Author: Joyce, Raymond, BlockBeats
MOODENG, SPX, GOAT… In this meme craze, the emergence of various big meme coins has gradually brought the name Moonshot to the attention of crypto players. This newly launched product, which has quietly built itself over three months, has suddenly become known as the "Binance of the meme world." This mobile application, which carries the narrative of "buying memes with fiat," seems to have become the sluice gate of the meme track, regarded by players in the industry as a key driving force behind the rise of all big meme coins.
On the other hand, the explosive popularity of Moonshot has been so sudden that many meme players still know very little about it. What did Moonshot do right in the months leading up to its rise? Is it really, as people say, the ultimate entry point for money and traffic in the meme space?
How the Big Meme Coin Driver Was Forged
Moonshot launched on July 18. Less than a week after its launch, Murad, who had not yet given a speech on the meme supercycle at Token 2049, specifically tweeted to introduce Moonshot, along with a demo video of its interaction. "I am not involved in this project in any way, but startups like Moonshot will make the Memecoin supercycle even larger. Their users do not need to know anything about wallets or blockchains; they just need to click once, like paying for an upgrade in an iPhone game."
At the beginning of Moonshot's launch, many tokens were listed, but its influence did not extend beyond the community until it encountered MOODENG, which had not yet seen a significant market cap increase. When MOODENG was launched, Moonshot did not specifically tweet about it. After MOODENG continued to rise, the official Twitter account kept updating the "price increase after listing" posts. On September 26, Moonshot tweeted, "The highest trading volume day in Moonshot's history," accompanied by a meme of the MOODENG hippo.
On September 27, Moonshot popped up a notification that MOODENG had achieved a 100x increase since its listing on the app and initiated a vote to "rename Moonshot to MOODENG." On the other hand, the official MOODENG Twitter account frequently recommended the community use Moonshot to purchase tokens.
Dune data shows that from September 24 to September 28, the market cap of MOODENG rapidly increased from around $100 million to about $300 million, during which Moonshot's daily fees surged from around $3,681 to $24,000, and daily trading users grew from 396 to 3,458.
As MOODENG propelled Moonshot to "break out," Murad was delivering his "memecoin supercycle" keynote speech at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, calling for $SPX6900. Since early September, SPX6900's market cap had risen from less than $9 million to $900 million in just a month, and before Murad's speech, Moonshot had already listed SPX6900, which at that time had a market cap of less than $30 million.
With the continuous success of big meme coins, Moonshot began to truly experience the "listing effect." Meme coin projects also hoped to list on Moonshot. The meme coin APU on Ethereum started to rise from a market cap of around $60 million in early September. When it increased by about 2.5 times to a market cap of around $150 million, APU announced on October 6 that it would list on Moonshot, planning to cross-chain from Ethereum to Solana via Wormhole. Subsequently, APU continued to rise, and as of the time of writing, its market cap was $330 million.
Although the "mutual achievement" with MOODENG has brought rapid development to Moonshot, with daily fees rising from $3,700 at the end of September to $32,000 last weekend, the number of daily users has not seen a significant increase since MOODENG, and daily fees have experienced a phased decline. In the sentiment-driven meme market, what Moonshot brings to memes is a heat that is more important than trading volume.
Last week, AI meme coins exploded, with $GOAT surpassing a market cap of $500 million. For further reading, see "Behind the Explosion of GOAT: The Speculative Expectations and Concerns of AI Memes | 100x Review." Moonshot announced the listing of this coin when GOAT's trading volume surged and began to climb from the bottom, accompanying GOAT from a market cap of less than $40 million to $500 million, once again witnessing Moonshot's "magic."
However, from the perspective of the "listing effect," the trading volume on Moonshot is relatively small compared to the total trading volume of meme coins. At 1 AM today, Moonshot listed the meme coin slop. According to Dune data as of around 4 PM, slop's trading volume on Moonshot was $110,000, while according to Dexcreener data, slop's total trading volume during this period was $46 million, meaning Moonshot contributed only 0.2% of slop's trading volume.
From the chart, it can be seen that after the news of slop's listing on Moonshot, its price surged nearly 20% in half an hour, but after reaching a market cap of $50 million, it began to decline, currently sitting at $25.48 million, nearly halving from its peak.
