Memecoin Launchpad Competition Heats Up

Plus, 📊 Markets wobble under Trump’s policies, 🏦 Coinbase aims at institutions, 🎯 Bitcoin is king, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
March 19, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🚀 Raydium challenges Pump.fun with its own token launchpad

  • 📊 Stock market turmoil and inflation

  • 🏦 Coinbase targets institutional DeFi

  • 🔥 EOS rebrands to Vaulta and pivots to Web3 banking

  • 🎙️ Memecoins won’t work like before

  • 🛑 Crypto AI agent AIXBT gets hacked

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By Tikta

Solana’s largest decentralized exchange Raydium is building its own token launchpad that will resemble a direct fork of Pump.fun, according to a report from Blockworks. Raydium’s native token RAY rallied 17% after the report. 

Named LaunchLab, it will reportedly offer exponential and logarithmic bonding curves and allow third parties to set their own fees. 

Raydium and Pump.fun are two of Solana’s largest sources of income, but the two also enjoy an unofficial symbiotic relationship of sorts. Tokens on Pump.fun that achieve a market cap of $69,000 graduate to Raydium through a migration process once they complete their bonding curve campaign.

Last month, onchain sleuth trenchdiver shared evidence that Pump.fun was launching its own automated market maker (AMM) — a big hit to Raydium considering Pump.fun tokens represent 41% of its monthly revenue.

Raydium core contributor Infra told Blockworks that “LaunchLab isn’t about replacing Pump[.fun] or any other platform” but rather an alternative for teams who don’t want to develop their programs from scratch.

Inflation, stock market volatility, and a feckless Fed—what does it mean for crypto? Our experts explain why bitcoin isn’t reacting to gold’s rally and why markets are nervous under Trump.

The financial market is getting wrecked, inflation is still a problem, and bitcoin isn’t acting like the hedge that it’s supposed to be. Is this a real economic shift, or just noise?

With tariffs, stagflation fears, and fiscal dominance taking center stage, hosts James Seyffart, Joe McCann, Ram Ahluwalia and Noelle Acheson break down:

  • Why markets are struggling—and whether a recession or stagflation is coming

  • Whether the Fed has become irrelevant

  • How the stablecoin bill could rescue sales of treasurys

  • Why bitcoin isn’t following gold’s rally

  • The factors that could kickstart the next crypto boom

  • The latest on all the dozens of crypto ETFs in the works

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Coinbase has launched "Verified Pools," a new initiative aimed at enhancing transparency and security in decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity pools.

Verified Pools operates on Coinbase's layer 2 network Base, and uses Uniswap v4 for customized smart contract functionality, with onchain risk manager Gauntlet optimizing pool configurations.

Coinbase claims Verified Pools will make onchain trading simpler for retail investors, who will be able to retain control of their assets. However, the real cohort Coinbase is likely targeting with this offering is institutional investors, who will be able to access concentrated liquidity strategies.

In a survey published on Tuesday, Coinbase said that 83% of institutional investors plan to increase crypto allocations in 2025.

An attacker breached the dashboard of AIXBT, an AI-powered crypto bot, and prompted it to transfer 55.5 ether (ETH), worth approximately $106,200, from its wallet.

AIXBT launched in November 2024 on the Virtuals Protocol and functions as both a market analysis and sentiment tracking tool on social media platforms like X. 

The account’s handler, 0rxbt, said the attack was limited to a dashboard access hack that did not impact its core systems. 

“We’ve migrated servers, swapped keys, paused dashboard access for security upgrades, and reported hacker addresses to exchanges,” said 0rxbt.

EOS Network announced a rebrand to Vaulta as part of a strategic shift towards Web3 banking.

Vaulta will integrate Bitcoin digital banking solution exSat, but maintain EOS’ existing C++ smart contract architecture, decentralized onchain RAM database, and multi-chain interoperability features.

As part of the rebrand, an advisory group called the Vaulta Banking Advisory Council will be established to oversee compliance and strategy. The transition will also include a token swap that has been tentatively scheduled for the end of May.

EOS famously raised a record-breaking $4 billion through its 2018 initial coin offering (ICO). However, as the network expanded, the consensus algorithm faced challenges in maintaining high transaction speeds across a larger, more distributed system.

EOS’ native token jumped 30% on news of the rebrand and was trading at a four week high of $0.65 as of 9 pm ET on Monday.

Joe McCann of Asymmetric explains why he believes the current memecoin trade is over, Pump.fun is not extractive, and altcoins have no chance against bitcoin.

The memecoin trade might be over. And Joe McCann says that’s just the beginning.

The founder of Asymmetric has been at the intersection of crypto, macro, and tech for years. He called the $BONK trade early, made moves before most saw the opportunity, and now? He’s shifting his focus.

In this episode, Joe joins Unchained to discuss:

  • Why memecoins won’t work the way they used to

  • How institutions are approaching crypto in this cycle

  • Why prices are down so much

  • Why Bitcoin might be so hard to outperform

  • Whether Solana is still the fastest horse

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for on-chain finance. Launching three new core innovation pillars: Enhanced Index Fund, Mantle Banking and MantleX. 

  • 📊 The launch of Solana futures on CME saw just $12.3 million in trading volume on its first day, significantly lower than Bitcoin and Ethereum futures debuts, leading K33 analysts to suggest that a future Solana ETF would have a limited effect on SOL’s price.

  • ⚠️ Microsoft warned of a new malware strain, StilachiRAT, capable of stealing and decrypting data from 20 popular crypto wallets, including MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet, while also noting that the identity of the attackers remains unknown.

  • ⚙️ Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation integrated Evmos into its core software stack as “Cosmos EVM,” making Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities natively available across its 200-chain ecosystem while improving interoperability through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.

  • 📉 Bakkt’s stock plunged over 27% after revealing that Bank of America and Webull, which accounted for significant portions of its revenue, will not renew their commercial agreements, adding to concerns as the company also delayed its earnings call for a second time.

  • 💵 Blockchain infrastructure firm Crossmint raised $23.6 million in a funding round led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Franklin Templeton and others, to expand its tools for AI-driven commerce and simplify on-chain integrations for companies like Adidas and Red Bull.

  • 💰 Web3 infrastructure developer Halliday secured $20 million in a Series A funding round led by a16z crypto, bringing its total funding to $26 million, as it aims to simplify smart contract development and expand its engineering team.

  • 📈 Strategy is issuing 5 million shares of its new Perpetual Strife Preferred Stock (STRF) with a 10% annual cash dividend, up from its previous 8% rate, as it seeks to raise $500 million to continue funding its bitcoin purchases.

  • 🪙 Trump-backed World Liberty Financial has now raised $550 million after selling an additional $250 million in WLFI governance tokens to 85,000 accredited investors, with 75% of the proceeds allocated to a company linked to Trump and the remaining 25% to the project’s co-founders.