Tron founder Justin Sun has announced a major shift in tokenomics for the SunPump (SUN) platform. The community has voted to implement a 100% on-chain buyback and burn process, effective from September 3, 2024. This decision marks a departure from the initial plan to burn liquidity pool (LP) tokens, a strategy inspired by mainstream meme tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB).
In his announcement, Sun explained that while LP token burning can increase liquidity depth and maintain regulatory friendliness, the concept proved too complex for many community members to grasp, leading to confusion. The new on-chain approach is designed to be more straightforward and transparent, with all transactions immutably recorded on the blockchain for easy verification. This method mirrors strategies used by other major entities like Binance for its BNB token.
The strategic shift comes amidst intense competition in the meme coin launchpad space. SunPump, launched on the Tron blockchain in August 2024, is directly competing with the Solana-based platform Pump.fun. Pump.fun has established itself as a leader, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $81.4 billion, a total value locked (TVL) of $5 billion, and over $105 million in revenue from launching 193,000 tokens.
However, SunPump is rapidly gaining ground. In less than four weeks since its launch, it has generated 7 million TRX in total revenue, with its biggest day—August 20—earning nearly 2.78 million TRX (roughly $400,000) from over 6,000 memecoins created. SunPump boasts a higher daily active user (DAU) count and a TVL of $8.21 billion, surpassing Pump.fun's TVL. Both platforms, however, face challenges with low DEX conversion rates (SunPump at 2.1%, Pump.fun at 1.4%).
Concurrently, the Tron network and its native token TRX are experiencing a significant surge. TRX price has soared 21% over the past week, climbing from $0.126 to $0.1524 and entering the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. This rally is largely attributed to the excitement and increased network activity driven by the SunPump launch.
On-chain transactions on the Tron network have jumped 124%, with transactions between $100 and $10,000 seeing particular growth. On a single day, transactions in the $100-$1,000 range surpassed $100 million, while those between $1,000 and $10,000 exceeded $50 million. The network's daily transactions have hit nearly 8 million, supported by its capacity of 2,000 transactions per second and a substantial $60 billion liquidity pool in TRON-based USDT.
The launch has also spurred the growth of specific meme coins on the platform, such as $sunkong, $wolf, and $shiro, which have seen their market caps rise above $1 million rapidly. Technical analysis suggests TRX is on a bullish trajectory, trading above its 100-day Simple Moving Average. If momentum holds, it could target $0.1480 and potentially $0.1520.
