One of the Venmo co-founders, Iqram Magdon-Ismail, and an early investor in the mobile payment app, Sam Lessin, have launched a token on Pump.fun called Jelly-my-jelly (JELLYJELLY), which quickly soared to a $250 million market cap. The token is expected to support the pair’s upcoming JellyJelly video sharing app.
Despite its origins, the token’s rumored utility actually excludes it from the meme coin category. It’s the latest in an early trend of projects using Pump.fun to launch tokens that will later tie in to a new product.
JELLYJELLY debuted on token launchpad Pump.fun late on Wednesday, graduating to Raydium almost instantly after Lessin posted the link to his X, formerly known as Twitter, account.
Initially there was speculation that Lessin—who was a seed investor in Solana as well as Venmo—had been hacked. But then Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko reposted the X post.
In response, the token skyrocketed 1,278% from a market cap of $18.38 million to $253 million in just four hours. In the eight hours that followed, JELLYJELLY has since retraced 42% to $145 million, according to DEX Screener.
This token, as confirmed by both Magdon-Ismail and Lessin, will grant holders early access to the JellyJelly video chat app—although exact details on how are still being ironed out.
“This is all happening faster than we expected,” Magdon-Ismail said on X Spaces. “Yeah, we were literally just on a Jelly doing this,” Lessin laughed in response.
According to the app’s Apple App Store listing, “JellyJelly is the fastest way to share clips from video chats you have with friends and family.”
It looks to allow users to record video calls while JellyJelly automatically captions, titles, and summarizes the call. The app will then AI-generate short clips for social media—something many podcasters and livestreamers have to do manually.
“What TikTok did to videos, we are doing to podcasts,” Magdon-Ismail explained.
Although the founders said that the token will grant early access to the app, it appears you can already download and use it. In its current state, there is a TikTok-style feed allowing you to flick through clips posted by users.
It’s worth noting that Decrypt encountered a bug where videos wouldn’t play. The app also features a “People” tab to call other users, a “Create” tab to record your own videos, a “Library” tab which connects to a users’ photo library, as well as a “Profile” tab.
Image: JellyJelly
Magdon-Ismail claimed in the X Spaces that he does not own any of the tokens, but is looking to purchase some. He claimed the token spiked in value too quickly for him to get supply. That said, the deployer wallet has currently bought 1.8% of the supply. Lessin has made statements on X Spaces leading investors to believe that he’s the one who controls the wallet.
How exactly the token will be integrated into the app is still unclear. Magdon-Ismail explained that the app is looking at ways to monetize posts, possibly through a token tipping feature. The token may also unlock a premium tier of the app.
This launch becomes the latest in a line of start-ups launching Pump.fun tokens to build hype and raise funds for products. Previously, this trend felt fairly limited to artificial intelligence projects like ElizaOS being pushed forward by the ai16z (AI16Z) token, for example.
More recently, Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov launched Vine Coin (VINE) which peaked at a $475 million market cap.
At first, it was simply a nostalgia-driven meme. But, as time has passed, speculation that it may power the relaunch of Vine grew, after Yusupov posted a waitlist link.
Interestingly, according to Lessin, Rushir Parikh co-founder of food brand Popchew helped launch VINE and is also helping with JELLYJELLY. VINE now sits at a $245 million market cap.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/303551/venmo-founders-jellyjelly-solana-token
