Bonk.fun vs Pump.fun
The return of the bull market has once again invigorated the meme sector. Recently, on-chain meme activity has surged, reminiscent of the lively atmosphere of the past.
However, unlike the previous round where Pump.fun dominated the meme landscape, the current version has seen the emergence of more challengers to Pump.fun, all vying to shake its status as the supreme meme launchpad. After all, the business model of generating revenue through transaction fees from daily meme launches is quite lucrative. As a result, various launchpads have recently emerged, each hosting their own golden dogs attempting to capture the limited attention in the existing market.
In this environment, two platforms have begun to release tokens with the same name. For instance, today both letsBONK.fun (hereafter referred to as Bonk.fun) and Pump.fun have introduced a token named $GLONK, with both platforms fully supporting their respective versions.
Bonk.fun is incubated by Raydium and the Bonk community, with Raydium providing technical support through its LaunchLab platform, while the Bonk community leverages the influence of its meme token $BONK to establish a foundational presence for Bonk.fun. This clearly positions it as a formidable competitor to Pump.fun.
On the surface, this appears to be a token battle, with players betting on which version of GLONK will prevail; however, in reality, it is an infrastructural war within the Solana ecosystem, influencing not only the market value and trading volume of tokens but also the technical strength, community support, and future development of the platforms. More importantly, it pertains to the actual platform revenues and interests at stake. Tokens represent popularity and attention, and high-stakes competition among platforms often manifests in the form of racing based on token prices.
Competing Tokens, Founders in a War of Words
Current observations suggest that $GLONK on Bonk.fun seems to have the upper hand. As of the time of writing, the market capitalization of the $GLONK on Bonk.fun is approximately $16.5 million, while that on Pump.fun is around $4.4 million. In terms of trading volume and liquidity, the Bonk.fun version of $GLONK is also leading by a wide margin.
Behind the price fluctuations of the $GLONK token lies an intense clash between the founders of Bonk.fun and Pump.fun. Although there is no direct confrontation, the developers of Bonk.fun, SolportTom (@SolportTom), and Pump.fun’s Alon (@a1lon9) are both actively rallying support for their respective platforms.
Tom posted that everyone should support Bonk.fun; just two minutes later, Alon responded with a similar phrase, “SEND THE OG,” implying that Pump.fun is the original OG of meme launching, with the implications being unmistakable. What is even more intriguing is that both sides gradually began to openly express their intentions, naming each other and asserting that their version of $GLONK is the superior choice. Tom believes that the market has already made its choice, with the token price saying it all, directly tagging Alon: “The market cap of the token on Bonk.fun has reached $3 million, while Pump.fun’s has only $170,000, yet someone wrote ‘support the OG version’; I find this quite low.”
Alon, on the other hand, argues that price performance does not tell the whole story, asserting that Pump.fun has its proud grassroots culture and community spirit; he claims that the price increase of the token on Bonk.fun resembles the actions of a conspiracy group.
This “war of words” has had a significant impact on market sentiment. After Alon’s “OG” remarks were published at 00:15, the market cap of $GLONK on Pump.fun soared from $7.8 million to $13.4 million at one point, demonstrating its short-term influence on market sentiment. However, the market cap of the Bonk.fun version subsequently rebounded to $16.5 million within ten hours, while Pump.fun’s version dropped to $4.4 million, indicating that the market ultimately favored the Bonk.fun version. Earlier, the official account of Pump.fun had even blocked Tom, highlighting the escalating competitive tension.
As it stands, $GLONK on Bonk.fun has indeed emerged victorious, but the triumph of a single token may not fully encapsulate the situation; the competitive advantages of each platform and their methods of attracting users are crucial.
Strategic Alliances and Counterattacks
Today’s data indicates that the number of graduate tokens on Raydium’s LaunchLab (primarily Bonk.fun’s launchpad) has for the first time surpassed that on Pump.fun. While the number of tokens created by Bonk.fun still lags behind Pump.fun, a higher graduation rate reflects a gradual erosion of attention and liquidity, confirming that Pump.fun’s dominance is indeed being challenged.
