A new memecoin factory

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Warren Buffett just announced he’s retiring at the end of the year.

Sure, he called Bitcoin “rat poison.” But even crypto investors can learn a thing or two from him. Here are three quotes from the Oracle of Omaha that still slap:

• “Our favorite holding period is forever.”
• “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
• “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

As for his anti-crypto stance? Let’s blame it on his environment and old age. If he were a zoomer, he’d probably be in the DeFi trenches with us.

Here’s what we got today:

• New memecoin winner? Everything about the hot new project.
• Soul Protocol Deep Dive. The future of the DeFi money market is here.
• Around the web. LBTC comes to EigenLayer, Phantom introduced gasless swaps, Pectra upgrade is on tomorrow, and more.

Today’s email is brought to you by Soul Protocol—the crosschain money market

Here’s your Edge !

Hot project

BOOP: The New Memecoin Consensus?

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Hate them or love them, memecoins will always be a part of Crypto. Pump.fun has been getting all the attention the past year.
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Now a worthy challenger has finally appeared.

What’s it? It’s a new memecoin launchpad. Think Pump.fun, but with a twist — or three.

Boop.fun makes it dead simple to create and trade tokens. Just like Pump.fun, tokens start trading on a bonding curve. Once a token hits a ~$400 SOL market cap, it “graduates” and gets deployed on Raydium.

But it has some important differences, which make it better than Pump.fun.

• Tokens are connected to X accounts, not random wallet addresses. This adds accountability for tokens.
• You can launch tokens directly from the X app. You just have to tag @beeponboop to launch a token.
• It doesn’t extract value ($SOL) from the meme ecosystem. Instead, it pumps $SOL back into the meme economy using clever mechanisms.

These mechanisms are really interesting. It redirects the majority of value to BOOP stakers and memecoin holders.

• 5% supply of all the graduating tokens will go to BOOP stakers.
• There’s a 1% fee on all trades. It’ll go to team (10%), BOOP buyback (30%), and BOOP stakers (60%).
• 1M BOOP is airdropped daily to graduated tokens. 10% to creators & 90% to tokenholders.

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In conclusion, Boop.fun is driving value in the memecoin economy to the BOOP token. And new BOOP is airdropped daily to memecoin holders. Granted, a lot of value goes to the BOOP team and meme creators as well, but it’s still much healthier dynamics than the current one.

Now, this doesn’t mean BOOP won’t be gamed or farmed.

There’ll be cabals that’ll try to graduate as many tokens as possible. Many different graduated BOOP tokens give them more BOOM airdrop.

In fact, data already indicates that it’s happening. The graduation rate is the number of tokens graduating on BOOP as a percentage of the total number of tokens. BOOP’s graduation rate is 8x that of Pump.fun.

That said, the app is very new — it only launched on May 1st. Here’s what we know so far: data we have tell us?

• They’ve attracted 78.5k users.
• 6k users have staked 61M in BOOP.
• Boop has launched ~22.3k tokens and 465 of them graduated.

The chart below shows the number of tokens launched and graduated on Boop. We can see a clear downward trend there. All other relevant metrics have a similar downward trend.

Despite the downward trend, everyone still seems to be excited about Boop’s model. Below are some reasons.

#1. Reputable founder.

One of the biggest risks in crypto is founder rugging tokenholders. Just last week, Coindesk revealed that the Movement Labs team was dumping (via market makers) on holders.

Boop.fun is built by @dingaling. He has an impressive background. He was the CRO of Binance and the founder of Pancakeswap, an OG DEX on Binance Chain.

So, we can reasonably expect for a reliable execution from the team.

#2. Pump.fun with a token

Memecoins was the most successful narrative of this cycle.

And Pump.fun was the biggest winner of the narrative. It’s the most successful app of this cycle. According to DefiLlama, Pump.fun has generated $677.1M in fees in the last year. That’s insane.

But one big problem: there was no way for retail to benefit from Pump.fun. Only the team benefitted. And they regularly dump those millions of fees into open market.

Boop.fun promises a healthier memecoin economy that retail can benefit from.

#3. The passive trenchor thesis

Making money from memecoin trading is hard. Unless you are part of cabal or something. >95% of the people lose money. You have to grind several hours on trenches to make anything from memes.

Boop.fun offers a better alternative. Just stake the BOOP & 5% supply of all the graduating tokens will be airdropped to you. You don’t have to grind in the trenches, memecoins will be directly airdropped to your wallet.

This is like betting on the house. BOOP will become THE COIN for exposure to the memecoin narrative. We can already see many people sharing screenshots of how much they made from random meme airdrops.

As people share more screenshots of BOOP profits, it’ll gain more traction.

Now, are there any criticisms of Boop? Definitely yes.

#1. It’s a rich get richer scheme.

Boop.fun is airdropping 150M BOOP to influencers and onchain degens. The influencer airdrop is based on your Kaito data. So these are people who’re already “rich”.

