PING is launching a Launchpad, and PAYAI is working on migration. What are these two projects up to?

Recently, the actions taken by PING and PAYAI have left many people confused. A MEME project suddenly announced it would launch a Launchpad, while another utility token started migrating and changing liquidity pools—at first glance, this looks like an exit scam, right? The market is full of skepticism.

But if you think calmly, these moves actually make a lot of sense.

Why all the fuss? Just fixing weaknesses

What’s the biggest weakness of MEME coins? They lack sustainable value generation and rely solely on community consensus and hype. Once the buzz dies down, they cool off faster than anything else. As for facilitator-type tech tool projects, their ceiling is obvious—low technical barriers, plenty of competitors, and limited room for imagination.

So what these two projects are doing now, at the core, is just patching their respective shortcomings:

PING launching a Launchpad is an attempt to shed the pure MEME label and position itself as a platform token. This way, it can continuously empower its token value by incubating new projects, forming a positive feedback loop. It won’t have to rely solely on hype and memes to stay relevant, but will actually build an ecosystem.

PAYAI’s token migration is aimed at upgrading from a tool to a protocol. What used to be merely a facilitator tool is now expanding toward infrastructure—adding staking mechanisms, reward systems, and ecosystem incentives. Simply put, it’s to give the token more use cases and value anchors.

The ambition is there, but the plan isn’t fully executed yet, so the market isn’t buying it.

Does it make sense logically?

Let’s talk about PING first. Launching a Launchpad isn’t that surprising. In a bear market, relying solely on the MEME narrative can’t hold the price, and the x402 narrative could cool off if it gets too meme-centric. But if it pivots to being a Launchpad platform token? That’s different—you can keep launching new projects, trying your luck until you hit a liquidity breakout and achieve transformation. Strategically, this is a smart move.

Now for PAYAI. Token migration does easily raise suspicion—does the team have no more tokens? Are they trying to manipulate the supply? But if you think about it, if it were really a scheme, wouldn’t it be easier to just dump and FUD the price? So it’s more likely that the team has realized the limitations of being just a facilitator tool and wants to upgrade to a protocol level to continuously empower the token. In the long run, this isn’t a bad decision.

Why doesn’t the market get it?

At the end of the day, most people entered the x402 track with a MEME trading mindset. The quick in-and-out strategy doesn’t work here.

The growth logic of the x402 track is very different from pure MEMEs and can’t show results in the short term.

PING’s Launchpad move is just the beginning of the x402 asset issuance narrative. Whether it succeeds is still unknown, but more Launchpads are in the pipeline. Take a look at the ideas popping up in the c402 Market—this new wave of Launchpads won’t just issue useless tokens; GameFi, SocialFi, and other practical scenarios can all be integrated for token launches. This is a big step up from simple chat mining.

PAYAI’s protocol upgrade is even more nuanced. Rumor has it the team is very engineering-driven—which is actually good in a bear market, as it gives them time to prove themselves. For the facilitator niche, the value capture and business expansion potential can be huge or small, depending on execution. The new positioning signals the team is starting to continuously empower the facilitator, with the ultimate goal of changing its status and value capture capability within the x402 ecosystem.

Of course, all of this is still in progress. Will they deliver on their promises? The market will decide.