BlockBeats Note: This article was written on July 1, at which time Pump.fun had just launched its live streaming feature, and the phenomenon of "live streaming with memes" was emerging in popularity. Recently, the Pump.fun team once again promoted the live streaming feature. In the early hours of November 22, a young unemployed individual in North America livestreamed on Pump.fun, stating that he would only end the stream once the market cap of his own token (LIVE) reached 100 million. This livestream was also selected by the Pump.fun official team and featured on the homepage. After the on-chain trading volume reached $100,000, the LIVE token began to soar in value. Key opinion leaders (KOLs) such as gmony then participated in real-time online interactions, eventually driving the LIVE token's market cap above $20 million.

Left: The LIVE token issuer livestreams a haircut; Right: LIVE token price

After the "livestream issuer" became popular, a new wave of live streaming fervor swept through the Pump.fun official website. Various hosts showcased their talents in unique ways to boost their token's price, creating an atmosphere resembling "TikTok in the crypto world" on Pump.fun.

Pump.fun is the most unique product in this cycle. Since its launch over four months ago, Pump.fun has released over 1.17 million tokens, with total revenue exceeding $50 million. How should we interpret this number? Compared to the top traffic product during the previous bull market, Uniswap, Uniswap Labs is estimated to have an annual revenue of about $25-30 million.

It can be said that Pump.fun is not a typical Web3 project. It lacks a complex tokenomics model and DAO governance mechanism. However, with precise market positioning, Pump.fun has established a foolproof business model. In the era of attention economy, many people explain the sustained prosperity of meme coins as the advantage of short videos over long videos. So, in the "everyone issues a coin" era, can latecomers still get a piece of the pie? With attention economy overlaid with ultimate player-vs-player (PVP) dynamics, what new gameplay will emerge in the world of meme coins?

The Person Who Burned Himself to Promote a Meme Coin Is Still Live Streaming

Do you remember the developer who burned himself a month ago to promote his meme coin? Last Thursday, June 27, he was still live streaming on Twitter.

This developer's name is Mikol. On May 17, he launched a meme coin called TruthOrDare (DARE) on Pump.fun. At that time, Pump.fun did not yet have a live streaming feature, so he could only post pictures in the comments section. Mikol took the lead in showing the "highlights" of the first season to the community by streaming on Twitch, pouring isopropanol on himself and having friends shoot fireworks in his direction. Amidst fans' gasps and the rise of DARE, his body caught fire. With third-degree burns all over, he was rushed to the hospital.

The DARE token saw a 12x price increase on the day of Mikol's burn incident, only to quickly drop back to zero the following day. Mikol's story was covered by the cryptographic community media Decrypt, attracting a lot of attention. Faced with such popularity, Mikol, lying in the ICU, recorded a video for the community, affirming his commitment to continue operations, saying, "You will see a better version of me."

More than just Mikol, there are others who launch meme coins and then engage in extreme behavior to attract attention and hope for price surges. The Solana meme craze brought in many newcomers to the world of crypto and spawned numerous meme coins that are designed to be viewed in seconds. Alongside Mikol's "burn coin," there were meme coins during the same period with names like "LIVEWITHMOM" that involved live streaming of explicit parts of the body to "beg for buy-ins."

Although the lifespan of these meme coins is extremely short, and very few have market capitalizations exceeding $1 million, the fusion of live streaming and coin launches has allowed many low-income earners to find a path to wealth.

A week after these events, Pump.fun introduced a live streaming feature. The community's initial response was to advise coin launchers, "Please do not self-immolate for the sake of making money."

At the time when Mikol's story was gaining community attention, many held the view that such behavior was too pathological and contrary to the original spirit of crypto, with some advising Mikol to find a good job after recovering from his illness. However, after stabilizing his condition, Mikol, who was still in the hospital, started live streaming on Twitch and synchronized the stream on Pump.fun. As he wished, his return to live streaming drove DARE to another 15x price increase.

The surge that accompanied his return lasted only a day, and DARE's price continued to decline, seemingly losing momentum for further growth. However, from that time until now, Mikol has frequently live streamed in bandages, performing stunts like eating raw eggs, dry swallowing cinnamon, and sharing his daily recovery routine. New members have joined his "TruthOrDare Family," showcasing talents such as eating mustard, dry eating chili peppers, and other "feat."

Barring a few rare circumstances, Mikol and his DARE may find it challenging to regain the same level of attention as before. There are more Mikols on the internet hoping that through sufficiently abstract and impactful performances, they can garner community attention and propel their memes to great heights.

