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Through much of the Memecoin fuel boom in Solana application revenue, the leaderboards looked like an established group of Pump.Fun, Phantom, and so-called trading bots.
The horse has broken down in recent weeks as new competitors quietly appeared. Axiom, an online trading platform that combines trading bot capabilities with Hyperliquid’s permanent futures products, ranks second behind Pump.Fun in terms of Solana App Revenue.
Last week, Pump.Fun generated $12.2 million in revenue, while Axiom approached about $10.5 million, according to BlockWorks Research. About $4.3 million Phantom was half-distal third.
Axiom was co-founded by a pair of 22-year-old UC San Diego alumni Henry Zhang and Preston Ellis. My computer science major was “really nothing to do” in college, but both were involved in crypto trading so I built some projects at a free time, Zhang told me.
Ellis was a graduate of college, but Zhang was just beginning as a software engineer for Tiktok when Solana Memocoin’s Crazi began taking off. The pair decided to build a platform that rivals their chosen trading bot, Photon. They built their early products in mid-2024 and were selected for the winter batch of Y Combinator, the prestigious startup accelerator counting as graduates of Airbnb, Coinbase and Reddit. Zhang and Ellis said the Y combinator connected with Jordan Fish, a crypto entrepreneur known as X’s Cobie.
Trading bots are like dex aggregators with soups that are specialized in landing crypto transactions quickly and successfully. They are popular among users such as sniping. This is the term for purchasing memo coins immediately after they are created. Axiom is only web apps, but most are built on Telegram.
Although it’s a busy area, Axiom has separated from the pack in recent weeks. According to Dune Dashboard, in late February, Trading Bots Photos, Bullx and Trojan combined approximately 75% of the Solana Trading Bot volume. Today, Axiom has over 50% of its market share alone.
Why does Axiom lead so much income? Danny Knettel, a research analyst at Blockworks, told 0xResearch Newsletter’s Donovan Choy that Axiom’s Secret Sauce combines two of the most popular trading products of the moment, Solana Memecoins and Hyperquid Perpetual Futures. Knettel said he’s heard rumors that other crypto teams are considering offering these two products.
