Launchpads Landscape

HashKey Capital Reading Time: 12.06Min

TLDR:

The recent wave of memecoin launchpads have once again brought the term ‘Internet Capital Market’ to the spotlight, underscoring the vital roles these launchpads play in allowing projects/creators to secure funding through tokens to bring their projects from ideation to market.
While memecoin launchpads currently command much of the spotlight, the market also hosts a diverse array of alternatives. Launchpads may operate on either a permissioned or permissionless basis, and they can serve as broad-based platforms spanning multiple verticals or specialize in niches such as artificial intelligence, gaming, or decentralized science (DeSci).
Launchpads play an important role not only as a means to secure funding, but also accessing resources and the bootstrapping community.
Despite aforementioned benefits, misuse of platforms and inadequate understanding of risk can also put investors' funds at risk especially when dealing with dubious token launches and projects.
For many founders and projects, despite having lower barriers to entry, they often struggle with market differentiation and illiquidity. Projects have to address these issues on their own as well to drive a sustainable business model.

What are launchpads and why are they considered ‘Internet Capital Markets’ ?

In Web3, launchpads serve as a vital platform for projects and founders to access capital, resources, and community. Launchpads can take various forms such as those adopted by echo.xyz, Republic, Coinlist where KYC investors invest in vetted projects first and own a share of the tokens in future. Likewise, the term can also describe permissionless platforms that let founders and creators swiftly launch their own tokens and projects with minimal red tape, lowering the barriers to entry and enabling them to fund product development through token sales.

Recently, the meteoric rise of the Believe App, which allows creators to launch tokens through X, has once again sparked discussions around ‘Internet Capital Market’ in Web3. The term ‘Internet Capital Market’ was first coined by Akshay in Solana Foundation’s 2025 marketing memo to describe the transformational potential of blockchain technology in democratizing access to funding and liquidity to a wide user base. Traditionally, in financial markets, companies' means of public funding comes from an IPO which is a tedious procedure accompanied by numerous red tapes and criteria, hence hindering smaller companies from getting access to public capital. Retail investors are thus denied the opportunity to invest in high quality companies as well. Launchpads in Web3 offer to change that by providing a platform for startups to fundraise and retail users to participate in early stage investments.

Main types of launchpads in the market today

Web3 launchpads generally fall into two categories: permissioned and permissionless. Permissioned platforms—such as Coinlist—conduct rigorous due diligence, including KYC/KYB, AML screening, and project vetting, and typically restrict participation to verified investors. These platforms aim to provide regulatory safeguards and investor protection. In contrast, permissionless launchpads enable anyone to launch or participate in token sales, removing traditional barriers and fostering open access to capital. This model favors speed and inclusivity, often appealing to grassroots communities and independent creators looking to validate ideas in real-time.

In terms of sector, most launchpads with the most social traction are geared towards memecoins exemplified most notably by Pump.fun which onboarded more than 18.3M wallet addresses and brought 10.4M tokens to the public market. Owing to memecoins’ strong cultural element and low barriers to entry for retail, other launchpads such as LaunchLabs, Believe, letsbonk.fun have sprung up, further putting memecoin launchpads in the limelight. However, beyond social memecoins, there are other categories of launchpads as well such as those in gaming, AI, DeSci among others. Below, we will examine each of the different types of launchpads and how they support creators and projects in receiving funding, resources, and community.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: HashKey Capital

Memecoin Launchpads

Memecoin launchpads are popular among retail users due to their seamless user interface and strong cultural elements that enhance retail accessibility. As an area with one of the highest retail visibility and participation, having high throughput is important to support user experience which made Solana a popular destination for these launchpads.

Most memecoin platforms today offer a similar token launch mechanism. Users give their token a ticker, description, upload a media and the token is ready for launch. Upon launch, the token will also instantly have its own bonding curve and liquidity pool where trading volume and market capitalization helped steer the token to bonding curve completion. Once the bonding curve is completed, the token is migrated to a larger DEX which depends on which blockchain is based, offering the token higher visibility and retail volumes. As the leading memecoin launchpad in the space, Pump.fun has demonstrated strong retail adoption, with more than 10M tokens launched and generating more than $700M in fees over the past year. However, with newcomers like Believe.app, LaunchLabs, and letsbonk.fun entering the memecoin launchpad arena, competition has intensified. Pump.fun used to capture more than 90% of the market share in memecoins deployment, however, its share has steadily declined in May and at one point reached 56.2% on 12 May with the surge in activity on Letsbonk.fun. Platforms are now not only competing based on user experience but have to differentiate themselves through revenue-sharing incentives, user-centric features, partnerships (eg. LaunchLabs & Letsbonk.fun) and more competitive pricing.