For X influencers, there’s a caveat. They have to launch their own token to claim their airdrops. Many influencers were offered 80k-200k+ in BOOP to launch their own tokens.

I was also offered 85k+ to launch my own token (keep in mind it has to reach at least $5m in marketcap). Won’t be launching one as well…I prefer playing long-term games.

But this was also a genius strategy. With every influencer sharing screenshots of their potential allocation, everyone’s attention was on BOOP.

Their airdrop to degens, aka active onchain users, were instantly unlocked. This can help in attracting trench warriors to the app in the short-term.

#2. Metrics aren’t pretty

Despite all the cool mechanics, the metrics aren’t painting a pretty picture. I already shared the BOOP’s metrics, trending down since launch.

We could say that’s due to declining interest in memecoins themselves. But Boop.fun has been losing market share against Pump.fun since launch as well.

The chart below tracks the market share of memecoins launched on different platforms.

The blue color at the right end is Boop.fun. We can clearly see that it’s losing market share, not gaining market share. Additionally, other projects like SunPump, Moonshot, and Launch labs have been able to create bigger challenges.

Now, we are still in the early stages. And Boop’s model is innovative enough to create a big enough threat to Pump.fun.

#3. Upcoming unlocks

Boop is airdropping 1M $BOOP every day to memecoin holders. This creates selling pressure.

Additionally, BOOP has offered 150M $BOOP to influencers to launch their tokens. The majority of those tokens will be unlocked only after 30 days. When that happens, it could create massive selling pressure for $BOOP.

In 30 days, Boop will have to gain enough market share to prevent massive sell-offs.

Also, at the end of the day, memecoins do not produce tangible value. It’s all a fugazi of shifting attention and liquidity. So, I’m not a big fan of memecoins.

But memecoins are a big part of the crypto economy. So my whining about their extraction doesn’t matter. You can either be smug and feel morally superior, or you can face the reality.

Memecoins are here to stay.

If they’re going to stay, the BOOP model is much better than Pump.fun model. It’s the only memecoin launchpad with a serious chance of competing.

BOOP dominance isn’t guaranteed. Maybe Pump.fun will just copy BOOP’s token model. Either way, I’m keeping an eye on it.

Sponsored Deep Dive

Soul Protocol: The Future of Money Markets

DeFi has the potential to eat TradFi.

We’ve already built the core primitives — DEXes, perpetuals, money markets, and more. But there’s one massive problem:

Most people can’t use DeFi.

Why? Three major reasons.

#1. The user experience is awful

Even if someone has crypto in their wallet, jumping into DeFi feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube… blindfolded.

There’s no clean onboarding. No simple dashboard. No one place to just do DeFi. Instead, we have too many chains and protocols competing for user attention.

Trying to earn yield? Better brush up on L1s vs L2s, bridging, and protocol mechanics. It’s like needing a PhD just to lend some USDC.

Too much friction. Too much complexity. DeFi shouldn’t feel like a full-time job.

#2. Liquidity fragmentation

In finance, deep liquidity is everything. It’s how you get accurate prices, smooth trades, and reliable borrowing power.

DeFi could theoretically offer deeper liquidity than TradFi. Why? Because it’s all on-chain. In an ideal world, protocols would compose, plug into each other, and share liquidity seamlessly.

But the reality? They don’t.

Instead of a unified ocean, we have a thousand tiny puddles — split across competing protocols and chains. That fragmentation creates worse products, worse prices, and worse user experiences.

#3. Capital inefficiency

Current DeFi protocols force users to operate in isolation from each other. Users on one protocol cannot easily build strategies that take advantage of another protocol. This creates a lot of market inefficiencies.

To achieve optimal yield, users have to constantly track the best rates across protocols. Then move their assets repeatedly across protocols and chains.

Arbitrage is limited by slow bridges and asset availability across chains. You cannot borrow against the unified balance across multiple chains. And more.

In short, non-composable DeFi is an objectively worse product.

Well, is anyone solving these issues?

Enter Soul Protocol.

It upgrades the DeFi money market experience to the next level. If I may simplify, Soul integrates competing money markets across many chains into a single app.

That’s it. One app. No bridging headaches. No bouncing between Aave, Compound, and a dozen tabs. Just connect your wallet and go.

You can earn yield by supplying your crypto from any chain. You can borrow from any chain. You don’t have to worry about nonsense like bridging or going through multiple websites like Aave and Compound to find the best APR. Soul integrates everything into a single app.

For example, you can do the following from the Soul interface.

• You can supply $10k in ETH to Aave on Ethereum
• Connect Arbitrum to this account and borrow USDC on Arbitrum from Compound using the Ethereum ETH on Aave as collateral.

You get USDC on Arbitrum. Your ETH still stays on Ethereum — no bridging risks. You get the best rates from the existing top protocols on Ethereum and Arbitrum. In the backend, Soul will manage everything for you.

This wasn’t possible before. With Soul, all money markets on all chains can come together in a single app.

