Pump’s Bull Case, Fomo’s Social Moat & Crypto’s Consumer Layer

Transcript

Nothing said on ZeroX Research is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. GM GM, welcome back to another episode of ZeroX Research. Joined today with bunch of brainpower from the Blockworks Research team. Shonda Devins, Carlos, and Average Joe's Crypto, uh Ryan. And all these guys are wearing green today, uh manifesting the new bull market. Again, it's a early cycle for the initiated and optimistic so.

How are you feeling today, guys? >> Feeling good. How about you? >> Feeling great, man. Great to be on the pod again. >> Likewise. >> So, we've seen some activity back in the trenches. Uh meme coin volumes are showing a little bit of a resurgence, and uh pump fun is up over 100% off of the low. And it's something we've been looking at for a little bit of time now. Uh it kind of comes right in line with a big unlock cliff a lot of [snorts] people were worried about, um but at the same time revenue is up around 60% over the past few weeks. So, curious how are

you guys feeling about the investment case for Pump here? >> I mean, I will say one thing, which is my framework for investing is the market is always right. And previously, I think it was very clear that Pump was generating a lot of revenue. It has a very unique product market fit, and it's just really entrenched in like the meme coin gambling infrastructure layer. You see like there are a lot of builders that are doing well routing through them, and they're generally doing very well, but there was just a huge question of like transparency, right? We have very little understanding in what's going on behind the scenes. We know that 50% of revenue goes back to the token. Well, I think like everyone was

very suspicious. One, how are the revenue and volumes like so consistent even when everything else is like in a cyclical downturn. And two, I think the question is if there if the buy backs are so high, how is it that price is still going down, right? It doesn't really make any sense, especially when you look at hype and other tokens that were also buying back like less amounts and and performing much better in terms of price. It's like the question you ask yourself is, okay, what's going on behind the scenes? Surely someone knows something that I don't. And I think that a lot of people kind of just went with that mindset like me as well. And that's a very easy decision to make when the

price is going down, right? Because you're validated. And you don't really need to look deeper. But as soon as that changes and as soon as like there's the price is going up, you need to kind of re-evaluate your bias and you need to think again like, okay, the market is right. Price is going up for a reason. Your reason for not buying previously was based on like it not being transparent enough. But once the start price starts to go up, like it's ironic, right? It goes up, you need to start re-evaluating that. And I think if we make the case that we're going into a new kind of cycle, like this is the beginning stages of that cycle, on chain is going to do very well again. Like that's what we see when retail gets on boarded. Pump is like a

critical core piece of infrastructure. It trades at a very, very reasonable valuation relative to Solana. Um there are a lot of synergy with the trading terminals that are also one of the breakout consumer apps that I think will are going to continue to grow. And I just think the risk reward is it it starts to look very good at these prices. And it's also very easy to cut it, right? Like once the price goes down a bit, you are invalidated and you take some off the table. That's generally how I see it.

>> Yeah, I mean, just to build a little bit on that. There's a lot of points, but maybe two points that I would point out is that I think that the two biggest risks that people saw with pump have been quietly addressed in recent months. And the market is is starting to absorb that information. The first one is transparency. There was a lot of lack of trust in the team and that maybe people thought that buybacks were discretionary before, even though they were like 100% of revenue. I think the move in April to a programmatic buyback and burn and allocating 50% to buybacks was the right decision and that's sort of alleviated some of those concerns. And I think that the team has

also made stronger, albeit not sufficient, IR efforts since. And then the second thing is, and I think probably more important, is that people have always framed the bear case of pump fund as some variation of revenue durability. In the sense that people have argued that meme coins are in a secular decline and that the fees that pump fund generates are not sustainable enough. And that merits a discount. That's sort of how the argument goes.

But at this point, like I think the data is sort of like beating the narrative. In the sense that if you look at pump fund's revenue over the past year, it has maintained a weekly floor of $6 million in revenue. And it's been growing over the past few weeks to a high or what we see here. This is the daily, but a high of like 11 million or something. On the weekly. So I think that at some point you have to recognize that the revenue is far more durable than you could initially like attribute. Uh and I think those two pieces of information are being priced in.

