The Solana Token Launchpad Coming for Venture Capital | Ryan Connor
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: The Solana Token Launchpad Coming for Venture Capital | Ryan Conner
This episode of Lightspeed, featuring Ryan Conner, Head of Research at Blockworks Research, centers on the emergence of Belief, a new Solana-based token launchpad that is positioning itself as a curated platform for funding indie application developers, effectively acting as a “meme coin launchpad for venture capital.”
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is the intersection of meme coin mechanics (Solana ecosystem) and early-stage startup capital formation, specifically targeting the underserved cohort of indie application developers who typically cannot access traditional Venture Capital (VC). Secondary themes include the evolution of token launchpads, the implications of “vibe-coding,” and the regulatory ambiguity surrounding token issuance.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Curation vs. Permissionless: Belief differentiates itself from platforms like Pump Fun by offering a curated experience. While anyone can launch a token, the Belief team filters and features projects attached to interesting app ideas on their iPhone app, appealing to users wary of the “trench game” on open platforms.
- Vibe-Coding and Rapid Prototyping: The speed of modern development tools (like Cursor) combined with the instant price discovery of meme coins allows founders to “vibe-code” an idea, launch a token on Belief, and gauge market resonance before committing significant resources to building the actual application.
- Feature Parity with Launchpads: Unlike Zora (which the hosts argue stripped out necessary financial features to appeal to an “ETH native” narrative), Belief retains essential launchpad features like price charts, allowing users to assess the relative financial characteristics of the tokens.
3. Market/Investment Angle
- Underserved Capital Market: Belief targets indie app developers whose per-app revenue rarely reaches VC-scale outcomes ($150k–$7M top percentile), meaning they are ignored by traditional venture funding. Belief offers them a mechanism to monetize potential equity or raise small amounts of capital.
- Retail Demand for VC Upside: There is strong latent demand from retail investors for venture-like upside in small-cap, high-risk projects, which meme coin markets currently satisfy. Belief attempts to channel this demand toward actual, albeit nascent, application ideas.
- Risk of Association: The reliance on meme coin liquidity means founders are taking on capital backers (meme coin traders) who might have “crazy demands” or bring negative baggage, as evidenced by the controversy surrounding the Jeff Hu (ZeroRow creator) situation.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Belief: The central project, a curated Solana token launchpad for indie app developers, led by founder Ben Pastor (previously founded the “Nugs” fake chicken nugget startup).
- Pump Fun: Mentioned as the highly successful, non-curated benchmark for meme coin launches on Solana.
- Zora: Used as a counter-example; criticized for removing necessary financial features to mask its function as a token launchpad.
- Ledger: Featured as a sponsor, highlighting their hardware wallets’ support for securing SOL and SPL tokens.
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
- Legal Ambiguity and Risk Transfer: The platform explicitly states tokens are not promising returns, ownership, or financial rights, aiming to keep them in the “collectible” or “fun” zone to avoid securities classification.
- Front-Running Regulation: Conner argues that founders must “front-run” regulatory change (like Uber or Airbnb did) rather than waiting for clarity, as delaying means missing the market opportunity entirely.
- Blame on Regulators: The current messy middle state where issuers struggle to balance utility with compliance is attributed to the lack of regulatory clarity over the past several years under the current administration.
6. Future Implications
The conversation suggests a future where capital formation becomes increasingly rapid and tied to market sentiment (“vibe-coding era”). Belief represents an attempt to formalize and curate this process, potentially creating a viable, albeit risky, alternative funding source for small-scale builders who are currently excluded from traditional VC. The market is expected to normalize over time, reducing the most extreme volatility seen in early meme coin launches.
7. Target Audience
Crypto professionals, Web3 investors, Solana ecosystem participants, and founders interested in novel capital formation mechanisms and the evolution of token launchpads beyond pure speculation.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
đź’¬ Key Insights
"Kickstarter promises you a T-shirt or a version of the board game that you're funding or whatever it is, and they seem to have done fine. So what is meaningfully different about this thing, Kickstarter? And if Kickstarter did the securities thing, why can't Belief?"
"It's going to be a cat and mouse, but at the end of the day, it's not going to stop—it's not going to stop Pump from being successful for the same reason that MEV is not going to stop a chain from being successful, or it's not going to stop NASDAQ from being successful."
"This is meant to discourage what I think is the worst thing about Pump: which is that a majority of tokens are bought immediately after their launch, like in the same block."
"they have some kind of partnership with Medior where the bonding curve that these Belief tokens trade on has an anti-bot mechanism where the fees are initially higher until it gets to a certain market cap, and then the fees drop."
"it's frankly those guys' fault that we're in the situation we're in today. Regulatory clarity should have been an eight-year-ago thing, and it just never happened."
"Is this thing deeply unethical? Because I think from a thousand-foot view, you're a founder with an idea, you are asking people, or allowing people, to invest in a meme coin related to your idea with the sense that you may build an app in the future... but you're given no actual equity rights. What we know about meme coins is they always trend to zero."