Solana ecosystem is one of the most dynamic in the crypto space. Today I decided to play a little bit with Pump And Fun site to see how the platform works launching a new token using their Create a token service which uses a bonding curve.
The whole concept is to have fun creating a token representing a community but the way they have decided to do so, using a bonding curve and adding liquidity is quite interesing. You can read more about a bonding curve in this link from Tokenomics Learning, or watch this 3 minute video (make sure you select the correct audio track for you) which explains the basic concepts and benefits of using a bonding curve to provide liquidity for a token.
The site is pretty straight forward, you login with your Solana wallet (I used phantom), add the token name and ticker and select an image to represent it. You can add social media links if you want to and then you select how much you want to purchase to start the bonding curve.
I decided to create The City Hackers token (TCH) using a comic image created with AI.
and purchased about $10 of Solana to launch the token.
Pump And Fun provides the charts, the buy/sell option for anyone to join the party and a chat and video streaming services to engage with the audience. Here's the link to the site with the info about the token.
To me, these community interaction services, together with the bonding curve token launch make it a nice tool to manage a community which may be thinking on dealing with their own token.
I remember the times when first sites for token creation appeared in Ethereum and most of the L2 EVM chains. And also how you could use tools as thirdweb to easily launch your own token in any of those chains creating your own smart contract forked from audited sites. Yes, you created your token, but no liquidity was added unless you added some at an external DEX such as Uniswap or Sushiswap. Pump And Fun has added the bonding curve concept which adds liquidity and all the conversation elements needed to engage with the participants.
You can see a newly created token which is about to launch their first life streaming session on this screenshot
Once the token is created you can see it on Solana Explorer and also find it on Jupiter , the most used finance app in Solana, all you have to do is search using the ticker. Apparently you can also buy and sell on MEXC centralized exchange.