Obviously, there's some reflexiveness in in pump. Like as it goes up, like people trade more on chain and like they it becomes like more bullish, etc. But like I think that those two things are having critical for pump uh doing well. And maybe the last thing I will say is that this price action also looks like uh a combination of like these improving fundamentals plus uh bullish unlocks. Uh pump had some significant unlocks like last month, I think. And it's going to continue having monthly unlocks. But I think uh to what Shawn was saying like uh before they were buying back 100% of the with the revenue the token. And the token still kept

going down. Uh my opinion is that probably a lot of the insiders and like early investor investors had already hedged out or like exited their positions OTC. And so, I don't think that many people are willing to sell at these prices now. Uh and hence you remove another overhang if you see that you have unlocks and and the price is not going down, that's also another bullish signal in my opinion. >> Yeah, looking at the uh vesting schedule here, I think likely for the better part of the past year a lot of public market investors were decently concerned about this big cliff here in July um at the one-year

mark from TGE. But that's behind us now and um and the coin's rallying. And same deal with the uh the narrative that meme coins are perhaps in a secular decline. Like the revenue data and the data on volumes of meme coins, like they stopped declining. They showed a pretty durable floor. Um So, no longer going down, but at least going sideways and in recent weeks back up to the right a little bit.

And even though buybacks are are less than what they were uh historically as a percentage of total revenue, um seems like the the flows picture has become optimistic enough to warrant that re-rating to the upside. Um One point you made, Shondo, was, you know, some some investors may have been concerned about, you know, the the crime narrative. Uh you mentioned you ran your your Claude program for 10 hours or whatnot, looking at the on-chain data to see if you can find any any crime. Uh any findings there?

>> Yeah, I mean yeah, for context, there are a lot of people using their ChatGPT credits to solve math like the hardest math questions. So, I thought to myself, if it can solve those problems, it can definitely go get to the bottom of if Pump is committing crime or not, because everything's on chain. And I did have it running overnight, and it said that the the picture looks very little like crime. Like everything looks legit, and I think it it it's hard to at this point make the case that those revenues and volumes are not real. Like at this point, everything's on chain. We have the tools to figure out if it's fraud or

not. Like I'm inclined to believe they're real. It's obviously a lot of bots driving a lot of the volume, but I don't think that that's being like washed. I Like I think a lot of people say that they're pumping revenue back into token and buying it back and making it look like there's activity when everything is just circular, I don't think that's the case. So, just for some context here, we removed general wash trading from our dashboard on Pump. So, that is already accounted for in the figure you see on our Pump Fun dashboard.

And the accounting math for the revenue and the cash flows are correct as well. What you perhaps don't have visibility as an investor and is not on chain are the expenses of Baton Corporation, which is the entity behind uh Pump. So, one of the theories could be right that um and this is just speculation that Pump could be paying people to deploy on on their platform or paying traders to trade on Pump instead of other platforms, etc.

So, that's why you don't generally have visibility unless you have visibility into Baton Corporation's accounting books right? Uh but this is a problem that most crypto companies have in the sense that we usually don't have visibility into expenses, we only have visibility into the revenue that is on chain. So, I don't think this is necessarily a valid point to discredit uh Pump. It's It's just pointing out that maybe the numbers aren't as attractive if you looked into the expenses. But my own counter argument for this is that for assets that have programmatic buybacks, you don't necessarily need a perfect income statement in the sense

that if you are right about your growth assumptions, you can model pretty well what will go into the token, which at the end of the day is the asset that you own. Um so, that's that is sort of my framework for Pump. I've also had the idea of like I I I I um entertained the idea of like pump doing crime a few months back. But at this point I think if no one has like figured out, I think it I think the numbers are legit on chain. I I think uh probably the main thing to look at would be the expenses, but yeah.

>> There were there was a recent poll where one of the pump guys said that their weekly expenses are 2 million. And they also mentioned that the foundation has 2 billion dollars of cash on hand. Which I mean that's pretty crazy. They're They're market cap is like 2.3 billion. So like it's it's super clear that if there was more transparency about the token, if even they just made a public statement that like all value is meant to accrue to this token and that even if it's just 50% going to buybacks, the rest 50% is being used to eventually over the long term grow the value of the token. I I think pump would be massively. It's just that there still exists even if if the

revenues look legit, that they've not confirmed that token is a priority. So you got to keep that in mind. Like until now I think the only thing we have is this programmatic buyback that's going to last 1 year, right? From April 2027 until uh until April 2027 and then we don't know what's going to happen from there. And it's like on the website it explicitly says like pump is not equity, doesn't represent any claims. It's like it seems like they're probably doing that for legal reasons, but at the same time there's like nothing otherwise to suggest that ultimately pump is going to accrue the value.

>> Yeah, I mean you get into sort of like the token equity debate here, which will probably uh probably listeners are tired of hearing this, but yeah, it's uh it's it's probably more of a transparency issue at this point. Um but yeah, I I I think I agree with with your take. >> So, looking at pump buybacks, I mean, we saw revenue set its floor and climb back up to the right. Uh, on-chain volumes back up into the right, but uh, the positive bid from buybacks is still down significantly.