Two days ago, an external KOL @theunipcs revealed that Tom, during a chat with him, disclosed some key statistics about LetsBONK.fun:
- 6,911 tokens were created within 24 hours, generating fees of 2,880.36 SOL (approximately $500,000);
- A total of 26,902 tokens have been created since the platform’s launch;
- The total fees generated since launch amount to 10,197.83 $SOL (approximately $2 million generated in just two weeks).
Behind these figures, the platform’s growth is attributed to its creator-centric incentive mechanism: On May 4, 2025, the platform partnered with Raydium to provide airdrops of 50,000 RAY to eligible Launchlab and LetsBonk.fun traders to enhance user participation. On May 11, LetsBonk.fun announced a reward of $5,000 for five tokens that rapidly develop and continue to grow in the following week. On May 13, Tom added an additional $15,000 reward for the best-performing project in the upcoming week.
This strategy resembles the subsidy-burning tactics employed by various delivery platforms to attract merchants and users. With substantial rewards, there will inevitably be brave contributors; the platform will also share 10% of the liquidity pool (LP) fees with token creators after migration, which has attracted the developers of FARTCOIN to deploy two tokens—FANGPI and BarkCoin—on Bonk.fun; among them, BarkCoin’s market cap reached $826,700 on May 13, bringing broader attention and participation to LetsBonk.fun.
What is particularly interesting is the connection established with the Chinese community. Bonk.fun has not only developed a series of tools to support one-click creation of tokens based on content from Chinese social media platforms but has also integrated narrative elements related to trending topics in China. A recent phenomenon on Bonk.fun, the “ikun” meme, serves as a powerful example, with its market cap briefly exceeding $12 million.
Who Will Prevail?
As two major players in the meme token launchpad sector of the Solana ecosystem, both platforms are engaged in comprehensive competition across technical strength, community support, and market performance. Bonk.fun has rapidly risen with the support of Raydium and the Bonk community, while Pump.fun is fiercely counterattacking through technological innovation and a large user base. Let’s take a closer look at the competitive advantages and highlights of each.
The token creation process on Bonk.fun is very straightforward (just three steps: click “Create Token,” input information, set issuance volume), lowering the barriers for users, while Raydium’s CPMM pool provides higher liquidity support for its tokens. Additionally, Bonk.fun enhances community engagement through an income-sharing mechanism (35% used for $BONK buyback and burn), attracting a large number of users interested in the Bonk ecosystem.
As the market leader, Pump.fun has also been consolidating its position through innovation in recent years. In March 2025, Pump.fun launched the PumpSwap platform, offering instant free token migration (previously requiring 6 SOL) and supporting cross-chain token transactions (such as Aptos’s APT). In early May 2025, Pump.fun introduced a revenue-sharing mechanism for creators (0.05% transaction volume sharing) in an attempt to resolve the “pump-and-dump” issue through creator incentives. Although it is temporarily lagging in the $GLONK battle, Pump.fun, with its massive user base (a peak of 107,000 daily active addresses) and cumulative revenue of $150 million, remains securely on its throne.
If Bonk.fun truly seeks to displace Pump.fun’s position, it will need to further expand its user base and innovate technologically, while Pump.fun must address the trust crisis stemming from community engagement and historical negative incidents (such as the employee theft incident in 2024). On the other side, for on-chain players, the platform competition resembles a form of dividends. Different platforms are bound to create their own wealth effects, whether through conspiracies or community efforts; the likelihood of golden dogs appearing will increase. Compared to a stagnant market, having golden dogs is certainly better than having none, as the anticipation of gains adds an element of excitement.
At the same time, in order to attract users, platforms will inevitably roll out more favorable rules or incentive plans, which could be seen as a kind of meme-driven “harvesting.” However, the emergence of multiple platforms has made the already fierce PVP Trench even more crowded, resulting in shorter token lifecycles and faster entry rhythms, thus placing greater demands on monitoring and energy. Chaos is the ladder to ascension, and young players will always benefit from the iterations of versions.
This article is a collaborative reprint from: Deep Tide