Pump.fun's Junior Brother, MoonPay's Perfect Partner
Many people do not know that Moonpay and Pump.fun are actually "brothers from the same school," both incubated by Alliance DAO, and have made significant progress on the path of "crypto new retail." QW, a founding partner of Alliance DAO, once mentioned in a podcast that Moonshot's market opportunity lies in the fact that "there are not enough retail gambling scenarios in the market."
Of course, identifying the right direction is not the only reason for Moonshot's success. What sets it apart from its senior brother Pump.fun is the effort it has put into user experience.
One of Alliance's major incubation principles is that when developing crypto products, one should not only focus on blockchain technology itself but also compare it with traditional internet applications that are already very mature and provide excellent user experiences, ensuring that their products can also offer the same smooth and easy onboarding experience. Imran Khan, a founding partner of Alliance DAO, once tweeted that the competitors of crypto products are not just other crypto applications but also the user onboarding experiences of traditional Web2 applications.
The day after Moonshot's launch, it partnered with MoonPay, and all the product highlights of Moonshot, such as "fiat purchase and Apple Pay payment," benefited from MoonPay's functionality.
In terms of fees, users on Moonshot incur additional costs in two categories: those collected by Moonshot during the transaction process and those collected by the partner MoonPay during the deposit and withdrawal process. The former includes network fees (gas fees) and management fees, with a 2.5% fee (ranging from $0.3 to $6.25) for transaction amounts below $250, and a 1% fee for amounts over $250.
The fee collection mechanism for MoonPay is detailed in the official documentation, with deposit and withdrawal fees for purchases made using PayPal being 4.5% and 3.4%, respectively. The payment function for Apple Pay was explored by MoonPay as early as 2022.
In addition to MoonPay, the non-custodial wallet Turnkey is also a partner of Moonshot. In an article published by Turnkey, it is introduced that when users log into Moonshot, Turnkey will create a non-custodial wallet in the background, allowing users to easily verify transactions after registering with an email or biometric technology (such as Face ID).
Alliance DAO, which incubated Pump.fun, controls the product direction, while MoonPay handles the payment side and TurnKey manages the wallet side. The application, which is the "first to easily trade meme coins using Apple Pay," made a stunning debut, and upon reflection, it seems like a natural progression.
In Moonshot's official statement, there are no publicly disclosed specific listing standards, but it mentions that "generally, the total trading volume of the token needs to reach about $1 million within 24 hours." In its early days, Moonshot listed many coins, including MAGA, SCF, SPX6900, MUMU, and other lesser-known meme coins, with its "breakout work" being MOODENG.
Clearly, in terms of product experience, Moonshot has met Alliance's ideal standards. Imran even proudly stated that many founders of consumer startups currently regard Moonshot's user onboarding experience as a benchmark or model for their learning.
Fiat Meme Track, Competitors Have Emerged
As a newcomer in the payment sector, Moonshot has ridden the wave of the meme bull market. By focusing on fiat payments, Moonshot has further simplified the barriers for users to engage with memes. Moonshot's success lies not only in providing a more efficient trading experience but also in offering a new path for mass adoption in the industry.
The segmented track of fiat memes will certainly not leave Moonshot to walk alone; there are now fiat meme payment products on the market that benchmark against Moonshot: Prerich.
Prerich is an application that simplifies on-chain transactions, promoting a slogan similar to Moonshot's: "Buy memecoins with ease!" Prerich offers a user-friendly interface akin to Robinhood, allowing users to conduct fast and efficient on-chain transactions. Users can also log in using their email and credit card. Prerich's unique meme-themed design interface has also become one of the factors attracting community users.
However, the listing effect of Prerich is far less significant than that of Moonshot, as it has not produced big meme coins like MOODENG and GOAT. Besides differentiated meme icon marketing, Prerich will need to continuously list big meme coins to surpass Moonshot.
As long as the crypto meme celebration continues, innovative products in the payment sector will keep emerging. After Moonshot has taken the lead in fiat payments, it opens up a larger imagination space for mass adoption.
As the Binance of the meme world, Moonshot not only brings significant liquidity and wealth creation effects to on-chain memes but also quietly changes the landscape for future entrepreneurs with its product model that is closer to Web2.
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