Um, uh, as a result of of low lowering that amount total revenue share going to buybacks. Um, do you think this was the right decision? Like, how much of that free cash flow should you be shipping back into the token? And does that strengthen or or weaken the the bull case here? >> I mean, in my opinion, it strengthens the bull case. Uh, like, before it was 100%, but it was discretionary, and like, money doesn't grow on trees. So, at some point, you have to recognize that they have to use some part of that revenue to actually put it into productive like use cases to reinvest into the growth of the

platform. Uh, and right now, I'm expecting like, if growth continues, that 50% allocated to buybacks will eventually surpass what was previously 100%, if that makes sense. Uh, so I think it's bullish, and it it's also programmatic, so it removes kind of like that discretionary concern that people had. But I know Ryan probably had something to say. >> Yeah, I think I I don't think like, in principle, there's anything wrong with them like lowering it to, you know, like, you have to run a business. Not everyone's hyperliquid.

It's completely okay, but like, if there any if there's any company or token that could be similar to hyperliquid in this manner, probably is Pump Fun. Um, their annual cost being like $100 million a year to me is actually like kind of crazy for running like a meme coin launchpad. It seems like right now a lot of that is going towards like trying to sign traders onto their Pump Fun app, which is they're basically trying to be like a FOMO competitor and tap more into social trading. Um and like on that like I don't really have an issue with that. I I think like companies should take massive big bets and like I think that's like a valid bet to take. So So yeah, like I would be concerned if like they cut the buyback and then like

weren't trying to do anything with it, but it does seem like they are earnestly trying to like grow the business. Um people can disagree on like whether that's like the right direction or not. But they seem pretty like dead set on like this is the future of Pump Fun. Like it's not just going to be a meme coin launchpad. It's going to be like the social trading layer for for all these assets being deployed on Pump Fun and elsewhere. So yeah, I think like to Carlos's point like I think it is bullish in the sense that like there's now like guaranteed programmatic buyback.

But at the same token like there is probably if there's any company in crypto that can like get close to a hyper liquid's 97% or whatever it is to buybacks, it's it's Pump but so yeah, we'll TBD if they are able to like surpass FOMO or maybe it's a scenario where like FOMO and Pump Fun both win and revenue 10x's from here from that like we're going to look back and be like of course it was a smart idea to cut the buyback rate. So we'll see, but you can make cases both ways, I think. >> Dude, I I'll take the other side of that to both of you.

Um for Pump specifically, when you have $2 billion of cash on hand and your number one problem is that investors don't trust your intentions, the easiest thing you can do is to just say, "Okay, allocate 100% for a year, make it undoubtedly clear that our intention is to grow the value of the token." It's not like they don't have enough cash, right? Like that would really signal to people that the token is a priority. In the long term, yeah, you can decrease the percent that's allocated to buyback. Like they made that very clear in the language that once that one month one year period is over, they can change it.

But I think it would have been a very very strong signal to um investors that the token is a priority. >> But they were doing that and the token was down only and now they stopped doing that and the token's going back up. I I don't think like the trust issue stems from the buyback so much as like just like the general like growth story for PumpFun. Um I think like a lot of people still incorrectly assume like PumpFun is like the OpenSea of this cycle where meme coins were kind of like the Metafad or whatever and like now they're going to die, which I think it's like the completely wrong take. Like I think meme coins are like the most durable thing in crypto besides stable coins at this point. Like there is a whole economy of

people that just trade these things and like they're not on your feed. They're like brain They're like brain rot zoomers that just trade this [ __ ] all the time and there is quite a durable revenue stream. It's not like a sexy growth story like hyper liquid oh we're going to purpify every financial market. Um But yeah, I think that's like kind of the the misconception of the growth story. And then like obviously there is like a token equity split. I think all that stuff matters and like it's a a combination of efforts, but I don't think you could just say it's purely the buyback considering they were doing a 100% buybacks and the token was down only during that period.

>> Yeah, I mean, to preface, I still have no idea how the hell price dumped so hard during those buybacks, but I think the distinction was that those buybacks were discretionary and they could have ended at any time, whereas the 50% was like formalized over the period of a year, right? So if you were to formalize that 100% of revenue over a period of year goes back to the token, that makes a big difference over just being discretionary. Which again, it's like I'm definitely not advocating that every single crypto company needs to allocate 100% to buybacks. I think that doesn't make sense at all, but I think in this unique situation where you have the foundation that is like very well capitalized, they have $2 billion

