Hyperstition #3 — May 5, 2025
Boop sputters after splashy debut, Hyperliquid Staking Tiers go live and more.
Boop launchpad sputters after splashy debut
Boop, the newest contender in Solana’s launchpad wars, is already fading from the spotlight after its splashy Thursday debut, according to data from Dune Analytics.
On May 1, Boop — created by pseudonymous PancakeSwap founder dingaling — hosted upwards of 10,000 coin creations and briefly coopted a more than 26% share of the launchpad market, the data shows.
But activity on the platform has subsequently dwindled. As of May 4, Boop launched around 1,100 coins, per Dune. Its market share now stands at some 3%.
Boop’s short-lived success partly reflects its controversial marketing strategy. It also underscores the intense competition overtaking Solana’s launchpad ecosystem.
For instance, LetsBonk.fun — a rival launchpad created by the BONK memecoin community — followed a similar pattern to Boop.
During its April 25 debut, LetsBonk.fun briefly eclipsed incumbent Pump.fun in coin creations before retreating to a single-digit market share, per Dune.
Soaring Valuations
Boop’s raucous May 1 debut sent Boop-native memecoin valuations soaring.
Within minutes of listing, the launchpad’s native BOOP token approached $500 million in market capitalization, according to data from DexScreener.
This was partly because of BOOP’s tokenomics. Boop plans to pay stakers 60% of trading fees plus a 5% share of every token launched on the platform, according to Web3 researcher Eli5DeFi.
Meanwhile, Boopa, a Boop-native dog coin, surpassed $10 million, the data shows, and at least eight others broke $1 million on or around May 1.
As of May 4, BOOP and Boopa trade at market capitalizations of roughly $300 million and $5 million, respectively, per DexScreener.
Courting Controversy
However, Boop stirred controversy because of a marketing strategy that essentially amounted to paying influencers to launch coins on the platform.
The approach was “basically everyone’s worst agreed-upon nightmare of launching a shitcoin, but with extra steps,” according to Ashen, founder of Kamai Finance.
Prior to launch, Boop “worked closely with the Kaito AI team to curate a list of all [crypto Twitter] accounts and rank them by memecoin mindshare,” dingaling said an April 30 X post. Kaito is a social media analytics platform.
It then airdropped BOOP allocations — sometimes purportedly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — to top influencers.
The BOOP was subject to 30-day time-locks, but could vest sooner under one condition: Influencers needed to launch Boop-native memecoins themselves.
Dozens accepted Boop’s offer.
Influencers including db, aixbt, kook, Mr. Punk, Sisyphus and others are among those who launched coins on the platform, according to a dashboard created by 0x_ultra.
Per the dashboard, nine Boop-native influencer coins achieved all-time high market capitalizations of at least $1 million.
Of those, only four are worth more than $100,000 as of May 4, the data shows.
“[Y]ou’ll be surprised just how many people did in fact launch tokens,” Easy of BoDoggosNFT said in a May 1 X post.
“With that being said - most didn’t even bond… [and] countless people haven’t mentioned their token launch,” he said. Bonding refers to raising enough liquidity to list on a decentralized exchange (DEX).
In Other News…
Hyperliquid Staking Tiers go live
On May 5, Hyperliquid is rolling out a staking upgrade designed to reward stakers with lower trading costs while increasing the DEX’s overall fee revenues. Check out Hyperstition’s May 2 issue for a detailed breakdown.
By the Numbers…
