Frequent occurrences of divine plates, what is the origin of Pump.fun, the largest Meme launch platform on Solana?

Author: Frost, Luccy, BlockBeats

For a long time, internet culture and memes have played a significant role in the cryptocurrency space, and "value investing is in vain" is a high-level summary of the market's enthusiasm for meme speculation.

When it comes to memes, Solana is indispensable. Starting with last year's Silly, the meme projects on Solana have been numerous, including the viral Doge WIF, the trend-setting BOME that initiated the "pre-sale payment" craze, and the "resurrected" SLERF, among others.

The world of memes is never short of entertainment. Recently, a platform with the domain "fun"—Pump.fun—has attracted considerable attention in the crypto community. Even professional poker player Tom Dwan mentioned Pump.fun in a tweet, hinting at his interest in the gambling entertainment offered by Pump.fun.

As a platform dedicated to meme speculation, Pump.fun was initially launched for Solana. On this platform, people can deploy tokens at a cost of less than $2. Currently, Pump.fun may already be the largest memecoin platform in the Solana ecosystem and has added support for Ethereum L2 Blast.

Pump.fun May Integrate Meme Speculation Demand

Due to the extremely low cost of launching memes, a large number of new trading pairs are listed on decentralized exchanges every day, making it a fast-paced field. However, because of this, the average lifespan of most meme projects often lasts only 24 hours or even shorter, mainly because bad actors attempt to exploit this frenzy by orchestrating scams and marketing to deceive ambitious, unsuspecting investors.

The "meme pre-sale craze" ignited by BOME is a good example. The meme project BOME achieved a 50-fold increase in a single day, triggering waves of pre-sale frenzy in the crypto community within a week, even spreading from the Solana chain to other public chains. However, most pre-sale projects experienced rug pulls, among which the Avalanche fundraising project Sener, after raising about 93,000 AVAX (approximately $4.8 million), saw its founder transfer a large amount of AVAX away, and the project token SENDER only slightly increased upon launch before entering a full sell-off phase.

There are countless similar examples. According to ZachXBT, just 27 pre-sale projects on the Solana chain raised over 655,000 SOL (over $114 million). In response, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko called for a halt to funding pre-sale projects.

Nevertheless, the fervent crypto world continues to pursue the next hundredfold coin, and the community's enthusiasm for participating in memes remains unabated. The trading process for memes generally involves people first discovering meme coins, then checking all the details on Birdeye or DEXscreener, and finally trading on Jupiter. For many early meme coins, wallets may not even have basic support. Currently, a suitable DEX for meme coins is Raydium, but the experience is not optimal.

People hope to create a website similar to Birdeye, but specifically for meme coins, making it more social, where influential bloggers can hype each other and copy trades. Pump.fun meets the needs of meme enthusiasts.

What Makes Pump.fun Stand Out?

Opening the Pump.fun official website immediately immerses you in meme culture, with trading records flashing at the top, while the latest released memes are updated in a bouncing manner at the bottom of the page. Due to the rapid frequency of transactions and deployments, the entire page seems to shake like an aftershock, which can be described as "abstract." Many users have reported that the website's page "shakes painfully."

Clicking on the "how it works" option reveals only a card with five sentences that introduces the core trading process of the platform. However, this aligns well with the magical and frenzied labels of memes; the crazier it is, the more likely it is to attract attention and build consensus.

However, Pump.fun is ultimately a platform serving memes, and each meme clearly displays basic information such as creator, market cap, number of comments, and narrative. Selecting any meme allows you to view detailed information about the coin and start trading.

Frequent Emergence of Memes

The first meme deployed on Pump.fun was TEST, which brought in over $5 million in revenue for Pump.fun, officially bringing it into the community's view.

Reportedly, TEST was created by the Pump.fun development team. On April 5, a developer wrote a script to obtain the first batch of tokens deployed through the Pump.fun smart contract, which included TEST.

Due to the early deployment time of TEST, it could not be purchased through the pump.fun website, leading many to believe that TEST was unavailable for purchase. At this point, a community member used a request interception tool to discover how to buy TEST, and subsequently, some buyers used this tool to spend 100 SOL to purchase nearly 50% of the TEST supply. Due to the severe supply imbalance, the price of TEST skyrocketed.

However, the rise of TEST did not last long. Early buyers were unwilling to hold TEST for the long term and exited after the price increase, causing TEST's price to drop sharply. As over 90% of early buyers exited their positions, the distribution of TEST gradually became healthier.

