Sanctum Acquires GoFundMeme

Sanctum Governance
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Very much a heat check at this stage.

GoFundMeme are a reasonably innovative token launchpad on Solana and they’re looking for someone to take over the project.

Given sanctum is now acquiring transaction infra, and they already have LSTs, would it make any sense to acquire the platform and integrate sanctum services and tokens (INF) into it?

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More context on GoFundMeme looking for someone to take over? Why?

Initial thoughts: not sure if it’s in Sanctum’s ethos to operate a memecoin launchpad

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So let’s start out by reminding everyone that this is a wilder idea. But the less obvious ideas are often where the biggest wins come from (also where the majority of bad ideas come from too…)

Are memecoins really not in Sanctum’s ethos? @fplee you once wrote an essay, which I really enjoyed, call ‘earnest memecoins’ (sadly, no longer available) in which you laid out a broad thesis for memecoins that didn’t fit the mould of the generally accepted memecoin meta we have today.

As we can see from Pump’s move towards streaming and social media (which is all long term focus, you don’t “rug” your social profile every 5 mins and be successful) and projects like Believe coming out (this idea of internet capital markets for start ups on chain), there is a deliberate move (for at least part of the space) away from the casino aspect of token launchers.

GFM (GoFundMeme) is much like FLaunch (How it Works) in that (least the advanced option) looks a lot more like a token project launcher rather than an memecoin launcher, with in-built staking and team allocations.

A little while ago the original deployment pools on Meteora for GFM were hit by an exploit which drained a few million. As this was a project that still hadn’t gotten a heap of traction yet that proved to be catastrophic to their growth. That and, IMO, GFM came out too early (we were only just at the start of Pump copy cats) and never committed fully to their advanced mode (their USP) so had one foot in each camp: more serious project builder AND pump copy paste casino. With a small team you can only ever do UA (user acquisition) well for one and they didn’t do enough.

So now the team are canvasing for a buyer. I’ve been following them for a while and according to the TG they’ve been in discussions with a few people but nothing has come to fruition yet.

For Sanctum I see the opportunity here as the following. NOTE: I only refer here to the advanced mode, I don’t think their Pump clone side has any legs left in it.

  • they have the basics of a framework for launching tokens that resemble internet capital markets more closely. transparent token allocations and unlocks. token staking. it’s a lot more than what Believe has.
  • There’s a mechanism to stake the platform via $GFM itself. At present it’s a very simple rev share but I think that can be expanded to be shared liquidity token (think what $JLP is) and this become like the ‘VC token’ of the platform. As in users could, collectively, be VCs to the platform via that liquidity token.
  • Sanctum have transaction infra they can leverage to offer optimal performance to token projects launching here (…or relaunching here..)
  • If projects launching here are more serious, and much less concerned with ‘the casino’ why not integrate LSTs deeply into the liquidity? Or just use INF instead of SOL? If you’re looking for long term (both creators AND backers) yield makes all the sense in the world.

It’s still a pretty wild idea (as I flagged at the start). The token launcher space is crammed full of teams and being successful in the traditional sense still requires large investments in UA (something Sanctum don’t have experience in or the talent for yet). However GFM is no longer competing in that specific space IMO, their failure to capture enough of that main market leaves them only viable as a much smaller niche focusing on a small now but potentially much larger space which is: on chain start ups. Last cycle these were serviced by NFTs. And largely they still are. Pudgy Penguins, BAYC, Doodles etc.. are all serious projects worth billions of dollars and they raised via NFTs.

One could argue a project like BONK raised via it’s “memecoin”.
If Pump were have to focused on incubating the next ‘Bonk’ then they wouldn’t exist today as their token launchpad model doesn’t not profit from long term winners.

Someone will build a model that profits from long term winners and the GFM model with shared liquidity staking might be it.

(or it’s not. most ideas end up being bad ideas after all).