Comparative analysis of leading memecoin launchpads

Source: HashKey Capital

While the demand for memes is high, most of them struggle to capture sufficient liquidity, and are highly volatile with less than 5% of tokens across platforms successfully graduating into a DEX pool.

While memecoins are often associated with a high-risk, high-reward profile, a number have matured into well-established ecosystems. A prime example is BONK, which has grown from a meme token into a thriving network with more than 925,000 holders and 140 project integrations spanning 13 blockchains. Noteworthy initiatives include a curated BONK art gallery, the letsbonk.fun memecoin launchpad, and a charitable fund dedicated to animal-related causes.

Overall, memecoin launchpads capitalize on hype and users’ greed when speculating high risk assets. Retail users participating in these token launches have to exercise due diligence and evaluate the project on various metrics like project roadmap, market capitalization, exchange listings, trading volume, number of holders among others to mitigate risk of loss.

AI Launchpads

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Kaito.ai

AI agents have become the dominant growth narrative in Web3, catalysed by retail-friendly tooling that lowers the barrier to launching on-chain agents. Key players such as Virtuals Protocol and MyShell AI have accelerated this trend by allowing users to configure, tokenize and deploy their agents onchain seamlessly. By abstracting away model management, memory and toolings, they shrink time-to-market and unlock retail adoption that used to be reserved for well-funded AI teams. One of the most popular agents launched via Virtuals Protocol is crypto influencer, AIXBT that delivers real-time insights to its 459.2K twitter followers and boasts a FDV of $200M, underscoring the pivotal role that these launchpads play in bridging strong project founders and retail adoption. The team behind AIXBT drives value accrual for the token by requiring users to hold 600,000 $AIXBT in order to access its AI-driven analytics platform.

Compared to memecoin launchpads that thrive on hype and speed, agent launchpads come with a higher level of complexity, requiring users to have a basic understanding of AI tools and models in order to customize and develop their own agents to accomplish more complex tasks. Platforms like MyShell’s ShellAgent launchpad significantly simplifies user experience by providing a ‘drag and drop’ approach for users to define their agent personality, choose their preferred model, add widgets (plugins and tools) developed by the community and choose the social media platforms (Telegram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Discord) to deploy their agents. Technical complexities such as model memory, agent frameworks and widgets are abstracted away from builders and quietly prepared by experienced developers in the backend. ShellAgent has also integrated with MCP, enabling easy access to drag and drop widgets such as GPT, BNB chain, Github among others, connecting the bridge between Web2 and Web3. Since launch, the platform has seen the number of creators increase by more than 200% with more than 200,000 agents in its marketplace. Clearly, agent launchpads like ShellAgent in this case provided the necessary toolings with monetization features seamlessly embedded for projects to quickly go-to-market and monetize on their ShellAgents.

Virtuals Protocol launchpad also caters to different user profiles, allowing both developers and non-technical users to launch their own agent tokens. Genesis launchpad which was recently released encouraged greater participation and visibility into high quality AI projects by enforcing a fair and permissionless token distribution mechanism for $VIRTUALS and points holders. Users are first required to engage in meaningful actions within the Virtuals ecosystem to earn points that can eventually be used to participate in pre-sale agent launches. Based on points pledged for the agent, users are then required to commit $VIRTUALS with a max cap of 566 VIRTUALS to allow for fair and equal participation opportunity. This helps to create a positive feedback loop for the ecosystem as positive actions by ecosystem users are being rewarded, benefitting both project founders, protocol and investors (ecosystem users).

Another key distinction of AI launchpads is that they can be valued like a developer software tooling business with clear utility and revenue model but just onchain. Startups looking to launch their own AI agents can also be valued like AI software, allowing them to be more objectively evaluated based on fundamentals. Virtuals Protocol is already home to several high-profile AI social agents that are able to autonomously manage various social media accounts and even manage users’ DeFi portfolios.

Comparative analysis of AI Agent Launchpads

Source: HashKey Capital

Although paling in comparison when it comes to number of launches, demand for no/low code AI agent launchpads is witnessing increasing traction. Launchpads can also foray into multi-agents orchestration and agent marketplace, allowing projects to tap into ecosystem synergies and expand into more innovative areas.

Gaming Launchpads

Web3 gaming launchpads serve a critical role in the ecosystem by bridging early-stage game development with communities and funding. Oftentimes, indie game developers / small game studios face the daunting challenge of raising funds to support their games and web3 gaming launchpads allow them to raise capital through bootstrapping community participation via token sales. This creates synergies and value for both users and developers since users get a stake in the game while developers get access to funding they need. Several popular Web3 games have adopted the launchpad approach, including Illuvium (Balancer pool, which raised $90M), The Sandbox, Gods Unchained, and Star Atlas which leverage launchpads for community bootstrapping and raising funds. A common observation is that most of these gaming projects have chosen to raise funds through centralized crowdfunding platforms in order to gain more visibility and user base for their games. Popular launchpads for these games include Seedify, GameFi, TrustPad, Red Kite and BSC Station, Coinlist among others. Some of these platforms require users to hold the platform’s native tokens in order to participate in these token offerings, with users that hold more tokens being given more allocations or being guaranteed a spot for highly competitive token sales. This model helps to maintain demand for the launchpad’s token while allowing projects to fundraise.