Key point: Soul isn’t just another lending protocol. It isn’t another fork of Aave or Compound. Soul doesn’t compete for liquidity from other protocols.

Soul integrates the existing liquidity of existing lending protocols across chains via an efficient cross-chain coordination layer. This has several advantages for Soul:

• Leverage liquidity and security of existing lending protocols like Aave & Compound.
• Even if new money markets emerge, Soul can easily integrate those markets as well. This creates a win-win relationship between the Soul and other money markets.
• It provides a better money market user experience. You don’t have to go through multiple different apps and chains to find the best yield. You can see all the details from a single app.

Soul protocol massively increases the capital efficiency of money markets. Concretely, below are some things users can do more efficiently on Soul.

• You can borrow against collateral on multiple other chains. This gives much higher borrowing power than previous DeFi money markets.
• Users can diversify their lending & borrowing activities across many chains & protocols from a single app. This diversifies risks and gives varied returns.
• Currently, Arbitrage operations are executed manually. Soul can make it more efficient. You have the option to allow Soul to automatically earn the best yield according to your constraints.

Wow! All that sounds cool. But, how does the Soul protocol work?

(Nerd Alert ) Soul is designed as a modular architecture capable of integrating many chains and money markets. It’s best understood as a coordination layer between many protocols and across many chains.

For cross-chain communication, Soul leverages LayerZero. It’s their primary interoperability layer. They’ve integrated many fallback systems for added resilience as well. Those are powered by Axelar, Wormhole, and Chainlink.

Soul’s architecture has four key components: –

• Controller – Evaluates risk, borrowing limits, and liquidation status.
• SToken – Tracks positions in each market.
• InterestStrategy – Mirrors base protocol rate curves.
• CrossChainRouter – Sends messages between chains via LayerZero

The image below shows how everything fits together in Soul.

If you want a detailed explanation of Soul Protocols, check out their documentation.

They haven’t launched their token yet. They’ve taken steps to avoid the usual trap of this cycle’s utility tokens: low float and high FDV. They’re trying to get the tokens into the legitimate supporters of their project.

So, they’re doing a public sale of their token. You can learn more about $SO here.

A team of smart 40+ people has been working on it for 2+ years. And finally, they’ve released the testnet. They’ve launched quests to incentivize testnet activity.

Do you want to see the future of the money market?

Try Soul Testnet

 DeFi Catalysts

Ethereum pectra upgrade is scheduled to go live tomorrow. Major changes include scaling blobs and account abstraction.

Morpho has launched Morpho Lite. It’s a minimal, open-source app with just the essential Earn and Borrow features.

Lombard Finance has partnered with EigenLayer to bring LBTC into EigenLayer as a restaking asset. It’s the first BTC asset to do so.

Velodrome has received a 1M OP grant from Optimism to increase TVL and liquidity across the Optimism Superchain.

1inch has expanded its DEX aggregator to Solana. This brings $7B+ liquidity into the Solana ecosystem.

Phantom has introduced gasless swaps. For trades over $75, users can pay gas fees with the tokens they’re swapping.

Enso has created a shortcut that enables Uniswap LPs to migrate from any EVM chain to any pair on Unichain in a single transaction.

Meteora is discussing a proposal that allocates 25% of its token for liquidity rewards and TGE reserve.

Lido has launched its V3 testnet. Builders can now create tailored staking solutions using Lido stVaults on the Hoodi Ethereum Testnet.

Trust Wallet has introduced a Stablecoin Earn section on its wallet. It’ll allow users to farm using their stablecoins much more easily.

GMX is becoming a multichain perp exchange using LayerZero, which’ll give users access to millions of liquidity on the existing GMX deployments cross-chain from any supported blockchain.

Airdrop Alpha

MilkyWay has opened the claims for Massdrop. Eligible users can claim it until May 29th, 2025.

Industry News

Movement Labs was found dumping $MOVE on users. Movement Labs has suspended its founder, Rushi Manche.

Base has reached Stage 1 of the decentralization framework proposed by Vitalik and L2beat. It now has permissionless fraud proofs.

Ethereum R1 is an upcoming rollup that promises to be the neutral rollup built for Ethereum. It won’t have a separate token or private sales.

 New Launches

Aztec has launched the public testnet for its private L2. It’ll have decentralized sequencers and provers at launch.

Echelon went live on Initia mainnet. It’s a purpose-built, cross-chain lending hub designed to unlock capital-efficient liquidity and increase yields.

Stride launched Stride Swap. It’s a DEX purpose-built for the Cosmos Hub. It’ll handle bridge swaps for IBC Eureka.

Panoptic went live on the Base chain. It claims to unlock gas-efficient, onchain options and LPing for degens and traders.

X Hits

1. HyperLiquid thesis.
2. ​Narratives to monitor now.
3. Current state of the onchain trenches.
4. Vitalik’s proposal to simplify Ethereum L1.
5. Potential impact of crypto as an asset issuer.

Meme

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