and you have this token where it's just the obvious issue is that investors don't trust it. Like increasing from 50 to 100% I think is worth it in that case. >> I mean, yeah, totally. Like I said earlier, like if there's any project in crypto that can like replicate the hyper liquid model, it is PumpFun. They're the only one that like just prints a ridiculous amount of money and like has a massive war chest. So, 100% agree there. Like they could do it. Um But again, like I this is just like me like speculating, but there has been a lot of companies in crypto that have just like burned through massive treasuries and war chests. So, perhaps investors like actually like to see some like financial prudence and not just like, "Hey, we're

dumping everything into the token and we're going to start burning 10% of our treasury every month or whatever or something ridiculous like that." So, so yeah, I mean like I do agree if anyone can be the hyper liquid the next hyper liquid in like terms of like how they treat their token, it's PumpFun, but maybe there's actually not that strong a demand for that. Maybe there's stronger demand for like responsible financial prudence for your treasury. >> Yeah. I mean, maybe the only thing I would add here is that people have said that Pump has $2 billion in cash since the ICO happened in July last year.

So, if that was true back then and they had $2 billion in cash and back then they were allocating 100% of the revenues to buybacks, then it also has to be true that at some point they didn't have $2 billion in cash, right? They did like three acq- like three major acquisitions. Like they bought Coal Scan, which is like a wallet tracker in July 2025. They also bought bought Padra, which was like a trading terminal in October 2025. And then they bought also a cross-chain execution infrastructure called Viper in February 2026. So, I can't imagine that only those three acquisitions like would have cost like I don't know how much would that cost,

but at some point like their reserves would have gone down if they were allocating 100% to buybacks. So, they The only way I believe that they have $2 billion in cash now is because they stopped allocating 100% of their fees to buybacks, like uh at some point you have to grow that cash reserve and like and and they're clearly doing something productive with this cash flows. It's not like they're just uh like paying themselves salaries with it. So, so I do think that that that $2 billion in cash has figure has been static like in in the eyes of the public for over a year. I think that that doesn't make any sense.

>> Yeah, I mean um the latest time I saw that number being quoted was like few days ago when the Pump co-founder was on a podcast and said they have $2 billion at the time. >> Wait. Yeah, I mean it may be true, right? But and it's probably true. I'm just saying I'm just saying that they it is $2 billion because they also stopped doing like 100% buybacks, right? Like the acquisitions they did were not were not free, right? And if they were doing like 100% of fees to buybacks, then they had to do it from the cash reserve.

>> But even then if the token trades 2x higher and you have $1.5 billion instead of $2 billion, like seems like a fair trade to me. >> Trust me, bro. I are on the on the podcast. We We'd love to get some visibility into you that cash figure. I will say like if there's a time and place to ship 100% of your revenue into buybacks, I it'd likely be like near what you'd expect the floor to be in your token. So perhaps like three the recent point time past few months would have been much more appropriate for that free cash flow to the token than perhaps right after the ICO.

You just get more bang for your buck on the buyback. But ultimately like public market like likes the determinism of programmatic buybacks and just wants to see the token have have some credible claim on that. We're talking about this offline, but so say Pump is setting itself up to be high conviction long for the new new on-chain bull. If you were to put on a pair trade to take the other side, like what's that ticker?

Unsure if we get Shonda to put on Hype as as the short leg, but it certainly discussed. >> I'll put on >> [laughter] >> I'll put on Hype as the short leg. I think it's more so just from like a a flows perspective. So it's to clarify like I'm just mentally putting on this trade just for like clout. I'm not like actually putting on on my account. That's just more so like me just not really being like a huge perp trader. But I do think like Hype could be the sneaky short on this.

This is just like a tale as old as time in crypto where the best performing assets everyone piles into and now there's the new shiny thing and people are going to rotate out of that. I think there's also like been declines in like hyperliquid revenues. Um don't like think that's like long-term story, but like it certainly trades at a a pretty good multiple uh compared to pump. I think Hyperliquid trades at like a 10x higher multiple or something like that on circulating market cap. Shawn, I don't know if you have the numbers off the top of your head or not. I don't. Um but I I think from a flows perspective, like it could be a pretty compelling short.

Maybe like throw in uh Zcash as well. Just like these were kind of like the bear market darlings that like performed well. And now that like on-chain might be entering a bull market. I don't know if the majors are yet. Like money needs to rotate, and it could come from hype, and it could come from Zcash. So, again, like purely just like a clout calling pair trade on my part, but I I think like hype might be to actually like the sneaky short. And I know the counterpoint is going to be there's so much other just garbage assets, but if we are like bottoming, uh typically those garbage assets pump the hardest to start just because everyone's in shorts on them. They become the consensus assets. I don't know if you guys recall like last year after we pumped like after the the

tariff bottoms, like it was like Peanut. It was like um Mudang. Like they just put in like eight 10xs off the bottom because everyone was just short them because everyone knew they were garbage assets. So, those garbage assets will be good shorts again. I just don't know if they're good shorts if we're truly at the bottom. >> Yeah, okay. So, I guess I'll put on my counterpoint, which is and I think like both me and Ryan are saying we're spiritually short. Like we both understand it doesn't make sense to like hedge your directional risk by like shorting one of the top performing assets. Like there are a lot of dog [ __ ] coins that you can short that are probably going to make uh better short.

