The Launchpad Journey of PING and the Protocol Upgrade of PAYAI: The Transformation Logic in a Bear Market

In the past two days, the most common question regarding $PING and $PAYAI has been: why are these two projects not pumping and instead busy with other things? A MEME coin has started a Launchpad, while a utility Token is looking to migrate to a different pool, making it seem like they are abandoning their projects. It is indeed filled with uncertainty.

To be honest, with the environment being like this, no one feels secure. However, I can share some of my observations:

Both projects make sense doing this

The biggest problem with MEME coins is the lack of continuous empowerment. They rely entirely on consensus and emotion to survive. Technical tools like Facilitator have a low ceiling and a low technical threshold, resulting in both projects currently lacking support from the “confidence aspect.”

PING and PAYAI's recent moves are actually focused on improving their respective shortcomings: PING aims to strip away pure MEME attributes with Launchpad to establish a positive feedback loop; PAYAI, on the other hand, is upgrading from tool attributes to infrastructure protocol layer through token migration. These are all upgrades that can open up imaginative possibilities.

Can only talk logic, because the coin hasn't been delivered yet

The fact that PING is doing a launchpad is actually not surprising. In a bear market with basic fundamentals, there is no sentiment or consensus to maintain prices. The x402 track narrative it ignited is likely to extinguish due to its overly MEME-like attributes. However, if it changes to the identity of a Launchpad platform coin, it will be different—relying on projects released by the platform, one, two, or three continuously experimenting until finding a good liquidity node, completing its transformation. From this perspective, this strategic upgrade is indeed clever.

PAYAI's token migration is more likely to cause misunderstandings. Many people say the project party has run out of chips and is using migration to control the situation. But if it were really a conspiracy, wouldn't using FUD be more effective? So I tend to think the project party has seen the ceiling of the Facilitator tool's attributes and wants to upgrade to a protocol layer to continuously empower the token—staking mechanisms, reward systems, ecological incentives, and CEX locking can all be integrated. Looking at it from a longer perspective, this decision isn't bad.

Why doesn't the market understand these actions?

Most people are entering the x402 track with the mindset of MEME coin. They are still thinking in the way of MEME coin - pump once and leave. However, the growth logic of the x402 track is completely different from what MEME can bear, and it is not possible to see results in the short term.

PING's Launchpad is just the beginning of the asset issuance narrative on the x402 track. It might be very successful, or it could be terrible. But more Launchpads are still in the works. Just look at the ideas of those projects in the x402 Market to feel the signal — the new round of Launchpads is not just about issuing useless coins. Use cases like Gamefi and Socialfi can all be integrated to issue tokens, which is a significant improvement over purely chatting tokens.

The protocol service layer upgrade of PAYAI is even more subtle. I've heard that this team has a strong technical and engineering mindset. The emergence of such teams in a bear market is actually a good thing – they have enough time to prove themselves. And Facilitator happens to be a niche track where value capture and business space can be both large and small. The new positioning is precisely the beginning of the team's continuous empowerment of Facilitator, ultimately changing Facilitator's position and value capture ability within the x402 ecosystem.