Howdy!

I believe I was the first person to notice pump.fun had disabled livestreaming today, but my X post was quickly overshadowed by big engagement bait accounts. Tough scene. Let this be your sign to join the Lightspeed Telegram chat, which got the news first. 

Today we have bad vibes in pump land, a new high for Solana REV, and BONK on the Sphere.

Pump.fun suspends livestream feature

The Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun faced backlash over the weekend after a number of violent and unsavory livestreams on the platform started making the rounds on social media. By Monday afternoon, its livestream feature had been temporarily deactivated. 

The offending streams ranged from token launchers threatening to commit violent acts unless a coin’s price goes up to racist or disgusting content meant to create viral shock value and juice the token’s price. This all happened as pump.fun booked a staggering $14.3 million in revenue on Saturday, according to a pump.fun dashboard, nearly tripling its previous high. 

Pump.fun is no stranger to edgy content. The site has drawn comparisons to the anonymous forum site 4chan for its often-unhinged content and lax approach to moderation. Before this current wave of disturbing livestreams, pump.fun had a large number of racially insensitive or pornographic tokens, none of which are subject to content moderation.

But as disturbing livestreams went viral on X, pump.fun’s anonymous founder alon wrote that the platform would work to protect users from seeing “repulsive/dangerous content.” In a separate thread, alon said pump had taken down a stream of a user threatening to shoot their dog unless a token’s market capitalization increased, noting that the platform has now taken down “hundreds of streams.”

A little after 2 pm, pump.fun disabled livestreams on the platform altogether. In a blog post shortly after, pump.fun cited “unprecedented growth” as the key challenge to content moderation before adding that livestreams would be paused “for an indefinite time period.”

This feels like an inflection point for a platform that has separated itself as the most viral application on Solana, booking nearly $250 million in revenue since launching. Largely on the back of memecoin activity emanating from pump.fun, Solana has seen record demand for its blockspace, which in turn has lined the pockets of the validators who run the blockchain’s software.

Leaders in the Solana world largely cast memecoins either as a stress test for the network or as an emerging, if currently unserious, financial use case for memes. Even among those who oppose crypto being used for what is essentially gambling, it’s frowned upon to tell users or developers what they should or shouldn’t do with blockchain technology. 

Multiple crypto posters shrugged off the pump.fun criticism, pointing out that every large social tech platform has had its warts with content moderation. 

But as Solana and crypto hopes for a shift to the mainstream, some are calling for a reckoning with memecoins’ downsides.

“Pump Fun is going to become a massive reputational stain on the crypto industry, on par with FTX,” Chainlink community liaison Zach Rynes wrote on X. Tech lawyer Preston Byrne also pointed out that the platform “does a lot very incorrectly from a social media law” perspective.

Up until now, pump.fun’s playbook has largely been to make light of criticism through trolling. With livestreams disabled, it appears this particular round of backlash hit home. It remains to be seen whether this will make any difference for traders in the so-called memecoin trenches.

— Jack Kubinec

Here’s why pump.fun fading would really sting for Solana: 

Solana’s real economic value (a measure of a chain’s income and demand that we cite often in this newsletter) crossed $150 million last week, continuing an eleven-week streak where the tips and fees processed by Solana have reached unprecedented new levels.

This income goes partly to validators and is passed along to SOL stakers, so a meaningful slump in pump.fun usage — which drives a large portion of all this new REV — would be felt throughout the ecosystem.

— Jack Kubinec

It started with a tease. Solana memecoin $BONK dropped a cryptic video on X, implying its adorable Shiba-inspired mascot was headed for the Las Vegas Sphere. If true, this would’ve been a mic-drop moment — not just for Bonk’s marketing team but for its ongoing rivalry with $WIF, The competing memecoin raised nearly a million dollars months ago to plaster its dog-with-hat mascot on the same screen — an ad which still has not actualized.

Some were thrilled; others were skeptical. “LMAO $bonk literally got on the sphere before $wif did, even with all the funds raised. what a rug,” gloated @0xShual. “Wow. Bonk going on Vegas Sphere before WIF was not on my bingo card,” tweeted @tofushit888. But not everyone was buying the hype. “If it was their own idea I would respect it far more — this looks weak imho” said @cypheronin.

But instead of a Sphere takeover, Bonk hit Vegas with… a drone light show. To be fair, it was reasonably impressive, with LED-lit drones manifesting in the shape of the project’s token. The crowd's initial excitement, however, quickly gave way to irritation.

“Wait… You guys HEAVILY implied that it was going on the sphere lol. Is this it?!” asked @fumonb00mon. “You want bonk on sphere? You get shiny lights in sky instead,” joked @GainzMajor. “Creating the expectation of having beaten wif to the sphere and then doing a shitty drone show is pretty desperate stuff,” griped @Tashtegooo.

For now, the drones might have landed first, but the Sphere remains unclaimed. And really, does it matter so long as it gets people talking? The real marketing is never the stunt — it’s the drama.

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Yash Agarwal, core contributor to SEND: