Explanation: This report aims to dissect the narrative of “Internet Capital Markets (ICM)” to highlight the pain points in asset issuance mechanisms, review the rise and fall of launchpads during this cycle and the historical evolution of asset issuance, and provide context and reference for possible future directions of asset issuance.
Internet Capital Markets
Note: Only about 15% of the global population can participate in the U.S. capital markets — the world’s most liquid market. Many other countries’ capital markets suffer from low liquidity, high entry barriers, and inefficient settlement.

1. Concept: What is ICM?

Internet Capital Markets (ICM) is an encrypted native alternative to Traditional Capital Markets (TCM). Its core is to use blockchain technology to build an open, decentralized, and borderless financial market. It allows entrepreneurs and projects to directly raise funds through asset tokenization in network communities, bypassing cumbersome traditional processes such as venture capital and IPOs, significantly lowering financing and participation thresholds.
We all know that traditional capital markets have long faced many problems: high entry barriers, complicated procedures, low efficiency, and unequal opportunities. These pain points have made the markets unfriendly to both investors and entrepreneurs, which ICM attempts to solve.
Simply put, the core philosophy of ICM is: “Transform various forms of ‘native ideas’ on the internet into tokens. On one hand, blockchain technology grants individuals access to international economic markets (Buy); on the other, it provides individuals or entrepreneurs with global capital markets (Sell).”
These ideas can be creative concepts, applications, geek projects, or even digital conceptual tokens like Meme coins that represent certain cultural trends and emotional symbols.
Generally speaking, ICM has the following characteristics:
  • Decentralization and Openness: Anyone with internet access and a wallet can participate in asset issuance and investment without relying on intermediaries like banks or brokers.
  • Diverse Assets: Not limited to stocks and bonds but including Real-World Assets (RWA), NFTs, cultural tokens (MEME), and various other asset forms.
  • High Liquidity: Asset issuance and trading processes are simplified, enabling investors to directly custody assets themselves, improving liquidity and security.
  • Community-Driven: Project incubation, investment, and governance rely more on community consensus and DAO mechanisms, emphasizing the value of creativity and the projects themselves.

2. From ICM to Asset Issuance

2.1 Origin and Development

The initial concept of ICM can be traced back to 2017, when Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko proposed the idea of building a “decentralized Nasdaq” where financial assets such as stocks, real estate, and cultural tokens could be freely accessed and traded by anyone at any time through a globally shared blockchain ledger, thereby eliminating many barriers and restrictions in traditional finance.
“We aim to build an on-chain capital market serving 5.5 billion internet users, covering diversified assets such as stocks, RWA, and culture.” (Lily Liu, public speech at Solana Foundation Expo, December 2024)
At the end of 2024, Solana officially launched and pushed the main narrative of “Internet Capital Markets,” emphasizing “allowing global users to issue and circulate assets at low thresholds, establishing an always-on, borderless digital capital market.” This goal has become a shared reality in code roadmaps, official speeches, industry analyses, and ecological technological upgrades.
In January 2025, Base Network declared in its annual market vision: “We want Base to become the hub of on-chain economy, building a highly liquid, always-online global capital market. The more assets and liquidity brought in, the faster the entire financial world goes on-chain.”
Back in the public eye is the “Internet Capital Markets Roadmap” jointly released by Solana’s core development team — a research report on blockchain financial market infrastructure with both theoretical depth and engineering practice. It not only showcases Solana community’s ambition for the ultimate vision of ICM but also offers strong foresight and trend leadership for the blockchain industry on technical boundaries, market mechanism innovation, and global compliance adaptability.
From the market development path perspective, driven by the growth of sectors such as RWA, stablecoins, and U.S. stock tokenization in this cycle, the vision of ICM is gradually becoming reality. Over the past 18 months, the “supply curve” of on-chain assets has significantly risen:
The core driver is the growth of on-chain asset supply, and the “demand curve” is mainly influenced by market participant’s willingness to embrace these new assets, supported by increasing regulatory clarity and investor education.
With the gradual maturation of blockchain infrastructure, compliance frameworks, and asset token standards, the asset issuance mechanism is evolving rapidly, gradually replacing traditional processes with on-chain issuance, trading, settlement, and governance.
At the same time, the integration of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols is providing liquidity, credit, and investment tools, enriching the ecosystem and attracting more participants.

2.2 The Rise and Fall of Launchpads

Pumpfun once enjoyed great prosperity. As a phenomenal product in this cycle, its highest single-day revenue exceeded $15 million, and during stable periods it could easily maintain between $3 million to $5 million daily, accumulating total revenue of up to $778 million. However, its current daily revenue has plummeted to $230,000, almost only a fraction of its peak; meanwhile, the $PUMP token’s current FDV is $2.51 billion, down 37.5% from the previous valuation of $4 billion, seemingly signaling the end of the feast.
We attempt to review on a yearly timescale to summarize the structural characteristics presented by the meme launchpad development in this cycle:
1. Overall Launchpad trend of accelerated expansion and platform diversification
From the number of deployed tokens, in the early stage Pumpfun dominated the market with steady growth; in later stages, newcomers successively took partial market share in phases, until recently LetsBonk overtook Pumpfun and took the lead position. Notable platforms with remarkable performance include: Pump, LetsBonk, Believe, Jup Studio.
2. Stage summary
  • Early expansion (360 to 200 days ago): The overall number of minted tokens was relatively stable, with Pumpfun leading the market.
  • Mid-term correction (about 200 to 90 days ago): Pumpfun still dominated, but daily minting volume dropped by 50% from the peak.
  • Recent period (last 90 days): Competition among platforms intensified, with both leading and emerging platforms experiencing significant fluctuations in token minting volume; Bonk overtook Pumpfun and the latter lost its lead.
3. Factors driving the competitive landscape
Platform launches and technological innovation, incentive mechanisms and fee models, as well as changes in market sentiment and capital flows are the main growth engines. LetsBonk, with its 1% fee all repurchase BONK, and tightly integrated liquidity on Raydium/Jupiter, accounted for over 55% of the market in July, with a daily trading volume of $539 million.
4. Market activity: The number of addresses has dropped over 50% from the peak of over 400K at the start of 2025 to below 200K; Pumpfun’s daily successful token launches in the past week are fewer than 50, a drop of over 95% from its peak, indicating market vitality and capital sentiment have dropped to freezing point.
It is undeniable that launchpads represented by Pump.fun have initiated a new era of meme coins and fair launch modes through innovations in “accessibility, standardization, dynamic pricing, and community autonomy.” However, as the market heat fades, tens of millions of on-chain toxic assets have emerged, and the market gradually quiets down, with a large number of memecoins and AI agent narrative tokens losing all value. The frenzy of capital plundering led to rapid bubble burst, disillusioning the fair launch narrative. As with every receding tide, reality’s conflicts are once again laid bare before us:
  • Fairness and openness VS risk
    • Phenomenon: From “one-stop token issuance” to “tweet token issuance,” all claim to be fair launches; the change is the extreme lowering of entry barriers.
    • Issue: Unlimited lowering of entry barriers breeds speculation, noise, and amplifies risk, allowing bad tokens to crowd out good ones.
  • Decentralization VS order balance
      • Phenomenon: Manipulation, rug pulls, and fraud are frequent, and founders bear no cost of wrongdoing, eroding market funds and trust.
      • Issue: Lack of autonomy and founder accountability mechanisms.
  • Liquidity is king VS real value creation
    • Phenomenon: Overemphasis on “play” and “speculation” orientation, trying to attract attention and raise liquidity in the short term.
    • Issue: Lack of projects with real application scenarios to attract and retain asset value.
  • Conflict between innovation and regulation
    • Phenomenon: Pumpfun faces multiple regulatory and legal challenges (wild growth); Believe defines tokens as non-equity and does not guarantee rights (compliance).
    • Issue: Innovation is always faster than regulation; the usual rhythm is “wild growth first, then regulatory redlines,” but lack of safeguards leads to abuse.

2.3 Major Launchpads in This Cycle

Launchpad Definition: The asset issuance end, platforms that help new projects issue tokens and raise funds.
  • PUMPFUN – $PUMP
Pump.fun is a phenomenal minimalistic token issuance platform within the Solana ecosystem. Users can create and launch their own meme tokens with one click without any programming or liquidity pool construction experience. The platform uses bonding curve price mechanisms and custodial trading, with all trades matched by the platform, significantly lowering the issuance and trading thresholds. Since 2024, Pump.fun has driven the meme coin popularization wave, becoming a representative tool for extreme decentralization of asset issuance rights.
Historical data: Over 12 million tokens issued in total, protocol revenue of $778 million.
Current data: Daily revenue $230,000, trading volume $40 million, tokens launched 4685/35, market share 10.78%.
Representative tokens: PUMP-$1.15B, Pnut-$255.9M, MOODENG-$180.9M.
  • LetsBONK.FUN – $BONK
LetsBonk.FUN is a Solana-based memecoin issuance and trading platform jointly incubated by the BONK team and Raydium, launched in mid-April 2025. It features no-code rapid token issuance, integrated instant trading, transparent fee mechanism, and community governance. Since July 2025, it has grown into a market leader, strongly suppressing Pump.fun. Compared to Pump.fun, LetsBonk.FUN emphasizes long-termism, focusing on community-driven decentralization and incentive feedback, providing more participation and growth opportunities for creators and community members.
Historical data: Over 680,000 tokens issued, market cap over $10 million, 10 tokens.
Current data: Trading volume $311 million, tokens launched 19,811/233, market share 82.16%.
Representative tokens: BONK-$2.39B, USELESS-$308.5M, Ani-$43.9M.
  • JUP STUDIO – $JUP
Jupiter Studio is the native launchpad platform launched by Jupiter, the largest transaction aggregator on Solana, aiming to simplify and standardize the token issuance process. The platform integrates a full toolchain from one-click token creation, economic model configuration, automatic liquidity management to ecosystem exposure, greatly lowering the threshold for projects and creators to issue credible, tradable, and sustainable assets.
Historical data: Over 22,000 tokens issued in total.
Current data: Tokens launched 324/10, market share 1.83%.
Representative tokens: JUP-$1.64B, URANUS-$69.6M, KIRBY-$2.79M.
  • BELIEVE – $LAUCHCOIN
Believe was formerly Clout, a token issuance platform based on X, and one of the earliest projects to propose the “Internet Capital Markets (ICM)” narrative. Unlike platforms purely focused on meme speculation, Believe emphasizes token issuance centered on real ideas, project concepts, or community visions, aiming to provide funding support for valuable creativity. This mission-driven positioning naturally attracts a user base seeking meaningful construction and long-term value.
In practical mechanisms, Believe adopts a trinity design framework of “social trigger + creator incentives + dynamic tax structure”:
  • Social trigger: Users only need to post on social platforms and @launchcoin; when reaching a certain interaction threshold, the system automatically creates a token;
  • Creator incentives: Project creators receive initial revenue shares and continuous revenue from fees generated by trading;
  • Dynamic tax mechanism: Transaction tax rates adjust dynamically based on time and holdings, incentivizing long-term holding and penalizing short-term selling to effectively curb “harvesting” behavior.
This concept quickly went viral due to social viral spread and sparked wide community discussion. However, the platform faces challenges in sustained growth: user activity gradually declines, lacking strong risk control and governance mechanisms. Overall, Believe is more like a platform converting “social influence” into “tradable assets,” with relatively innovative attempts in issuance mechanisms.
Historical data: Over 41,000 tokens issued in total.
Current data: Tokens launched 250/8, market share 1.23%.
Representative tokens: LAUCHCOIN-$90.6M, STARTUP-$21.9M, DUPE-$9.65M.
  • Virtual – $VIRTUAL
Virtuals Protocol is a leading AI Agent launch platform in the Base ecosystem. Users can create exclusive AI agents and their tokens with one click using $VIRTUAL, realizing on-chain assetization of AI roles, services, and economic rights. The platform integrates AI, Web3, and asset issuance, supports community co-governance and revenue sharing, with representative projects like AIXBT. Virtuals, with innovative token offerings and incentive mechanisms, has become an important entry for AI Agent assetization and on-chain economy, praised as the “Pump.fun + content incubator” for AI Agents.
Historical data: Over 17,000 tokens issued, protocol revenue over $40 million.
Current data: Tokens launched 1, trading volume $17.4 million.
Representative tokens: VIRTUAL-$902M, AIXBT-$131M, Mamo-$118M.
  • CLANKER – $CLANKER
Clanker is a leading AI-driven social meme asset launch platform on Base chain. Users only need to @clanker on the Farcaster platform and input token information, and AI automatically issues an ERC-20 token and creates a Uniswap liquidity pool, achieving “zero threshold token issuance.” The platform supports AI agent collaboration, automatic revenue sharing, and LP locking, greatly lowering asset issuance thresholds and driving AI meme hype and social fission. Clanker has become the core infrastructure for meme innovation and community assetization in the Base ecosystem.
Historical data: Over 35,000 tokens issued, protocol revenue over $33 million.
Current data: Tokens launched 192, trading volume $10.5 million.
Representative tokens: CLANKER-$57M, BNKR-$82M, Fartcoin-$30.2M.

2.4 Historical Evolution of Asset Issuance

What kind of asset issuance mechanism does the market truly need? Let us trace the evolution of asset issuance in history to find answers:
  • 2008 — The birth of Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System —> making “money” decentralized, borderless, and trustworthy by machine logic
  • 2017 — ICO craze, allowing any team/project to raise funds directly globally —> decentralizing asset issuance rights, breaking IPO/VC barriers
  • 2019 — IEO popularity, projects issue assets and trade via exchanges —> ICO + exchange vetting + liquidity provision
  • 2020 — DeFi craze, achieving an “Internet-style upgrade” of capital markets —> reshaping “issuance + trading + liquidity + pricing + leverage”
  • 2021–2022 — NFT craze, turning art, tickets, game items, and IP into assets —> introducing non-fungibility, capitalizing everything
  • 2022–2024 — fair launch + community-driven, animal memes and airdrop initiations —> setting the tone for de-VC and on-chain fair launch
  • 2024 to present — memecoin ultra-minimalistic asset issuance (Pump.fun, Believe, etc.) —> “simplification and extremization,” interest and traffic-oriented
Looking back, we find: asset issuance has always been the ultimate goal that the entire crypto finance has struggled for and pursued since Bitcoin’s inception.
From Bitcoin’s first decentralization and borderless money, to ICO and IEO decentralizing issuance rights, then DeFi and NFT reshaping capital markets, to the current cycle’s memecoin and social experiment token issuance with wild growth, each cycle has a different answer — solutions around asset issuance, liquidity, and financial equality.
Stage
Issuance Threshold
Trading Liquidity
User Protection
Compliance & Transparency
Decentralization
Narrative Innovation
Community-Driven
Representative Tokens
Summary Features
2017 – ICO
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
High
Low
EOS
Innovation-driven
2019 – IEO
High
High
Medium
Medium
Low
Medium
Low
Matic, One
Exchange involvement
2020 – DeFi
Low
High
Low
Medium
Medium
Low
Medium
UNI, SUSHI
Liquidity mining
2021 – NFT
Low
Medium
Low
Low
Low
High
High
BAYC, CryptoPunks
NFT content
2022–2023 – Fair Launch
Low
Low
High
Low
Medium
High
High
Pump.fun, Believe
Fair and community-driven
2024–present – Memecoin Minimalism
Very Low
Very Low
Very Low
Very Low
Very Low
Very High
Very High
Pump.fun, Believe, LetsBonk, Jup Studio
Simplification, extreme accessibility, social-driven
We rated the above six stages across seven dimensions: issuance threshold, trading liquidity, user protection, compliance and transparency, decentralization, narrative innovation, and community-driven factors, leading to the following conclusions:
1. Narrative innovation and community power are becoming increasingly important;
2. The asset issuance threshold is being pushed to the extreme low, a sensation that is very obvious both across cycles and within cycles;
3. Decentralization, fair distribution, or community allocation have deeply taken root and become industry consensus;
4. Changes in issuance mechanisms: issuance + reliance on CEX liquidity —> issuance + AMM pools —> one-click issuance + liquidity —> social issuance (seamless creation)
5. Historical issuance mechanisms seem to have sacrificed user protection and compliance transparency, which aligns with the highly speculative nature of the crypto market demand.

III. What kind of asset issuance mechanism does the market need?

Behind the rapid innovation and wild growth of asset issuance, our understanding of the “asset issuance mechanism” must not remain at superficial technical breakthroughs such as “simpler, faster, lower threshold,” nor be limited to pseudo-demands like decentralization and fair distribution. What truly supports the next generation of capital markets is not the accessibility of tools or the social spectacle of one-click token issuance, but whether a sustainable balance can be found between financial equality, ecological governance, and value attribution:
1. Let asset issuance truly return to “trust” and “value creation”
The essence of technology is “empowerment,” and the current predicament is not the fault of technology. Extremely low issuance thresholds satisfy every human impulse for creativity and participation in the financial system, allowing any idea to be quickly “monetized,” which indeed revitalizes the market in every cycle. But in hindsight, the vast majority have become garbage, noise drowning out signals — creativity and enthusiasm often lose out to a few jokes and viral memes in the attention economy.
New asset issuance mechanisms must impose responsibilities on technology beneficiaries through rules — technology gives everyone power but also means everyone must be accountable for integrity, sustainable operation, and genuinely serving society. Issuance mechanisms can incorporate incentives and constraints such as “commitments,” “roadmap achievement,” and “periodic information disclosure,” and empower investors with real supervisory and decision-making rights through community governance rather than empty airdrop checks.
2. Crossing the “rift” between speculation and real ecological value
We need deeper mechanism designs: not only lowering thresholds and standardizing, but also embedding real authentication, third-party due diligence, on-chain achievements, and community evaluations as endogenous ratings before and after issuance; establishing accountability anchors such as node autonomy, time-locked releases, and milestone-based unlocks to force projects to bear growth pressure and avoid “peak issuance”; meanwhile, promoting real-world scenarios and market adoption, whether in crypto projects or traditional creativity, empowering RWA, intellectual property, public welfare projects, emerging creativity, and underlying ecological long-term value targets to enter the issuance track.
3. Compliance and order: advancing within the boundaries of freedom and trust
Given the “free market + limited intervention” regulatory characteristics in this cycle, the era of wild growth has reached a critical turning point. Long-term compliance and self-discipline considerations must become the centripetal force of asset issuance mechanisms. Platforms need to provide users with risk warnings and actively engage in positive global regulatory connections, no longer avoiding, delaying, or operating in gray areas. The ultimate goal of all mechanisms is to jointly build a capital market that effectively prices real productivity and future creativity.
A quality asset issuance mechanism is never about the smartest code stacking or human design, but about connecting hearts, rebuilding trust, and letting every on-chain transaction carry the warmth of the real world and the possibility of future value transmission. In such a mechanism, serious innovators can be trusted by the community, long-term builders can receive returns, and crypto finance can truly grow organically.

IV. Key Focus Areas (ICM & Asset Issuance)

1. Infrastructure Layer (L1/L2): Supports the entire capital market system, providing account systems, asset issuance, transaction settlement, and other capabilities.
  • Solana
Solana is an important promoter of the ICM narrative. From the initial idea of a “decentralized Nasdaq” to the current disclosure of its technical roadmap, it has clearly demonstrated its determination to realize this vision. In this cycle, the meme coin craze on the Solana chain has kept on-chain transaction volume and user numbers at a high level, boosting its network value significantly. Many projects and platforms (such as Believe and xStocks) have chosen it as their main battlefield, preliminarily verifying its reliability as ICM infrastructure.
With its existing first-mover advantages (performance, liquidity, users, culture), the core ecosystem teams, developers, infrastructure providers, and market participants maintain coordinated advancement, forming a highly consistent vision and momentum from the underlying network, consensus protocol, transaction ordering to market microstructure.
If the blockchain industry needs a “paradigm revolution,” this mode of full-chain collaboration and collective innovation may be one of the most notable breakthroughs.
  • Base
Base represents the Layer 2 camp in the ICM narrative: within its ecosystem, not only have ultra-simple token issuance tools and meme incubation platforms like Clanker and Virtuals emerged, but projects like Zora (content platform) and Farcaster (protocol) are also promoting content creators to assetize content and influence on social protocols.
Compared to Solana, Base offers more technical infrastructure for ICM with content assetization and multi-form integration such as AI/DAO. With Coinbase’s strong compliance and regulatory capabilities, it is expected to further promote ICM development.
  • ETH
Ethereum plays an irreplaceable role in ICM: it has established key mechanisms and standards for asset issuance, DeFi, DAO, NFT, and has been a testing ground for on-chain capital markets in past cycles. Although Ethereum remains a leader in decentralization and asset security, it also faces challenges such as high gas fees, complex user experience, and insufficient innovation in this cycle.
In the short to medium term, with the introduction of RWA (on-chain US stocks, bonds) and compliant stablecoins, ETH is expected to further consolidate its position as the world’s largest settlement layer and the mother chain of global capital markets, while driving further development and integration of on-chain capital markets.
2. Secondary explosion of existing leading launchpads: Pump, Bonk, Jup Studio, etc.
It is necessary to continuously monitor the data changes of leading launchpads. They already have basic user bases and brand mindshare, and their practical experience and risk resistance have been market tested. They have formed a mature “hardware foundation” integrating technology, community, and market resources, with the potential for another explosion triggered by innovative productivity and market demand.
3. SocialFi track with embedded launch mechanism innovation
Social platforms represented by Farcaster are exploring new mechanisms that deeply integrate content/interaction with asset issuance, and have made preliminary explorations between 2024 and 2025. The natural advantage of deeply integrating social media and financial asset issuance is that everyone’s social influence can be converted into crypto assets, injecting momentum into the on-chain economy that truly originates from the “attention economy.” Additionally, attention should be paid to attempts in traditional social media like Twitter and Instagram moving in this direction.

References

[1] Lily Liu. 2025. Building Internet Capital Markets on Solana – TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAshrNDBVY
[2] RWA.xyz | Analytics on Tokenized Real-World Assets from https://app.rwa.xyz/
[3] Stablecoins Circulating – DefiLlama from https://defillama.com/stablecoins
[4] Pump.Fun from https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun
[5] State of the Trenches | MobyScreener from https://www.mobyscreener.com/state-of-the-trenches
[6] The Internet Capital Markets Roadmap – Anza from https://www.anza.xyz/blog/the-internet-capital-markets-roadmap
[7] Cryptocurrency Prices, Charts And Market Capitalizations | CoinMarketCap from https://coinmarketcap.com/
[8] Base 2025 Mission, Vision, and Strategy — Base https://base.mirror.xyz/gFOLgyrs8jtX4Eqt4Kh6ikWhB3tqrhQoKfddeqZIECs
Author: Kyle
The views expressed in this article are personal and do not represent any official position or bear legal responsibility.
This article and its views do not constitute investment advice.
Image sources: Please contact the author for removal in case of infringement.
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