Meme Coin Wars Heat Up as Raydium Debuts LaunchLab

The move boosted RAY’s price, but PumpSwap continues to set volume records. Meanwhile, Coinbase’s Base network faced backlash after a meme coin tied to a promotional post crashed 90%. This raised concerns about the platform’s credibility and execution. Additionally, Mantra is under pressure after its 92% crash, which the team attributes to liquidations triggered by large collateral movements. The investigation is still ongoing, and the company is planning a token buyback and burn to restore trust.

Raydium Strikes Back with LaunchLab

Raydium, the team behind the Solana-based automated market maker (AMM),  launched a new meme coin creation platform that is called LaunchLab, entering direct competition with Pump.fun. The platform debuted on April 16, just a month after Pump.fun cut ties by migrating its token liquidity from Raydium’s pools to its own decentralized exchange, PumpSwap. This raised quite a few eyebrows as Pump.fun was once a major source of revenue for Raydium.

With LaunchLab, Raydium plans to reclaim dominance in the Solana meme coin ecosystem by offering a feature-rich, zero-fee token launch platform. Some of its key features include customizable bonding curves and automatic integration into Raydium’s AMM for tokens that raise at least 85 SOL, equivalent to approximately $11,150. According to LaunchLab’s website, around ten tokens have already met that benchmark.

Token creation on LaunchLab is free, and creators can earn 10% of trading fees from the AMM pool once their token “graduates.” The platform charges a 1% trading fee, with 25% of those fees allocated for buybacks of Raydium’s native token, RAY. 

RAY’s price action over the past 24 hours (Source: CoinMarketCap)

The announcement drove RAY’s price up by almost 14% to $2.41 shortly after launch before settling back. At press time, RAY was trading at $2.26 after its price rose by more than 7% over the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, PumpSwap continues to show strong performance, and even recently broke its daily trading volume record five days in a row. On April 17, PumpSwap hit $460 million in trading volume, surpassing the previous day’s $454.9 million. This was also the fourth consecutive day above $400 million. Since its March 22 launch, PumpSwap processed over $7.3 billion in trading volume, according to data from DeFiLlama.

PumpSwap daily volume (Source: DeFiLlama)

Meme Coin Mayhem Hits Base 

Other meme coin dramas also turned heads. Coinbase recently clarified its role due to backlash over a meme coin linked to its Base network that experienced extreme price volatility shortly after launch. 

On April 16, Base posted an image on X using its tagline “Base is for everyone,” alongside a link to a token of the same name that was created on Zora, a platform that automatically turns posts into tradable tokens. The token quickly surged to a market cap of $17.1 million within an hour, but 20 minutes later, its value plummeted by nearly 90% to $1.9 million, according to DEX Screener. The token since recovered somewhat. 

Despite the connection made by the post, a Coinbase spokesperson explained that Base did not launch or sell the token, and pointed out that the tokenization was an automatic feature of the Zora platform. The token’s Zora page contains a legal disclaimer warning that the post should not be viewed as an investment and that Base will not make efforts to increase its value. It also mentions that Base will receive 10 million of the 1 billion token supply, which it promised never to sell, and that fees would go toward developer grants.

Even so, the reaction from the crypto community was very quick and largely negative. Base reportedly earned more than $61,000 from the token, which recorded more than $26 million in total trading volume. Critics flooded X with posts condemning the token launch. 

One user said that the episode destroyed Base’s credibility, while former Riot Platforms researcher Pierre Rochard called the move harmful to the industry. Abhishek Pawa, founder of AP Collective, acknowledged the potential in the concept of tokenizing content but criticized Base’s execution and its failure to align with trader expectations.

Jesse Pollack, the creator of Base, defended the initiative by stating that someone needed to lead the movement of putting content on-chain and said Base was willing to be that pioneer. He argued that tokenizing internet content represents the future of a new creator economy, though it will require a fundamental shift in how people think about content and value.

Adding to the controversy, Harrison Leggio, co-founder of the crypto startup g8keep, reported that the token was “horrifically sniped” by two addresses that bought 21% of the supply for just 2 ETH and made an estimated $300,000 by quickly flipping the tokens. A second token that was promoted by Base shortly after  also saw a sharp drop.

Mantra Under Pressure After OM Token Wipeout

The collapse of Mantra (OM) also caused quite a stir in the crypto space. Mantra issued an official statement addressing the severe 92% flash crash of its OM token that took place on April 13. It was released on April 16 under the title “Statement of Events: 13 April 2025.” The update explained that the project team did not engage in any token sales and that operations are still  intact as the investigation into the incident continues.

Mantra CEO John Mullin said that the statement was intended to provide updated insights into the crash, particularly regarding the factors that triggered the price collapse and to offer verifiable data on OM’s circulating supply. While the community anticipated a full post-mortem, the current statement provided very limited new information.  

The Mantra team attributed the crash to a big volume of OM tokens being moved to exchanges as collateral, which led to forced position closures and a cascade of liquidations, some of which were automatic.

To better understand the chain of events, Mantra partnered with blockchain analysts, and is also exploring the option of hiring a forensic auditor. Among those consulted are professionals from FTI Consulting, though no firm decision has been reached yet. Mullin stated that the team is fully focused on the company's future and does not plan any layoffs.

Mantra clarified that there are two versions of the OM token—an Ethereum-based ERC-20 version and a native token on the Mantra mainnet. The crash primarily involved the ERC-20 version, which represents the bulk of the token's liquid market. On April 15, almost the entire 888.8 million supply of ERC-20 OM was in public circulation.

The platform also noticed a pricing discrepancy in OM spot prices between major exchanges OKX and Binance around an hour before the crash, which suggests that further clarity might be provided by collaborating with these platforms. A support plan involving a token buyback and supply burn is in development, though Mantra did not share a specific timeline for its implementation.

Only time will tell whether Mantra will actually preserve its reputation after the incident. OKX CEO Star Xu described Mantra as a “big scandal.”