The best memecoins are entertaining enough to inspire holders to create memes, act collectively online, and build community. Research backs this: entertaining, interactive elements reduce entry barriers and foster trust through shared cultural bonds.

BonkFun understood this implicitly, arriving on the scene equipped with allegiance to Solana's memetic mascot and its existing culture as Pump seemed to be making yet another run for money.

This creates a virtuous cycle: entertaining memes launch where culture thrives. Culture thrives where value accumulates. Value accumulates where revenue redistributes rather than extracts. Each element reinforces the others, building trust through repeated wins.

What Comes Next?

To be clear, as we conclude, this isn’t all to say Pump can’t reclaim its throne. But any comeback attempt faces an uphill battle against platforms like BonkFun and Zora, which have rebuilt what Pump destroyed: trust rooted in cultural and communal alignment, albeit with different levels of sustainability as I see it.

BonkFun has mastered the Cultural Trust Loop, using Pump’s same infrastructure but flipping its philosophy from extraction to redistribution. Zora similarly deserves credit for excelling in its mission to provide creators with direct, sustainable monetization — offering a compelling alternative to platforms like Instagram.

Overall, the lesson is stark: in a world where token launch mechanics are commoditized, how you structure your ecosystem determines everything. Platforms thrive by reinvestment, not just token generation. Cultural and economic alignment with users can create lasting value that even the most volatile cycles can't erode.