Those with built-in high traffic have already issued their own coins, from Jenner to Mother, Father, and others. The celebrity coin wave has enabled both the coin issuance team and early adopters to make a killing. Although individuals like Vitalik have expressed views against this phenomenon, it is difficult to stop the increasing trend of "entertainment to death" in the crypto community.

One might consider that the newcomers flooding into the crypto community this time are from the "underserved market." The meme coin market is still quite significant, but unlike meme coins like DOGE and PEPE, which had some connection to the crypto community in the past, the current meme coin frenzy is pointing in a new direction, towards the underserved market outside the crypto community.

The Crypto Market Is Undergoing a Transformation from PGC to UGA

There are many practical reasons behind the emergence of the meme frenzy. Indeed, the narrative attractiveness of this bull market is not as strong as before. Rather than the opaque chip distribution and the lofty yet impractical narrative of "value coins," newcomers prefer to use memes as their first step into the community.

Behind this trend is an increasing number of users who have seen through the ultimate PVP logic. Regardless of how the narrative changes, it is all just to create a sufficiently Ponzi-like scheme, waiting for the next person to take over. The market lacks not people who issue coins but people who can tell the coin issuance story well. Since the community consensus has become "the essence of value coins is also a form of air coins," it is straightforward to issue one's own coin. The emergence of Pump.fun came at just the right time.

The appearance of Pump.fun allows users to launch their own meme coins at an extremely low cost (0.02 SOL). Memes go through cycles of takeoff and collapse in a matter of hours, with over 10,000 tokens being released daily on Pump.fun, accounting for over 80% of the total supply of tokens in the Solana ecosystem. Recently, Pump.fun's daily revenue has been between 450,000 and 1 million USD, and its total revenue has exceeded 50 million USD since its launch a few months ago.

As highlighted in a May analysis report released by Youbi Capital, the craze for low-liquidity assets is an intrinsic response to the current cycle's lack of on-chain liquidity. Additionally, after the shift from PGA (Professionally Generated Asset) to UGA (User Generated Asset), the sharp increase in the number of coin issuances has led to an increasingly decentralized consensus, serving as a potential metaphor.

However, new opportunities still exist.

Three days ago, DEX Screener launched the token issuance platform Moonshot. On the first day of launch, over 7000 tokens were released. Meanwhile, Solana received community acclaim for its feature that allows token trading on Twitter called blinks. The meme coin SC, which combines these two hot topics, saw its price more than double in two days, indicating that the market is eager to partake in token issuance platforms, and users are looking forward to new stories post Pump.fun.

After all, the unprecedented advancement of cryptographic technology has significantly lowered the speed and barriers of asset issuance and trading, and its potential application market is still very large. As long as the community's demand for "attention monetization" exists, the crypto market still has stories to tell.

What If Live Broadcasting Happened in Web3?

In the traditional internet, the "attention economy" industry has developed for about 20 years, experiencing the transition from the forum and BBS era to the era of text and image microblogs, and then to the era of short video live broadcasting. A similar trajectory is unfolding in the crypto field.

On May 29, pump.fun announced the launch of live streaming on its platform. For a site that aims to drive traffic and make money quickly, users indeed do not have a need to watch live broadcasts. However, live streaming, as the form of communication with the highest information density, strong situational awareness, and infectiousness, combined with asset issuance features, is worth imagining from the perspective of attention economy.

Simplifying Monetization to the Extreme

The path of commercialization in Web3 is completely different from that of the traditional internet, but in terms of the attention economy, typical Web2 cases can provide some insights to the crypto industry.

Take Kuaishou (Kwai) as an example. In 2013, less than two years after its inception, Kuaishou decided to transition from a GIF creation tool to an internet community where users produce content on the platform, recording and sharing their lives and creativity through short videos and interacting with fans. Unlike new platforms like Douyin (TikTok), Kuaishou's user base consists of "average people in society," mainly young people in second- and third-tier cities.

In 2014, YY anchors with a loyal fan base in the lower-tier markets joined Kuaishou when the platform had a monthly active user base of 1 million. By the end of 2016, Kuaishou's monthly active users exceeded 64 million. During these two years of rapid growth and expansion of Kuaishou, YY system anchors occupied the top four positions on the platform's list of leading anchors at the time.

Kuaishou has maintained the features of the grassroots community in the sinking market, not signing internet celebrity stars, not providing traffic support, and a fair algorithm mechanism that encourages the vibrant development of UGC content. Compared to products of the same period, Kuaishou stood out with its unique "decentralized community" model.