But like spiritually in terms of like the idea behind where these flows are going to come from, I would say probably Solana's a more appropriate bet. Luke, if you could pull up slide two, I'll kind of like walk through how I see this. And I actually feel like pump from the the reason why you take the trade is actually pretty similar to the reason that you'd allocate towards hype, which is I think if you look towards the L1 value chain and you look like where is value accruing and what does the segmentation of responsibilities look like? We're seeing a shift into a very clear separation where you have the user layer, which is like the trading terminal that's onboarding users, that's acting kind of as a broker. You have the

deployer layer, which the role of the deployer layer is to list assets that users want to trade and then you take some sort of cut on it. Like the analogous part in Hyperliquid be Trade XYZ, right? On Solana it's Pump Fun that's launching all the coins. And then at the bottom layer you have the base layer, which is just handling execution. And I think for a long time the argument was the base layer sees a lot of network effects and it has modes because of the enshrinement of apps. Like if you do well in one sector, for example, perps, you make the argument that you're going to do well in the other like spot, right? But what we're seeing is if the majority of users come from these front ends where the base layer is abstracted

a away, those front ends are just going to route through the best execution venue, right? So the front ends that listed memes through Solana, they aren't going to list Solana's perps. They're going to route through Hyperliquid. The same way users trading perps on Hyperliquid, when they go to trade memes, they're not trading Hyperliquid memes. They're going to get routed through Solana. So I think in terms of how you want to position, perps and memes are like probably the two most lucrative and most well-established sectors in crypto. And if you want to get access like exposure to both, Hyperliquid is a clear winner on the perp side. And on the meme side, if you

look at revenue valuations and you think that Pump Fun is almost just as much infrastructure bet as Solana because the user layers are routing through pump fun coins, right? They're multi-chain apps routing through pump fun because those coins are doing the best. Pump fun just looks like a much better bet and the kind of discrepancy and mispricing between Solana that has such a high premium even though it does like few times less revenue than pump fun when basically they're very very correlated in terms of uh what monetary activity they benefit from is like the correlation between Solana's REV and pump fun revenue is like over 0.9. I think you can easily make the case that the

you long pump and you short Solana. >> My only main counterpoint to that is like if the absolute bull case for pump fun plays out and like we have a return to like Q4 24, Q1 25, like SOL's going to rip. It's the casino chip at the end of the day. You don't want to be short of the casino chip if there's a gold rush for the casino chip. So that's like the only concern for me of like using SOL as the short leg just because like the success of pump is going to destroy the success of your short leg and like personally if I'm putting on like a pair trade, I don't want to like limit my upside exposure. So like in a scenario where the bull case plays out like the

the crazy bull case where pump like 10x's, revenue 10x's, like you're going to just kind of destroy your your upside potential there by taking the SOL short leg. You're probably better off like shorting other L1s at that case, I think, if like you want to put on like the L1 economics are deteriorating side of the short which like I do directly agree with you 100% Sean to but I do think you're playing with fire on the SOL short side. >> No, like dude, I agree with you 100%. That's why I said I would be spiritually short SOL in the sense that like if the market were rational, this is probably the trade that I'd put on, but the market is obviously not rational and obviously the price of pump and sell is like very correlated, so that trade would never work out. It'd be

an incredibly ridiculous trade to put on. But, spiritually, that would be my counter to your hype short leg. >> Chander, your your graphic showed both Fart Coin and Wood. Uh two two memes that were generational fumbles for me. So, did did you mean to do that? >> Unfortunately not. I guess it's just the universe. >> Yeah. Um perhaps pivoting to another incredible growth story that we've seen take place over the past uh past few months is FOMO's traction.

So, looking at this chart here of daily active traders, I mean, it's gone absolutely parabolic. Um what we can see is, you know, this shows Hyperliquid and Solana daily active traders. And it kind of shows like a a mass onboarding event. Um so, I'm curious, are do you think these are like net new users coming on chain or are they just migrating from other platforms to a new and better app?

