Over the past few weeks, new projects that are coming into the crypto market have been using launchpads more and more. It has become a common expression of our sector’s frontier spirit to say that crypto launchpads have taken center stage. Now, these platforms, which allow teams to create and distribute their own tokens, have been gaining more and more momentum in recent weeks. Nearly every day, they come up in conversation. They keep surfacing in discussions about the latest funding rounds and even the E3 blockchain gaming. Pumpfun’s Continued Dominance and Market Shifts Pumpfun has kept its position as the leader in the launchpad category, enabling upward of 200,000 token launches per week. This striking figure underscores the platform’s ability to unfailingly drive new projects to market. The triumph and elevated activity level of Pumpfun have set a high standard for any other platform looking to subsist in or encroach upon this part of the market. Over the past year, the platform has unfailingly kept itself at the top, with an upward graduation rate that seems to be hitting close to 2%—the kind of number you like to hear for a platform that does what Pumpfun does. However, even with Pumpfun’s continuous success, there has been a marked drop in the overall making of new tokens. Since January, the making of tokens has decreased by about 50%, with the making of new tokens seen in previous months that may be peaking off. But this dial in token making is counterbalanced by a resurgence in the making of tokens that is now underway. Since the summer of 2024, the making of tokens has more than doubled, giving signal that making new tokens is more likely now than in 2023. This upturn in token making is partially attributed to the number of teams and developers who are now looking for opportunities on the platform, in turn making it more competitive. 1/ Launchpads have been a hot topic in recent weeks with many new projects coming to market. @Pumpdotfun 's success and dominance of the category over the past year serves as motivation for other teams to compete for a slice of the pie. So what's happening with launchpads? pic.twitter.com/e05JZCcqVi — Blockworks Research (@blockworksres) May 5, 2025 Emerging Competitors: Raydium, Moonshot, and New Entrants Pumpfun is on top, but other platforms aren’t taking it lying down. Take LaunchLab, for example. This is a launchpad created by the folks at Raydium, and for how new it is, it has quite a few recent projects under its belt. One of these was the launch of a Bonk token, which—rightly or wrongly—has captured the attention of a larger segment of the crypto market. No sign here of bank token launches subsiding, and where this is headed may not be pretty. JupiterExchange has taken an interest in Moonshot, which is also in the business of running its own launchpad. But whereas Moonshot has undertaken an almost negligible number of launches—just a few thousand tokens a week—it has not carved out a large business for itself. Moonshot’s struggle to find launchpad momentum against a backdrop where Pumpfun is the 800-pound gorilla of the space shows just how hard it is for any new platform to make itself seem interesting in a now-here-today, gone-tomorrow world. Boopdotfun, a newcomer platform, has entered the scene with a unique approach to incentivizing adoption and is offering creators token airdrops to access its large allocations of tokens. However, to access these tokens, creators must.t 1st launch a token (I’ll explain this step later) and 2nd hit a certain market cap. Despite the innovative model, boopdotfun’s activity levels have started to decline. Launchpads on Base and the Future of Token Launches Base, the layer-2 network from Coinbase, has also experienced a burgeoning set of launchpad products, with a plethora of teams exploring novel tokenomics. Platforms like ClankeronBase are moving toward automating the creation and trading of tokens, while social-graph-oriented projects like Zora are immersing themselves in this new world, too. But despite all this activity, token-launch volume on Base is standing pat at a level that looks a lot like the quiet before a storm, with only dozens to maybe a few hundred tokens being launched each day. It is interesting that, even though launchpads are the favored method for new token creation, most of the trading volume being generated within Base from meme coins is still coming from tokens that are not affiliated with any launchpad. Memecoins, which are usually launched in a more informal and decentralized manner, still lead in terms of trading volume on the Base network. There is an important distinction here: the launchpad route seems to be preferred for more structured projects, while those who are choosing the not-so-serious route are having no trouble generating meme coin trading volume. At the same time, Pumpfun does not just influence the launches of new tokens. It carries authority representing roughly 10% of all Solana meme coins traded, indicating its meaningful presence in the wider meme coin universe. The BNB-Chain ecosystem has also been seeing substantial development, and the meme-token community there is quickly building momentum. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s direct engagement with that community has undoubtedly been a factor in making the BNB-Chain a solid platform for furthering its growth. The Future of Launchpads: Competition and Innovation Even though Pumpfun is obviously in charge of the situation, the whole setup feels like more than just a shake of some well-packed tokens and a big revenue-sharing fan. That’s because the launchpad market is clearly moving, with new competitors springing up and old ones reanimating themselves with new ideas. Some of these competitors are working with features that could easily class them as disruptors—just like any good capitalist market should have. If you’re an enterprising team looking to raise funds for your project, you could do a lot worse than checking these guys out. As demand for the creation of tokens grows and as more innovative and customizable solutions are sought by new projects, the importance of launchpads will only amplify. It will be determined, in the next months, whether Pumpfun’s model continues to hold the key to the market or whether new collaborative platforms with fresh approaches can capture a larger slice of it. With continued evolution of features, new levels of community engagement, and improved revenue-sharing arrangements, the future of launchpads looks potentially very different, but their role in permissionless markets is assured. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on Twitter @nulltxnews to stay updated with the latest Crypto, NFT, AI, Cybersecurity, Distributed Computing, and Metaverse news !
