Polygon wen.markets: Pump.fun rival or bad copy?

• Polygon Labs has thrown its weight behind the Pump.fun imitator.
• The move comes despite concerns that Pump.fun does not protect against the abuses advertised.
• The speed with which Polygon Labs supports clones of the Solana memecoin generator raises questions about their intentions.

Fueled by hype and the ever-elusive yet forever alluring promise of getting rich quick, memecoins have become a major driver of blockchain activity over the past year. This trend has caught the eye of several blockchains and developers, who have taken several steps to encourage enthusiasm, for better or worse.

Recently, Polygon (MATIC) Labs insiders supported wen.markets, a copy of Solana’s Pump.fun, a tool that enables fast and cheap token launches on the Polygon blockchain. Abuse as marketed.

This move raises questions about whether the developers are truly engaged for the community, or if they are inadvertently exploiting memecoin mania for profit.

wen.markets

wen.markets announced the launch of Polygon on Thursday, June 6th. If you’ve used or just opened the Pump.fun website, chances are wen.markets will look instantly familiar. Similar to Pump.fun, when you open the wen.markets website you will immediately see a short description outlining what the tool is about. In other words, it is a token launchpad that makes a strong claim to eliminate the risk of rugpulls by ensuring fair token distribution and locking. Liquidity up.

After this explanation, the user will see a simple prompt: “Start a new coin.” Of course, this is less interesting than Pump.fun’s “I’m Ready to Pump.” But here, things get more interesting as clicking the button takes you to a page where you can generate tokens by filling out four simple fields and paying a small fee.

As of this writing, wen.markets has facilitated the creation of 38 tokens totaling $26,000.

These figures follow promotions of the platform by several Polygon Labs insiders, including the company’s DeFi growth leader “Crypto Texan”, community manager “Smokey”, and even Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal. This is a memecoin project that was newly launched in the past.

Is it better if you can’t beat them?

In the past, memecoins have been largely ignored or treated with skepticism at best by cryptocurrency industry thought leaders. They questioned whether the lack of utility and speculative nature of these tokens would be a setback rather than a help in the industry’s quest for mainstream adoption and legitimacy.

But over the past year, even amid dire economic times and users’ desire for significant growth, the persistence and sheer dominance of the memecoin sector has given even the most skeptical people pause for thought.

Instead of ignoring the sector, the project team shifted to encouraging and supporting its spread through grants, incubator programs, social media endorsements and tools such as wen.markets.

The story seems very simple. Memecoin can be a powerful tool for community engagement and an easy gateway for new users. With greater participation, blockchain developers can amplify these positives while also providing a filter that significantly eliminates potential bad actors looking to take advantage of the enthusiasm.

However, developer actions are not always consistent with this publicly espoused ethos, and this is the case with wen.markets.

Overpromise, underdeliver?

Like Pump.fun, wen.markets is marketed as a product that removes the rug by ensuring a fair launch and ensuring liquidity. However, as evidenced by the recent launch of the celebrity memecoin on Pump.fun, these controls do little or nothing to protect users from insiders and market manipulation.

JENNER, a token launched on May 28 by American journalist and former Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner, has lost about 65% of its value since launch, with insiders selling off most of the tokens.

Likewise, on May 29, Nigerian music star Davido jumped into the movement with the launch of DAVIDO. After creating the token, the artist acquired nearly 20% of the supply, which he immediately poured out to his followers for a profit of $500,000 in just a few hours.