>> I haven't seen precise numbers for that. If I had to guess, I think it's probably like majority migrating, but I I definitely do think there are new users coming on chain. Um I think FOMO got as high as like eight on the finance app leaderboards. I don't think you get that high without new your new users coming on chain. Um and I think the growth story here is incredible. Like, I I truly think like FOMO actually might be the product that like kind of bottoms on chain. Uh it's just incredible trading app for like if you're just not like a pro trader and just want to like have social signals, have easy buys, easy sells.

Uh, they've really just crushed it on the UX and like I see people on the timeline like constantly complaining like, oh, the slippage sucks. Like you're paying a 1% fee and it's like the target audience does not care about this stuff. Like they're trading if if you just like watch what FOMO users are trading, they're trading just slop. More or less like just like 100k, 200k market cap coins and I think it just goes to speak that like as much as, you know, people that have been in crypto for a while might hate meme coins and like hate this idea. Like the people that are coming on chain want to trade this stuff. For better or worse, I'm not here to judge. This is what they want to trade. They don't care about a 1% slippage, 1% fee or whatever. Like they just want easy buys, easy sells and like

a social layer on top of that. Um, and yeah, like it's just been incredible growth and like I'm now coming around to the idea that like FOMO is going to be like Phantom 2023 like on steroids where this is just like a great product that makes like crypto super accessible, easy to understand and like you're going to see just the next wave of users onboarding for crypto coming primarily from FOMO. And I think we're going to see a Pump Funds obviously like now trying to um, enter this arena. This is like social trading terminal arena. I think like everyone's going to be launching their own, but I think the moat here is actually insane cuz like the moat of FOMO is not just like it's sleek UX.

It's like the social layer and like that's like the best moat any product can build is just like having the social layer built around it. So like you can have an app like for example like Pump Funds right now is advertising like their trading app has 0% fees or whatever. It gives you better fills. That doesn't matter. Like all that like the value of these apps comes from the social layer and if like you can get actual alpha or insight from just like watching what other people are trading on FOMO. Moving over to another app, you don't get that. Um so yeah, like I I think FOMO like legitimately might be the king of this bull market.

If we get a bull market. >> Yeah, I think I agree with that. I think FOMO is the breakout app of this cycle and is the best execution we have seen yet of the social trading thesis. Like Luke, you showed the weekly active users, but also if you look at the revenue figures, uh FOMO generated like 3.2 million dollars in revenue last week, which exceeded their previous records set only one week earlier by 70% and by now they have extended their streak to eight consecutive weeks of growth. Uh so it's just been insane growth over the past two months. Uh to arrive I was saying I checked the App Store on Monday and they were 10th uh in the finance charts on the on the

US App Store. So that's also like uh some signal to me that they're expanding beyond crypto native users and reaching more uh a much broader retail audience. Um I also like we didn't discuss this when we talked about Pump, but I also think that Pump has emerged as the closest available proxy to FOMO's success in the sense that a lot of the coins that are being traded on FOMO like come from Pump, obviously. And so if you want to get exposure to FOMO's success, like right now obviously you don't have access to to FOMO's equity and they don't have a token. So I think a lot of people are also uh back like

betting on the success of FOMO translating to tailwinds uh for Pump. Uh so I also think that's another like kind of uh bull case that we didn't discuss that I think it's interesting. >> And one thing you said as well, Carlos, is um not only is FOMO perhaps like the best social trading app and UX for transacting on chain, but also like the best bridge protocol as well. And like looking at this revenue mix, um we're seeing, you know, 40 to 50% in recent weeks coming from the relay side. So, yeah, I'm curious what what your read is there

on um on FOMO as as the interop solution at of choice. >> That was just like I was on I was on Sunday, I think, and I I had previously used FOMO as a bridge, uh but like I I just had like um you know, like this lightbulb moment where I I had some money on Hypercore, and I wanted to bridge it, and I just like looked into FOMO, and like I deposited from Hyper from Hyperliquid to FOMO, and from FOMO to a Solana wallet, and that literally took like 1 minute, like tops. And and it was just like an amazing like it was the best bridge experience that I've ever had.

So, it was just like I I tweeted that after uh doing a bridge transaction myself. It's just uh no fees at all, uh incredibly quick. Yeah, you don't get that suspense that you get some bridges where you're like, "Did I send the money to the wrong network address? Did I Did I just lose lose like all my money, etc.?" So, I I I just think that beyond being obviously a great trading experience, because they've been so focused on not being like maximalist and just focused on one chain, but getting exposure to everything on chain and abstracting that away from the end user, then as an like as a byproduct almost, you you also have the best bridge

because you can just deposit from any chain you want and withdraw to any chain you want as well. So, I think that's just a very underrated feature about about the product. >> It really seems like that consumer layer is becoming the most lucrative and most monetizable layer to build on, right? Like, your role is basically abstract away the infrastructure, bring interoperability back between like different blockchains like Solana, Spot, Hyperliquid Perp, and then because you own the users, you can charge such a high premium. Like, I think so many of the apps that generated revenue have been these trading terminals. It just It's such a shame that like almost none

of them have had a liquid token to trade. >> And one one thing we discussed offline is whether or not FOMO should um kind of move down the stack and launch a a token launchpad feature. Um Given, you know, how how monetizable that product line is, do you think this would be complementary and additive to FOMO's success or is it is it too much of a mission creep from the existing product that already shows profound PMF?

