The on-chain craze recovers, horizontal comparison of the three major LaunchPads and their popular tokens

Launchpad is a decentralized platform, usually operated by blockchain projects or decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to help emerging blockchain projects issue tokens to the public through IDOs. These platforms provide project parties with fundraising channels and provide investors with opportunities to participate in high-quality projects in the early stage. Launchpad introduced in this issue refers more to the meme launch platform. Compared with traditional Launchpad, the market value of the online token is lower, basically 100% circulating, most of the tokens are meme, the threshold for users issuing tokens is low, and the potential wealth effect is higher.

effect:

1. Project fundraising: Provide financing channels for new blockchain projects, raise funds by selling tokens to the community for project development, marketing, etc.;
2. Token distribution: Help project parties distribute tokens to early investors, usually online at a lower market value to attract users to participate;
3. Traffic acquisition: Popular events or IP are an important way to obtain traffic on Launchpad platform, and can gain a lot of attention;
4. Provide wealth effect: the market value of on-chain tokens is low. Once the market is recognized by the market, FOMO purchases or the head Cex will be launched in the future, users who purchase early may obtain huge profits, thereby spreading rapidly within the community;

LaunchPad This track has been the first choice for many development teams and even public chains since its huge success last year, but in the end it was a waste of effort. The consensus on meme coins in the market gathered on Pump Fun.

But in addition to Pump Fun, Solana's old meme coin BONK recently launched its own LaunchPad - Letsbonk.fun. The highest market value of its meme coin has exceeded US$10 million, which is a good start.

Virtuals Protocol, the leader of AI Agent LaunchPad, recently launched new participation methods and activities. Not to mention the performance of its tokens, the price of the parent coin $VIRTUAL has doubled in one week, and the launch of the new activities seems to have achieved certain results.

So, although Pump Fun, LetsBonk and Virtuals Protocol are both LaunchPads, what are the differences in functions? What tokens are there under these three platforms in the near future? Let WOO X Research take you to see.

Pump Fun

I believe that Pump Fun must be familiar with it. The meme frenzy in the second half of 2024 started here. At its peak, you can earn more than 7 million US dollars a day. Even now, when the memes are cooling down, it is about 1.5 million US dollars a day. Since its launch, it has earned more than 600 million US dollars in total, which is well deserved to be the currency printing machine.

Pump Fun's revenue is all based on SOL. Usually, in order not to be included in the "cutting leeks" trend, and to be closer to Solana's official, the common practice is to pledge the earned SOL or operate the nodes on its own. However, Pump Fun does the opposite, constantly selling the SOL in his hand and changing it to USDC.

Since 2025, they have sold a total of $317 million worth of SOL tokens in an astonishing number.

This move not only has poor viewing experience, but also has previous live broadcasts and litigation scandals, although Pump Fun is super profitable in the Solana ecosystem, it is not the target of the foundation.

In terms of its meme coins, Pump Fun has become the first choice for coin issuing platforms. It is an entrance traffic website and is a non-segmented track. Therefore, you can see various themes in it, including animals, homophones, news events, AI, etc. Basically, as long as you want to get, it can be turned into meme coins. Therefore, in terms of the platform, its tokens do not have any special features. At present, the preferred platform for token issuance is still Pump Fun.

LetsBonk

Compared with Pump Fun, LetsBonk is obviously more politically orthodox. The main reason is that BONK is the most representative meme coin on the Solana chain and a meme coin with wealth effects. It is also a project that has been deeply engaged in Solana for more than four years. In addition to the recent Toly retweets, BONK can be seen in various offline activities of Solana long ago. In terms of relationships, it is obviously more pleasing than Pump Fun's behavior of selling coins all day long.

In terms of platform mechanism, LetsBonk also acts more selfless than Pump Fun, with revenue of 1% of the transaction fee, of which the amount will be used for:

• Platform operations and growth
• Give BONKsol Verifiers to Drive DeFI Growth & Protect the Network
• Repurchase and destroy BONK (Kanban will be launched soon)

In addition to the cooperation with Raydium's LaunchLab, it can be said that LetsBonk is quite sincere in his demonstrations of Solana ecosystem.

The current Letsbonk has the highest market capitalization token of Hosico, which is $38 million, inspired by a Scottish straight-eared cat named "Hosico". Hosico is a golden shorthair cat born on August 4, 2014. With nearly 2 million followers on social media such as Instagram, Hosico has become a world-renowned internet celebrity cat.

In addition, the tokens worth paying attention to include the tokens of the same name Letsbonk and Grassiot

Letsbonk was initially regarded as a representative of the official platform currency, and on the first day of the platform's launch, the market value of the currency reached a maximum of US$30 million. Later, due to the emergence of various tokens and the division of attention, it caused a decline. Now the market value is only US$4 million.

