MEME Ecological restoration is in progress: The front-end effect helps capital and sentiment rebound, and liquidity is still to be broken

Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, sentiment in the MEME market has gradually recovered, especially driven by multiple Golden Dog projects, the overall market activity has increased significantly. However, the MEME ecosystem is still in the early stages of restoration and financial confidence has not yet been fully restored. At the same time, in the context of insufficient liquidity and high emotional sensitivity, the front-end effect has gradually become the core driving force of traffic and funds. In particular, the synergistic effect of platforms and tools further amplifies the market influence of the front-end, making it a key variable for capital flow and emotional fluctuations.

Launchpad: The front-end effect is significant, driving emerging

platforms

Although the MEME market has recovered, from the perspective of token creation and user activity, there is still a big gap from the historical high.

Taking the current main position of MEME currency launch, Pump.fun, as an example, according to Dune data, as of May 7, the platform's single-day token creation volume has exceeded 33,000, an increase of 48.6% from the previous trough period (about 17,000), but it is still only 47.5% of the historical peak. In terms of token graduation rate, it has rebounded to 0.81%, which has improved significantly from the lowest point, but it is still a big gap from 1.67% of the historical high. In terms of user activity, Pump.fun's current daily active wallets reached 199,000, rebounding 55.1% from the lowest point last month, but only 46.9% of the historical high (about 424,000). It is worth noting that from the perspective of new users, the current daily new wallets are about 94,000, which is still limited in recovery compared to the historical peak of more than 216,000. This means that although the popularity of MEME has recovered significantly in the short term, the overall user participation and liquidity breadth have not been completely restored.

However, some emerging token launch platforms have also expanded rapidly with the help of the front-end effect. For example, Boop, which has become popular recently, has successfully used the front-end effect to achieve user growth and market value leap in the short term through the KOL-driven FOMO effect, platform incentive mechanism and precise market rhythm control. However, this method also faces short-term retention challenges brought by KOL airdrops and competitive pressure brought by competitors' possible replication strategies.

It is worth mentioning that the recent hot-selling "Golden Dog" projects have shown a significant front-end effect, that is, high-influence figures such as KOLs and large players drive traffic and capital inflows, forming snowball-like communication, further amplifying the token narrative value. For example, big players collectively pushed up Fartcoin's market value and exceeded another $1 billion, and House won well-known KOLs such as Ansem and Him to become popular. In contrast, recent MEME coins that rely on event-driven or grassroots narratives, although they once attracted short-term attention, were difficult to continuously convert traffic into effective capital inflows, resulting in a rapid decline in popularity.

Trading robot: Trading volume recovers, and the decline from peak is

still nearly 90%.

Trading robots are gradually becoming an important tool for on-chain users to improve trading efficiency, and have also rebounded recently with the recovery of market sentiment. Dune data shows that as of May 6, the daily trading volume of trading robots reached US$85.37 million, with more than 57,000 daily users, up nearly 64.1% and 43.8% respectively from the lows in recent months. However, compared with the peak in January this year, daily trading volume and daily users still fell by 89.1% and 62.5%, respectively.

In fact, for ordinary retail investors, the smart money tracking, automated order-stalking and on-chain data analysis of trading robots can enable them to monitor and quickly capture dynamics such as KOL/large investors in a market environment with information asymmetry, thereby effectively improving participation efficiency and reducing PVP risks.

At the same time, retail investors often have a high degree of trust in these trading robots recommended or used by the front car, and this endorsement effect has significantly increased the market acceptance and activity of related robots. Of course, due to its capital volume and market appeal, the front car tends to use robot tools with the characteristics of ease of operation, fast execution speed and high success rate to ensure maximum transaction efficiency and returns. Therefore, whether trading robots can meet demands in terms of diversified functions, safety or response speed is the core factor affecting the willingness to use the front of the car. Of course, the potential risk of some fronts of cars being controlled by robots cannot be ruled out.

For example, Axiom, which has emerged not long ago, quickly gained favor from MEME players with its advantages such as complex strategy support, efficient transaction execution and user-friendly design, especially to meet the core needs of the front-end (KOL/large players), and thus quickly jumped to the leader of the trading robot track in the short term.

DEX: MEME revenue plummeted, PumpSwap has shown initial advantages

MEME is still one of the core sources of DEX revenue. Taking Raydium as an example, Blockworks data shows that in the past 30 days, the daily income from MEME-related transactions accounted for as high as 86.8%, while the daily income from MEME token issuance accounted for 93.5%, which shows its dominance over the overall revenue structure of the platform.

However, the revenue generated by MEME is experiencing a significant decline. Blockworks data shows that as of May 6, Raydium's daily trading revenue from MEME was only $156,000, down more than 97% from the peak of $5.244 million in January. At the same time, the daily income of MEME coins was also dropped from the high of US$149,000 to only US$19,000, which also demonstrated a rapid cooling of market popularity and a clear ebb of user speculation sentiment.

In contrast, PumpSwap shows strong momentum. Dune data shows that since its launch on March 20, the platform has accumulated a total of US$17.67 billion in transaction volume, and has shown a significant upward trend since early April, with the highest daily transaction volume exceeding US$670 million. At the same time, the platform's user activity continues to rise, and the cold start stage quickly attracted a large number of new users. The proportion of follow-up users gradually increased, showing strong user retention ability. Especially in early May, its daily active wallet number once exceeded 450,000. It is worth noting that as of May 7, PumpSwap has accounted for 12.7% of the total transaction volume of Solana DEX, and has a preliminary competitive advantage in the ecosystem.

In this process, the role of large investors/KOLs cannot be ignored. It can not only promote a significant growth in MEME trading volume, but also drive the rapid expansion of liquidity pools and the concentrated influx of new users, becoming the core driving factor for the platform's short-term outbreak.

Wallet: Activity rebounded, down more than 80% from the January peak

The use of wallets is also one of the important indicators that reflect the emotions on the chain. Dune data shows that as of May 5, the weekly transaction volume of mainstream wallets reached more than US$460 million, rebounding 35.2% from the recent trough, but only 51.6% of this year's peak (about US$950 million). At the same time, the number of wallets' weekly active addresses reached 17,000, a sharp drop of more than 80.4% from the peak of 87,000 in January. This shows that although the transaction size has rebounded, user participation is still sluggish, overall chain activity is still in the early stage of recovery, and market sentiment has not yet fully recovered.

Similarly, the attractiveness and user stickiness of the wallet depend on core factors such as the integrity of its functions, the breadth of use scenarios, and the ability to integrate ecologically. For example, high-market wallets such as OKX Web3 Wallet and Binance Wallet have successfully attracted a large number of MEME players and become the mainstream choice in this segment. In this process, the usage rate and reputation effects of large users and KOLs also played a key role in promoting, not only significantly increasing the popularity of the wallet, but also enhancing the trust and willingness of ordinary users.