>> I think it's way too much of mission creep. Um they're crushing it right now with all the other launchpads. Like, everyone and their mother is rushing to launch a launchpad. Um FOMO probably could be successful. Like, they own the user layer, but like I just I think they're just kind of limiting themselves. Like, I would be less inclined to use FOMO if it just became like the social launchpad layer. Like, personally, I don't I don't go on Pump Fun and trade on Pump Fun. And when I say Pump Fun, I mean like the the launchpad, not like the the terminal app that they have. Um so yeah, I I I think it's a mission creep. Like I think they also kind of have this vision of like they can expand beyond crypto and like kind of serve as like the social layer for all trading.

And then like relegating yourself to to mean coin launchpad, I think kind of harms that overall growth. So So yeah, like I if FOMO employees are listening to this, please do not launch a launchpad. Like I think that's just like completely ruining the overall like mission statement you guys have. >> Yeah, I mean I brought up that that that scenario just because I was trying to think of bear cases for Pump. Uh and like last year, I think it was like probably February 2025, we saw Pump announce their Pump Swap AMM and stop graduating tokens from Pump to Radium, and that was a like that that

crushed Radium's uh forward-looking revenues basically. Uh and I was trying to think of a similar scenario, but like one layer up the stack, and that for me would be like what if FOMO launches their own launchpad and they stop like routing like to Pump and like uh any other Pumps or whatever. But admittedly, I was just trying to do scenarios. Probably in practice, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Uh probably doesn't make any sense for the reasons that that Ryan was saying earlier. So yeah, that was just mainly me trying to uh think of bear cases.

Um do you guys think that FOMO is like FOMO is a trading app, right? But it's like as you guys were saying, it's also a social app. And like for years, investors have said like younger generations uh experience investing as a social activity. But for for the most part, people have had like two separate experiences, right? Like people uh watch others' opinions in X or like Telegram or TikTok or whatever, and then they move elsewhere to fund a wallet or brokerage and trade. Do you think FOMO has a chance, basically, in the bull case to be like an Instagram or like a Facebook in the sense that they are so big that that they become just a social network with like trading features on

top? >> Yeah, I mean, I I think that is the bull case for FOMO. Um FOMO to me is really compelling cuz if it works, it's not really a trading app, it's a social media app built around trading. Which, like I said, I think that's where, you know, you can actually like develop like long-term sustainable moats is around like your your brand, your image, and like the social network that you create. Um so, yeah, like I think if FOMO is just kind of seen as another trading app, it eventually like fizzles out and withers away, but if FOMO is like the next breakout social media app, and it's built around trading, which, let's be real, like trading the the general sector of trading, or however you want to define

it, has been in like a supercycle since like the launch of Robinhood or whatever. As long as that's going to continue, I think FOMO is kind of like building that um social air to it. And, honestly, like probably the biggest competitor to FOMO, I don't think it's launched Robinhood Social. Um especially like FOMO's trying to go, you know, build out of crypto and like enter kind of the equity world and like the the real world, uh Robinhood could pose like a real threat there. Um I'm not sure it will work, though, just because this is It kind of reminds me of like when a new social media site has like like think about like when TikTok started popping off, every other like existing

social media launched like Reels or like short-form videos, and they never I mean, they got popular, but never to the size that TikTok got. So, so maybe it's a similar situation there, but But, yeah, like the ultimate bull case for FOMO is it's a social media website built around trading, not a trading app with social media features, if that makes sense. >> Yeah. Now, and then maybe this is a ridiculous question, right? But like imagine like it becomes a very successful like social application, right? Then like a lot of like teens and whatever go on Instagram or like TikTok or or or whatnot, but like isn't it an issue that teenagers would be going on FOMO? Like no KYC, no whatever, and just like uh

gambling basically on on Slope? >> Well, yes. Um yeah. We really don't have a good answer there. Yeah, like it definitely is an issue and I would imagine like for FOMO to the this will like if if FOMO becomes super popular, um this will absolutely happen where they'll they'll have to implement some form of KYC. Uh the heavy-handed government is always looming and they're probably just it's probably just too small right now for people for govern- the government to actually care about this stuff. Um but also at the same side like there is never I don't think you need a KYC to sign up for social media, so so maybe

not, but obviously there is a financial aspect. You need to KYC to to onboard onto to gambling apps. Um so TBD. I mean, I I do think that's something that will come down the line, especially if FOMO goes 100 X in users from here and like you start seeing horrible news stories about 13-year-olds stealing their parents' debit card and losing their family's life savings. Um that's obviously like scary and a risk, but you see those same stories today in regular social media. It's just a facet of the world that we live in, so I wouldn't get like too caught up on that, but but I think you are directly right.

