Hyperstition #10 — May 14, 2025
Believe reignites ICM meta, Hyperliquid's L1 breaks $1B, sns.sol airdrops token, and more.
Believe.app reignites ‘Internet Capital Markets’ meta
Believe.app, a startup token launchpad, has revived the ‘Internet Capital Markets’ meta and helped awaken Solana’s memecoin ecosystem from its March slump.
On May 13, daily coin creations surpassed 42,000 — more than double the early March low of ~17,000 — according to Dune Analytics. Meanwhile, trading volumes on Solana’s decentralized exchanges (DEXs) more than tripled, rising from under $1 billion per day in early March to around $3.75 billion as of May 13, per DeFiLlama.
One of the primary accelerants of this revival has been Believe, a Solana launchpad that AllianceDAO investor Imran Khan describes as Web3’s “Kickstarter for ideas and projects.”
A launchpad for startup tokens
Believe’s mechanics resemble those of Pump.fun, but instead of meme coins, it emphasizes tokens tied to startups.
“Essentially, if you believe in an idea, you can launch a token that is related to that idea… [and] if there are enough buyers, it means that there are enough people who believed in the idea itself,” Web3 podcaster Marco Manoppo said in a May 12 video.
Tokens that bootstrap a market cap of at least $100,000 “graduate” to Meteora, a Solana DEX.
Creators can then “claim [trading] fees…associated with the launching of the token itself… [and] actually start building the products that you've been teasing to the masses,” Manoppo said.
Believe’s model echoes the Internet Capital Markets vision articulated by Multichain Capital, which coined the term in a January whitepaper:
“Not only do we believe that crypto will support all TradFi assets, we also expect it to support many kinds of new assets that simply couldn’t exist before.”
Bootstrapping millions
Since its April 27 launch, Believe has bootstrapped an ecosystem of tokens with a combined market capitalization of roughly $400 million as of May 13, according to Believescreener.com.
Roughly half of that comes from Believe’s flagship token, Launch Coin on Believe (LAUNCHCOIN), which has reached a $170 million market cap — largely over a 48-hour “God candle” beginning May 12, per DexScreener.
The coin references one of Believe’s core features: “Reply to any tweet with @launchcoin +name to turn it into a coin.”
Despite lacking any value accrual mechanism, LAUNCHCOIN has emerged as “the leader of ICM (Internet Capital Markets),” according to memecoin influencer TraderPow.
Another standout is DUPE, affiliated with Dupe.com — an app for finding affordable alternatives to luxury goods. DUPE holds a ~$60 million market cap, per Believescreener.com.
It’s followed closely by BUDDY, associated with CreatorBuddy, an AI agent designed to help users write “banger content” for social media. BUDDY’s market cap has topped $13 million.
“We will see thousands of microapps solving niche problems through vibe coding — opportunities too small for trad investors but perfect for [Believe] and its community to back,” Khan said in a May 13 X post.
(Video credit to Marco Manoppo)
In Other News…
Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM surpasses $1 billion in TVL
On May 13, Hyperliquid’s permissionless smart contract platform, HyperEVM, surpassed $1 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to data from DeFiLlama. After a slow start in February, HyperEVM began rapidly scaling TVL inflows in April, propelled by decentralized finance (DeFi) applications such as HyperLend and Felix. Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE, now trades at more than $25 per coin, according to CoinMarketCap.
Yuga Labs sells IP for CryptoPunks NFT collection
Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Apes Yacht Club non-fungible token (NFT) collection, has sold the intellectual property rights to the CryptoPunks NFT collection to Infinite Node Foundation (NODE), a non-profit, for an undisclosed sum. Yuga purchased the CryptoPunks IP in 2022 from Larva Labs, which designed the digital artworks. CryptoPunks is the most valuable NFT collection, with a market capitalization of more than $1.25 billion, according to CoinGecko.
Sns.sol airdrops native token
Web3 identity protocol sns.sol launched its native token, SNS, in a May 13 airdrop, the protocol said in an X post. The SNS token has a market capitalization of approximately $7.3 million, according to DexScreener.