Journalist
Hassan Shittu
Journalist
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BonkFun has rolled out a new incentive structure aimed squarely at traders, marking another step in how Solana’s meme coin launchpads are quietly reshaping who gets rewarded.
The rollout of new features on Bonkfun shows a deeper infrastructure shift, highlighting growing competition among meme launchpads as rival Pumpfun also pushes through its own structural changes.
The update, announced on X, introduces “Winners Arc,” a weekly trading competition that will distribute $200,000 to the most profitable traders on supported USD1 pairs via Axiom Exchange.
Rather than focusing on creators or deployers, the program ranks participants by realized profit and pays the top 50 traders each week directly on Axiom.
BonkFun Reworks Incentives to Reward Profitable Trading
The structure involves traders operating on supported USD1 pairs during the active reward window and finishing the week with positive realized PnL.
The size of the prize pool, combined with the explicit focus on trading skill rather than token creation, signals a clear shift in priorities.
BonkFun described the launch as its first concrete step toward “putting trenchers first,” a phrase that has increasingly defined its recent messaging.
BonkFun COO Solport Tom framed the move as part of a broader reset. He said the team had spent months reworking its systems to address what it saw as structural problems, particularly around creator fees.
Tom noted that the partnership with Axiom and the weekly rewards are meant to make BonkFun competitive again after a period where incentives drifted away from active traders.
User reactions show that framing, with some welcoming the return of a leaderboard that makes performance visible and others joking about returning to near-round-the-clock trading.
Just last week, BonkFun announced “BONK Classic” launches with zero creator fees and a reduced 0.30% swap fee, most of which is routed back into liquidity.
BonkFun kept an alternative option through its “BONKERS” launches, where creator fees can be higher but swap fees are reduced, giving communities a choice between trader-first and creator-first economics.
Divergence in Strategy: BonkFun Courts Traders as Pump.fun Doubles Down on Creators
This trader-centric turn stands in contrast to Pump.fun, which continues to emphasize creator economics even as it introduces new features.
Earlier in January, Pump.fun overhauled its creator fee system, allowing fees to be split across multiple wallets and adjusting how they scale with market capitalization.
While the team acknowledged that past incentives skewed too heavily toward low-risk coin creation, it has stopped short of removing creator fees altogether.
The divergence is visible in the data, as over the past 24 hours, Pump.fun saw more than 24,500 tokens created, compared with about 3,290 on BonkFun.
Pump.fun also led in volume, active addresses, and fee generation by a wide margin.
Yet BonkFun’s changes suggest it is less focused on raw issuance numbers and more on re-attracting experienced traders through lower friction and direct rewards.
Taken together, the developments point to a subtle but deliberate shift in the meme coin launchpad landscape.
BonkFun is betting that rewarding traders and reducing creator extraction will rebuild engagement from the trading side.
Pump.fun is maintaining its creator-driven model while layering in funding, social features, and structural tweaks.
The competition has not turned overt, but the incentives on each platform are moving in different directions, reshaping the playfield without openly declaring a fight.