Like if FOMO is the next breakout social media app built around trading, they'll they'll have to implement KYC of some sorts. Hopefully by then we have like ZK KYC where like they you can KYC them without like actually revealing your identity and just proving like, "Hey, I'm 18. I'm a citizen or whatever you need to do." >> I'm I'm just curious, would you guys let your kids use FOMO or would you ban them from using it? >> FOMO with parental controls. I don't know. I I personally got into trading when I was like pretty young. I think it's good for like kids to have some like sort of financial acumen

before they they turn 18. However, would I want my kids just trading like the latest slot coins from pump fun? I'm not sure I want them developing a gambling addiction at the age of 13. So, maybe maybe like FOMO can implement some sort of if this ever happens like some sort of like strict list where it's like long-term investments. Maybe you like onboard your your Trump account into the FOMO app and just trade your Trump account from there. Um but yeah, I would not want my kids trading pump fun coins, but I I do think there is value in it like if the if the world they're they're growing up in is like socialized trading, I think you're kind of harming them by not letting them participate in that. I think you just have to do it in a tasteful manner.

>> Yeah, trying to be a responsible parent. I I would expect myself to do the best I could to evangelize index funds um to my child, but at the same time I I fully understand there's no better way to to learn how markets move than to be in the be in the arena and putting on positions, but at the same time I I don't think meme coins are the positions that can best teach my kids um about how markets work. So. >> Yeah, I mean that would be my position as well. I feel like trading is like one of the best things you can do. It teaches you how to think rationally. It teaches you how to take risks and how to think about stuff in terms of like

expected value that has like a lot of carryover into your life cuz a lot of things and decisions you make is like similar to a trade, right? You have some sort of expected outcome and some risk you're taking on and it it helps you kind of frame a mental model for your decisions. But that only works if you're kind of trading in a market that has some respect for fundamentals and you're trading certain like more mature assets. It doesn't work if you're like buying six seven coin or you know, like some dog coin on FOMO. So. It it it would be sad if it kind of takes away that lesson of like learning how to actually trade and replace it with just like gambling and buying slop.

>> I'd let my kid buy one meme coin, but I'll make sure it's a meme coin I like 90% bundle and bundle and and drop the bundle on his head just so he never has the inclination to trade meme coins again. >> Using our children as as exit liquidity, fantastic strategy. Um yeah, broadly like on on the idea of social trading, part of me is like do I do I want my friends or my audience to see my like brutal generational round trips? Part of me is like no, but at the same time when I have those, I consistently find myself like sharing those and they it's almost therapeutic in a form of self-reflection

and at the same time like the incredible wins or the losses or the round trips, they're always wildly entertaining. Um they're they're really fascinating form of entertainment that you know, we've seen exemplified with like success success of Wall Street bets and what not. So, I think long run like there's absolutely something there. >> I think this was a good call though. >> In that case, I will do a little exit.

All right, guys. Want to thank you all for coming on and uh wearing green shirts to manifest green for for the new bull. Um Think it'll come in time just for uh our conferences coming up. Uh Digital Asset Summit Asia, first time we're running it in Asia out in Singapore at the Marina Bay Sands, October 7th. I know Kunal and I believe Shonda will be there as well. Um so, definitely highly recommend attending to get get some inside alpha from there. Um I think hopefully Shonda's going to be uh running a nice fireside with Jeff from Hyperliquid at DAS Asia. So, not one to

miss. And then the other one coming up in November, November 10th through 11th um at the Hilton Park Lane in London. Uh running back DAS London. Uh I know I'll be at that one um and Digital Asset Summit series is yeah, never one to miss. Definitely some of the highest quality conversations uh you can have in the industry and um what we've seen just year-over-year running Digital Asset Summit is, you know, the sentiment from this institutional audience has grown from uh high curiosity to at this point high intent. And I think what we'll see both end of this year and going into next year at the DAS series is it'll grow

into high action. Um so, that's that's something I'm looking forward to. So, with that, yeah. Shonda, Ryan, and Carlos, I to thank you guys for coming on and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. >> Nothing said on ZeroEx research is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Luke and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.