Case Study - Seedify launchpad

A notable launchpad in the Web3 gaming arena is Seedify. With a 9 tiered system that awards holders based on the number of $SFUND holdings, staking and farming activity. Thus the more tokens users staked, the higher their allocations. Higher tiers also give users access to private sale and early-stage seed rounds. In order to boost platform reputation and build a sticky community, projects looking to launch on Seedify also go through vigorous screening by the team. The platform maintains its competitiveness by catering to various networks such as Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Avalanche and Polygon. Evidently, this has been beneficial for the launchpad as it ranked #6 on cryptoranks, used by more than 34 projects over the past year, averaging $434K in funds raised for each project.

Choosing the right gaming launchpad is important for founders looking to succeed. The right platform should allow quality projects to raise capital, gain access to resources, expertise and provide high visibility for initial growth.

DeSci Launchpads

DeSci launchpad is a relatively newer concept that only started gaining popularity in 2024 after several high profile fundraising and innovative project launches. In traditional science, funding is often provided by government agencies which require strict screening processes. These processes are often driven by an overemphasis on academic metrics, experimentation in ‘safe’ science fields and academic prestige, often neglecting projects with innovative ideas in unexplored areas. DeSci launchpads provide crucial funding to smaller laboratories and independent researchers, fueling innovation and groundbreaking studies in scientific areas that traditional funding often overlooks. Key venues include Bio.xyz Launchpad, which has incubated 11 BioDAOs and raised $34.8M; one flagship raise was the US $2.6 million $COVID auction that funded Long COVID Labs’ first treatment studies as well as immediate case studies on Pemgarda and Paxlovid that got more than 600+ patient sign ups. The company intends to use the funds raised to conduct 30 clinical trials by Q2 2025 and scale commercial roll-out of combination treatments via telemedicine partners by Q3 2025. VitaDAO’s VitaLabs fellowship focuses on longevity science and has already deployed more than US $4.2 million across 24 projects—ranging from autophagy-activator screens to mRNA rejuvenation therapeutics—while giving NFT holders governance over resulting IP. Meanwhile, Molecule’s Catalyst platform generalizes this model by minting “IP-tokens,” letting funders potentially participate in the future monetization of IP licenses, governance decisions, and giving scientists a built-in community of backers.

Case Study - Bio Protocol

Here, we examine the mechanism to participate in the funding of these science projects. Bio Protocol allows BioDAOs to fundraise through a 3 stage process:

BioDAOs submit an application to be part of the Bio network.
Bio token holders are required to lock their BIO tokens to signal their support for the potential BioDAO project.
If the project meets the curation threshold of locked BIO tokens, reflecting sufficient community support, it proceeds to the funding phase where it raises capital via a price threshold auction or a bonding curve sale.
Upon successful launch, locked BIO will be used to seed the initial liquidity in an AMM for the BioDAO, facilitating a seamless trading experience for investors.

Collectively, these launchpads are widening the research capital funnel, aligning incentives between scientists and supporters, and accelerating breakthroughs in areas that traditional funding often overlooks. To deep dive into DeSci, we have also written an article here.

Below is a comparative analysis of popular DeSci launchpads.

Source: Bio protocol, VitaDAO, Molecule.xyz

Conclusion

While the term ‘Internet Capital Market’ underpinned a future where funding, community formation and growth tooling are easily accessible and more democratized, there are also inherent challenges associated with the faster pace of launch. For one, the ease of launching a token has flooded the market, most tokens today with limited liquidity and high volatility, putting investors’ capital at risk. Easy access to resources also make tokenized startups provide similar offerings with limited competitive edge that often require more advanced features. Ultimately, it will still depend on the projects themselves to develop a viable product with PMF to ensure the sustainability of their business and launchpads are just platforms that provide the springboard to bring their idea to fruition.

References

https://pump.fun/docs/fees

https://www.believescreener.com/

https://dune.com/tiagocryptonary/pump-fun-analytics

https://revenue.letsbonk.fun/

ttps://dune.com/adam_tehc/memecoin-wars

https://four-meme.gitbook.io/four.meme/guide/how-it-works

https://sunpump.meme/

https://docs.raydium.io/raydium/pool-creation/launchlab

https://blockworks.co/analytics/raydium/raydium-launchlab

https://dune.com/four_meme/fourmeme

https://dune.com/hashed_official/sunpumpmeme