Grassiot's popularity was because BONK founder TOM purchased the coin, which was subsequently destroyed and finally bought it back. Simply put, it is to obtain the token increase through the founder's attention, but as the subsequent TOM stated that the purchase of the coin was only for purchase support, there was no insider and was not a developer, and it was also disclosed that he also held Hosico and LetsBonk and disclosed the purchase quantity. Grassito's market value also ranges from a maximum of $13 million to about $4.3 million in writing.

Virtuals Protocol

The AI ​​Agent LaunchPad, originally built on Base, was previously extended to the Solana chain. The business model is simple, and users need to consume VIRTUAL to create and trade tokens on the platform. However, the current AI craze has receded. Now, there is only less than 10 tokens issued in VIRTUAL a day, which is a huge gap from the previous day that it was able to issue at least 100 of them.

They have major updates in the near future.

Virgen Points: This system is an important mechanism by Virtuals Protocol to encourage user participation, and is used to access pre-TGE token allocations, especially "giga AI Agent launches", which directly affect users' participation qualifications and rights on the launch platform.

The AI ​​Agent was launched with a fully diluted market cap of $336,000 (approximately 232.58k USD), and all Virgens promised equal early access through Virgen Points. The allocation is determined after a 24-hour points bid period and no tokens are minted if the funding target is not met, and all $VIRTUAL and points are fully refunded.

How to earn:

• Trenchor Points: Earn by trading Sentient and Prototype Agent tokens.
• $VIRTUAL Points: Earn by holding $VIRTUAL tokens.
• Yap for Points: Earn points by creating content related to Virtuals Protocol (such as X posts). According to the X post on April 23, 2025, the event encourages users to "Yap" (i.e., participate in discussions or create content), and the submission method can be found in the relevant submission link. The post mentioned "Stronger signal. Higher rewards", suggesting that more influential content may earn more points.
• $VADER Stakers: Earn by staking $VADER tokens

How to participate?

1. Points of pledge:

• Use Virgen Points to commit to participate and get up to 0.5% of the total supply.
• The final allocation depends on the proportion of points you promised to total promised points.
• Excessive commitments can increase the chances of maximum allocation.
• If Genesis Launch is successful, the points only used for allocation will be destroyed and the remaining points will be refunded.

2. Invest $VIRTUAL tokens:

• Invest up to $566 VIRTUAL to ensure maximum allocation.
• If participation exceeds expectations, the allocation will be diluted and the excess $VIRTUAL will be refunded.

3. Receive tokens:

• After Genesis Launch succeeds, go to the Agent page to collect the purchased tokens.
• If startup fails, all points and $VIRTUAL will be fully refunded.

In summary, Virtuals Protocol is creating a smaller-scale and more loyal LaunchPad, which is somewhat similar to the recent new points-to-release activity launched by Binance Wallet. In essence, it is hoped that users can participate more in the ecosystem. If you continue to be optimistic about the Virtual system that will work in the future, there are three ways to participate:

1. Buy $VIRTUAL tokens directly
2. Buy $VADER tokens directly and do more
3. Participate in activities

The first two items have simple logic, and the $VIRTUAL & $VADER trends have seen amazing increases in recent times, which is the biggest beneficiary of the activity. To participate in the event, you must first accumulate points. You can hold $VIRTUAL tokens in your wallet. At the same time, if you are worried that $VIRTUAL will have a decline in the future, you can open the same number of $VIRTUAL in the centralized exchange. The advantage is that it can ensure that the profits are not swallowed up by potential declines while participating in the event, and that the activity will not lose money in design, and only the profits will not be as good as expected. The disadvantage is that more funds are needed to open short, and the overall funds will be greatly reduced.

Conclusion

Overall, Pump Fun, LetsBonk and Virtuals Protocol each have their own advantages and hidden worries: Pump Fun consolidates traffic entrances with a strong selling and huge profits model, but it is also questioned for frequent "cashout" and negative events; LetsBonk shows goodwill to the ecological system by deepening the community and sharing profits at low rates, but the attention of platform coins and secondary tokens is scattered, and whether it can continue to attract long-term participation remains to be seen; Virtuals Protocol's points mechanism and AI Agent stepping stone to lay out a new track, which is full of innovation, but has not yet shown stable issuance energy. Whether the user enthusiasm can continue is still to be seen.

Looking forward, the next wave of LaunchPad track is key to "value implementation" and "community resilience": Can the platform take into account short-term popularity and long-term ecological construction through mechanism design? Can the project party continue to provide real effects instead of relying solely on gorgeous narratives? When hot money fades, which model is more sustainable will become an important indicator for market testing. For researchers and participants, in addition to paying attention to platform traffic and token price fluctuations, they should also deeply consider the core risks and future upgrade potential of various mechanisms in order to find the one that is truly worthy of long-term bets in the controversy of hundreds of schools.