As Donald Trump and Elon Musk spoke on Twitter Spaces, it marked the opening of what’s been touted as the Pump.fun Olympics. Over a three hour period, 10,000 tokens were launched by the meme coin factory. But degens weren’t happy about it.
“How is this a good thing anymore?” Tyler Stockfield (better known as Anon) wrote on Twitter, “Nobody is having fun anymore besides the Pump Fun team raking in fees.”
Pump.fun is a token launchpad that gained popularity due to it enabling anyone to create a coin in minutes for a small fee. Recently the protocol got rid of the need to pay any fee at all to launch a token and now offers a small payment to the deployer of a successful token.
As a result, over 23,000 tokens were launched over the past 24 hours, which racked up an all-time high $5 million in fees—double its previous ATH of $2.3 million. However, according to a Dune dashboard, just 250 tokens graduated off the platform during yesterday’s swell.
The way Pump.fun tokens work, they get listed on popular Solana DEX Raydium once they reach a $69,000 market cap. That is just a 1% success rate of tokens launching on Pump.fun.
This low hit rate has frustrated meme coin traders who believe the protocol is oversaturating the market, in turn, increasing the number of scams and rug pulls.
“It’s definitely changed the game but has made it easier for bad actors to obfuscate and incentivises bad actors way too much,” pseudonymous trader LitBro posted on Twitter.
As explained by Alon, the creator of Pump.fun, the barrier for creating a coin has been significantly lowered. He explains it now only takes 1 minute rather than 60 to launch a token, and just $2 rather than $2,000. But this lowering of the barriers has reduced the incentives for a meme coin developer to push their project forward.
when you lower the barrier, you invite trash.
Thank you for making meme worst again
— Jeet (@youraveragejeet) August 12, 2024
“My issue is not necessarily with what Pump Fun is (a token launchpad), it’s more about the fact that they don’t do more to combat scammers,” pseudonymous trader Bizzy posted on Twitter, “Why is there no verification to add a Twitter? Why aren’t there better filter options to help identify and avoid scams?”
Pump.fun has implemented a number of updates it says are meant to safeguard users. In May, the protocol integrated on-chain visualizer Bubblemaps to help users research who holds a token’s supply. And, more recently Pump.fun has offered to pay 0.5 SOL ($79) to the deployers of successful meme coins—an attempt to reduce rug pulls.
Pump.fun did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