In 2017, Kuaishou once again took the lead in seizing the live streaming dividend, becoming the world's largest standalone live streaming platform. According to Kuaishou's prospectus, from 2017 to 2019, the company's revenues were 8.3 billion, 20.3 billion, and 39.1 billion yuan, with live streaming revenues at 7.9 billion, 18.6 billion, 31.4 billion, and 17.3 billion yuan, accounting for 95.18%, 91.63%, 80.31%, and 68.38%, respectively. It can be seen that at that time, live streaming was Kuaishou's core business and foundation.

After vigorous development, Kuaishou had to adjust its content ecosystem. After all, traditional Web2 companies need to undergo commercialization transformation. In this process, only content producers with high audience consumption levels, meeting traditional societal values, and surviving fierce competition can stay till the end.

In retrospect, rather than saying Kuaishou succeeded in the sinking market, it is more accurate to say that Kuaishou aimed at the new beginner market in the attention economy track. In contrast, coin issuance platforms targeting crypto beginners do not need to consider "commercialization transformation."

In traditional internet giants, whether they are content platforms or e-commerce platforms, they all hope to show users "here are good things worth watching/buying" because only content that is recognized and loved by more users has commercial value, thereby bringing profits to the platform. However, Pump.fun does not need commercialization. Its profit model is extremely simple and pure. It only needs to show "here are enough coins and traders." As long as there are trades, Pump.fun can make money.

Currently, although Pump.fun has enabled comments and live streaming features, users only come to Pump.fun to complete the buying or selling process. Discussions about meme coins mainly happen on Twitter, and meme coin developers with live streaming ideas mostly choose platforms like Twitch, Kick, etc., for live stream promotion.

In the Pump.fun interface, users can only choose based on the number of comments and token market cap. If there is a live streaming section on Pump.fun, will there be a "live streaming genius" on Pump.fun?

Human Game Theory and Regulatory Challenges

Currently, there have been some meme display platforms, such as Game.com, whose Twitter followers have just surpassed 7,000, offering a paid list token service. For 0.8 SOL, you can publish your issued meme coin on this platform to gain more visibility.

Meanwhile, the Pump.fun team seems to have no intention of further exploring the existing service. After all, a small team that has earned over $40 million in revenue in just half a year, with a stable daily income of $600,000, indeed lacks the motivation to disrupt products or innovate narratives, as positioning themselves as a "tool" is already sufficient.

With more newcomers entering the crypto field, perhaps live streaming could become a label for Moonshot and other coin issuance platforms as a differentiating strategy.

However, several past failed x to earn projects in Web3 have already indicated that even the most ingenious design cannot challenge human nature. On June 13, a user launched a meme coin on Pump.fun with a theme of a sheep wearing a hat and conducted a live stream concurrently. However, shortly after the live stream began, the comments section was still discussing the sheep's actions, and snipers who bought the token at the time of issuance quickly sold most of the tokens at a high price, causing a sharp price drop.

After the token collapse, the meme coin issuer explained in the comments section, "My token balance has always remained unchanged and can be verified through solscan. If I was just trying to make a quick buck, why would I livestream my sheep instead of selling my tokens?"

Perhaps not selling was because the token had not yet been listed on Raydium, and ultimately, the token did not reach a market cap of $60,000. The issuer never livestreamed his sheep again.

Furthermore, regulatory issues are also something that platforms of this nature need to be mindful of. If the livestream format is combined with asset issuance, there will inevitably be various attempts to attract attention through extreme and vulgar behavior. When Pump.fun announced the launch of the livestream feature, the community's biggest concern was how the platform would review extreme content. As coin issuers release some pornographic or more extreme inappropriate content, should Pump.fun intervene to prevent potential criminal behavior.

Conclusion

Returning to the meme coin issuers mentioned at the beginning of this article, you can sense the content ecology of early traditional internet short video platforms. After years of development, these platforms have explored highly monetizable business models.

As a form of content that provides an "immersive experience," live streaming breaks through people's imagination, making them realize how simple the convergence speed of "traffic" can be, and monetization channels such as tips and product placements also give content creators to some extent the ability to counterbalance platform capital.

In the cryptocurrency field, the platform's control quickly dissipates. Yet, attention remains the core driving force propelling the entire market forward. If live streaming takes place in Web3, what kind of story will unfold? Can the ultimate utilization of traffic find new forms of expression in a decentralized environment?

Looking back over the years, amidst the continuous breaking and rebuilding of consensus, the crypto industry has seen numerous projects go from "innovation" to collapse. The emergence of Pump.fun is just the beginning.

欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群：

Telegram 订阅群：https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram 交流群：https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Twitter 官方账号：https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia