Meet Y Combinator’s memecoin bet that made $10M last week
Throughout much of the memecoin-fueled boom in Solana application revenue, the leaderboard has looked like this: pump.fun, Phantom, and an established group of so-called trading bots.
That stasis broke in recent weeks as a new competitor quietly climbed the ranks. Axiom, an online trading platform combining trading bot capabilities with Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures product, is now solidly in second place behind pump.fun in terms of Solana app revenue.
Last week, pump.fun saw $12.2 million in revenue, while Axiom was close behind with around $10.5 million, according to Blockworks Research. Phantom, with around $4.3 million, was a semi-distant third.
Axiom was co-founded by a pair of 22-year-old UC San Diego graduates, Henry Zhang and Preston Ellis. The computer science majors “had nothing really to do” in college, but they were both into crypto trading, so they built a couple of projects in their free time, Zhang told me.
Ellis was finishing up college,...