Morning Minute | Memecoin Platform Pump.Fun Exploited

TylerD's Market Summary

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🚩 Pump Dot Fun Exploited

Pump dot fun had been building serious momentum.

The app is 9th on the protocol rankings on the month in fees generated with $13.4M.

But now that momentum is in jeopardy.

What Happened?

Yesterday memecoin launchpad protocol pump.fun was exploited for $1.9M.

The team published a post-mortem, sharing that:

• a former employee was responsible
• they executed a series of flash loans to 1) borrow SOL, 2) Use that sol to to buy memecoins so they hit their bonding curve limit, 3) get access to the bonding curve liquidity an 4) repay the flash loans
• the employee then seemingly distributed some of the profits to random other memecoin holders in what they described as a "robinhood" like effort

A truly wild story for those watching it unfold in real time.

Luckily not many users were too impacted as the contracts were always safe. But the team is looking to make amends anyway.

Looking forward:

• the protocol is now back live
• they are re-seeding any coin that went live during the exploit with 100% of its liquidity out of pocket
• trading fees are marked down to 0% for the next 7 days

They ended their post-mortem with the statement:

"solana shitcoins are back, and greater than ever"

But is that truly the case?

Why It Matters

Pump dot fun has had a massive impact on the memecoin landscape.

Solana is seeing 20,000+ new tokens created every day.

Even EVM-chains are seeing the impact, with 1M new tokens created in the last month (more than 2x the entire new creations from 2015-2023).

Now some are comparing this hyper-influx of tokens to what happened in the NFT bubble last cycle (on steroids).

Sisyphus commented:

"We have actually launched too many tokens (specifically, memecoins). Too chaotic for new schelling points to form"

Notable token trader L shared similar sentiment:

shitcoins in a weird spot these days

as a result of cheap deployment costs on solana + pumpfun there are simply too many coins

no max tx limits and tiny initial liquidity ruin distribution on new launches

not sure what solution is but pretty big problem

It does sound like a problem.

Pump takes a rake on their coin launches (enough to make them a top 10 crypto protocol in fees on the month), and pump is certainly pvp right now.

So are memecoins doomed?

Most are, yes.

Just like NFTs, 99% will go to 0. 

But also like NFTs, winners will win, and likely win big.

My gut take is that traders will consolidate into winners and new tokens that have "proven themselves" by passing certain mc thresholds (vs trading every new coin launch).

Huge gains are still on the table (look at TREMP or MICHI in the past few weeks), but it's getting harder to catch the $50k mc token that goes to $10M.

Regardless, calling top on memecoins here feels foolish with them still in the spotlight.

Memecoin supercycle still on.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• BTC led NFT trading volume with $8.3M on the day (-15%); ETH was next with $4.7M (-4%) and then Solana with $3.3M (+24%)
• BTC NFT leaders chopped on the day on lower volume; Puppets at 0.2 BTC, NodeMonkes at 0.3, OMB at 0.38 and Quantum Cats at 0.34
• Harvey Rayner's chatFUKR mint opened up at a 0.006 BTC floor post-mint
• ETH NFT leaders were mostly red down 1-3%; BAYC -1% to 13.45 ETH, Pudgy +2% to 11.75, Azuki -6% to 5, DeGods -3% to 1.95
• Wolf Game assets were the top performer ahead of their move to Blast; Sheep +90% to 0.25 ETH, Farmers up 50% to 0.09 and Gen2 + 44% to 0.06
• Solana NFTs were red again on the day; Mad Lads -1% to 58 SOL, Tensorians even at 13; DeGods -9% to 35, and SMB Gen 2 +2% at 32
• Blast NFTs were mostly red, while old leaders fell; Plutocats -11%, Blastopians -15%
• Pudgy Penguins announced a strategic partnership with mega-brand Lotte Group to expand its presence in South Korea and beyond
• CryptoPunks introduced Super Punk World - a 500 piece digital PFP collection from inaugural Punk In Residence, Nina Chanel
• Notable personality Threadguy dropped a podcast with Zagabond titled "azuki" talking Zag's history, anime and anime chain, elementals, dream collabs and more
• Backpack introduced a Mad Lads VIP program, offering discounted fees for Mad Lad holders on the Backpack Exchange

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are green this morning after the S&P 500 hit another ATH; BTC +0.5% at $66,400; ETH +1% at $3,030, SOL +3% at $169
• Memecoin majors were mixed with DOGE -1%, WIF -4%, PEPE -4%, BONK -5%; MICHI, MANEKI, TREMP outperform
• The U.S. Senate voted to repeal the SEC's anti-crypto banking rule (SAB 121) seeking to discourage self-custodying crypto in a bipartisan super majority vote
• The CME is planning to offer spot Bitcoin trading, notable as its the open interest leader in Bitcoin futures trading 
• Anichess announced a partnership with eSports brand Team Secret, the latest big move from the Animoca subsidiary

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $JESUS (+37%, $18M market cap, ETH)
• $MANEKI (+29%, $82M market cap, Solana)
• $MINI (+24%, $19M market cap, Solana)
• $MICHI (+20%, $317M market cap, Solana)
• $TREMP (+11%, $98M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Wolf Game (85%, 0.24 ETH Floor)
• Farmer (54%, 0.09 ETH)
• Wolf Gen 2 (44%, 0.06 ETH)
• Bursted Bubbles (23%, 0.95 ETH)
• Yogapetz (17%, 0.38 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slower day of new mints.

Bold Leonidas is back with another Blast drop. Trystan is doing the meme card today.

And then the highlight is likely the end of Fantasy Top Main Tournament 2 at 5 pm ET today - and what happens after unlock.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Bold Leonidas - PAC JAM (3:00 a.m. ET)
• Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Pixel Symphonies - Archetypes (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Jake Rockland - Opuntia (1:00 p.m. ET)
• Fantasy Top - Main Tourney 2 ends (5:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.