When BSC declared war on Solana, Pump.fun and Raydium had already started their internal battle.

"Has CZ posted anything on Twitter today?"

If you're asking this question, then it's clear that BSC is one of the few hot topics on the chain recently.

With the increasing activity of CZ and the top influencer on Twitter, the strategy of attracting attention and creating memes has gradually emerged. At the same time, relying on the strong secondary traffic capabilities of the Binance APP, embedding Binance Alpha directly into the app has also brought more heat to meme trading.

Amidst the overall poor market conditions, BSC seems to have a latecomer's advantage, and what it is seizing is the on-chain popularity that Solana once had.

Traffic and transaction fee revenue are the anxieties and cravings of every blockchain.

Under business anxiety, competition between different blockchains is inevitable, but in fact, different protocols on the same blockchain are also in competition.

For example, Pump.fun and Raydium each launched a "fork" of the other.

Pump.fun Enters AMM

Over 20 days ago, Pump.fun began to encroach on Raydium's territory by launching its own AMM pool, attempting to divert the liquidity revenue that originally belonged to Raydium.

Since user transactions are first matched internally on Pump.fun, relying on the platform's liquidity to complete trades; when the internal market is saturated, transactions are routed to the external market, which in fact depends on Raydium's liquidity pool.

Under this model, Pump.fun has always been a "traffic provider" for Raydium, but it is also subject to Raydium's rules. Every time a transaction is routed to the external market, Pump.fun has to pay a portion of the transaction fees, and this profit ultimately flows to Raydium's liquidity providers (LPs). Under the current situation, Raydium charges a 0.25% fee on each transaction.

The motive behind this is quite straightforward: in essence, Pump.fun, as a traffic entry point, has not fully benefited from the revenue generated by the traffic.

As we mentioned at the time, in a poor macro environment, it's not just retail investors who are competing against each other; projects are also engaging in fierce battles and competing with each other.

Raydium Launches Launchpad

And today, Raydium's counterattack strategy has come to light.

According to a report by Blockworks, Raydium is launching a token launchpad called LaunchLab, which is essentially a direct fork of pump.fun.

Although Raydium's official Twitter account has not directly posted about this new development, there is no smoke without fire, and this seems to imply that the unspoken cooperation between Raydium and Pump.fun is gradually breaking down.

As an onlooker, this perception is quite evident --- if you are going to take my job, then I can also take yours.

Raydium's motive is also very simple: as the backend of the liquidity pool, why not take a step further and capture the front-end entry traffic?

But the prerequisite for taking over is to have the capability.

For token launchpads like Pump.fun, copying a similar relatively simple product, the strength may not come from technology, but from funding.

Further reports indicate that Raydium's balance sheet still holds approximately $168 million, which provides the greatest confidence for cloning a Pump.fun, that is, to invest people and money.

An interview with an anonymous core contributor of Raydium by Blockworks indirectly proves this point:

"The protocol began developing LaunchLab several months ago but shelved the project because it 'did not want the team to feel that Raydium was in direct competition with them.' After pump.fun's AMM plan emerged, this so-called magnanimity seems to have run dry."

This means that while Pump.fun was launching its AMM, Raydium was already considering launching its own Launchpad.

It is more like a coincidental competition and a conscious action to take business further.

Project parties are apparently clearer than retail investors that transactions are the soul of the crypto business, and it is easier to capture more revenue by focusing on various aspects of transactions.

Of course, the best scenario is to have the capability to capture the entire process, from the entry point to the backend.

Internal War Moat

AMM pools are essentially open-source designs, and a meme coin launchpad is not difficult to implement; since neither side has a development barrier in the product, Pump.fun and Raydium could actually conduct their own businesses;

The only question is, where are the moats of both sides, and what will they rely on to win?

Pump.fun's moat is clearly in the traffic advantage brought by user habits. As a meme coin launch platform, Pump.fun has already firmly captured the attention of a portion of users through its unique community culture and user stickiness.

Once this user habit is formed, it is not easy to transfer to other platforms. More importantly, Pump.fun's user ecosystem has its own traffic entry point attribute, which provides continuous growth momentum for it.

On the other hand, Raydium's moat is built on the transactional necessity of its liquidity pool. As one of the most important DeFi infrastructures on Solana, Raydium's ecological control power comes not only from its deep liquidity pool but also from its position in the transaction network across the entire Solana chain.

In other words, Raydium's advantage is not just technical, but the entire ecosystem's dependence on it.

However, the strength of the moat is not just a static existence.

Under the current macro environment, the moats of Pump.fun and Raydium are also facing different challenges:

Whether Pump.fun's traffic can continue to grow depends on its ability to continuously introduce new features and new gameplay that attract users. Raydium, on the other hand, needs to maintain its lead in liquidity competition and further consolidate its ecological position through funding and technical investment.

Liquidity Drought: How Many People Will Join This Internal War?

As the two major protocols are busy competing with each other, a bigger question arises:

How many users will actually participate in this internal war? Is there really enough market space and user base to support it?

Given the current market environment, the crypto industry as a whole is in a downturn, with liquidity and user activity significantly lower than before. Against this backdrop, whether it is Pump.fun or Raydium, what they are competing for is actually a shrinking pie.

Without new liquidity injection or more "retail investors" coming in, this competition is actually meaningless.

Whether it is BSC, Solana, or other public chains, competition between chains and within chains is intensifying. Behind this competition lies the entire industry's craving for traffic and transaction fee revenue. However, if the overall environment of the crypto industry does not improve, this competition may ultimately be just a fleeting moment.

For the entire industry, the real breakthrough is not in internal wars or chain wars, but in how to enhance the overall attractiveness of the industry. Whether it is through innovative product forms, lowering user barriers, or through wider education and promotion, attracting new liquidity is the key to solving the problem.