All good, I wouldnt say conflating, they both use bonding curves that Uniswap pioneered
For the uninitiated:
Uniswap’s liquidity pool concept changed crypto forever and there are infinite code branches from that at this point. Pump.fun is a homegrown version of the same blueprint, with scripted automation and gamification built on top of it.
What used to be separate processes and cost teams tens of thousands of dollars to code and review (creating a token, getting it audited), is now rolled into a click of a button for pennies free.
Pump fun creates your token, fills it in a liquidity pool, initiates the initial purchases for price discovery, and locks the dev into a game where the it stays in the pump fun smart contract until the token hits a certain marketcap, then it transfers the liquidity pool (which is a bearer asset itself) into a more open trading smart contract called Raydium. This is an important goal because people provide liquidity with their own capital to raydium liquidity pools, increasing the collective respect and liquidity depth. These marker makers earn basis points from trades through the liquidity pool. (I so wish this was available on the stock market, coming soon I hope). Pumpfun keeps all their trade volume earnings to themselves.
Look at how much pump fun has earned over the past year. Launchpads are lucrative.