Subsequently, community members contacted the Pump.fun developers to confirm that TEST was a meme deployed by the Pump.fun team and reported this in the community's Telegram channel. After the news spread, a large number of traders flocked to Pump.fun, bringing in over $5 million in revenue, and rumors circulated in the community that the Pump.fun team had completed a large-scale fundraising.

Daily revenue of Pump.fun, source: The Block

The popularity of Pump.fun has also led to several high-profile memes, such as bert, which achieved a tenfold increase within 15 minutes of launch; WEI, which features an AI-generated girl introducing herself and expressing her love for the Solana ecosystem, very abstract, tripled in half an hour, but unfortunately, these memes typically do not last a day before going to zero.

The most noteworthy meme is SC, which saw a rise of over a hundredfold within just five days of launch, being called the most successful meme on Pump. According to Lookonchain's monitoring, a trader spent 6.6 SOL to purchase 33.6 million SC tokens just five hours after launch. When the profit exceeded 1000 times, he only sold 4.6 million SC for 768 SOL (approximately $145,000) and still holds 29 million SC, now valued at $2 million, with a profit of 1,730 times. Additionally, SC is one of the few meme coins on the platform that has not experienced a PVP incident, and as of the time of writing, SC's market cap reached $97 million.

Productizing Memes

Although the website content is relatively simple, with only a few sentences of introduction, the platform's token issuance function and subsequent exchange listing features are quite comprehensive.

In traditional token issuance processes, one must consider expensive setup costs and the need for significant liquidity seeding, which can lead to high costs. However, on Pump.fun, users can automatically deploy a token in a short time at a cost of less than $2.

Most importantly, Pump.fun aims to prevent rug pulls in meme token issuance. Traditional token issuance is complex and risky, as pre-sales are easily affected by scams, requiring advanced tools to monitor behaviors such as relinquishing token minting rights.

In response, Pump.fun provides an alternative to the existing token issuance model, typically following one of two paths. Either directly deploy the token and establish liquidity on DEXs like Raydium, then relinquish minting rights, locking or burning liquidity provider tokens, or conduct a pre-sale where participants send funds to an address without immediate returns.

By maximizing fairness, with no team allocations, there are no "mouse warehouses" that many retail investors despise. This is similar to the recent SLERF incident, where all private placement SOL was burned in the pool, both can be considered "people's memes," allowing users who deploy tokens to build their own communities. In summary, Pump.fun productizes what meme teams aim to do, providing a one-stop service from token name and logo to liquidity and liquidity destruction.

Once a meme is successfully deployed on Solana, once the token's market cap reaches $69,000, $12,000 of liquidity will be deposited into Raydium on the Solana chain and automatically burned. The market cap requirement on the Blast chain is higher, at $420,000, with $30,000 of liquidity deposited into Thruster DEX. Once the market cap reaches a certain amount, Pump.fun's liquidity will be automatically added to Raydium.

Although Pump.fun's productized service indeed simplifies the meme token issuance process, achieving a listing on Raydium or Thruster DEX is not an easy task. Community members have deployed 182 memes using Pump.fun, with only 37 successfully listed on Raydium, resulting in a success rate of about 20%. Nevertheless, @Sartoshi0x still earned over $640,000 in profit during this process.

How to Deploy a Meme on Pump.fun with One Click

Before deployment, you can store 0.05 SOL in your wallet. After entering the project website, click the wallet connection button in the upper right corner.

After connecting your wallet, click "start a new coin" in the center of the homepage, which will take you to the deployment interface where you can enter information, sequentially writing the name (creator's name), ticker (meme coin name), description (the narrative of the meme coin), and selecting an image. Finally, click "Create coin" to create a meme.

After that, it will show whether you want to pre-purchase your deployed meme. Pre-purchasing can prevent bots from targeting the token; purchasing is optional and not mandatory. The deployment cost of 0.02 SOL is a required fee, and once the fee is paid, the deployment is complete.

Pump.fun offers an alternative to existing token issuance, gaining public attention with its ultra-low-cost token issuance and highly automated features. However, just as @Sartoshi0x can easily deploy hundreds of memes, it is hard to imagine the subsequent maintenance and operation process. Some community members have expressed that this looks like "scam behavior." But it is certain that on Pump.fun, @Sartoshi0x is not the only player profiting significantly from token issuance.

Moreover, a prominent issue with Pump.fun is the severe PVP phenomenon, where a small number of participants in the presale hold most of the chips, typically resulting in a 50%-90% retracement after trading opens. Although a large initial increase in token price may deter new users from purchasing, many users have still made significant profits by buying in the very early stages of the launch.

From this perspective, it is not surprising if a bot emerges in the market to automatically monitor projects about to launch on DEXs. Of course, risks accompany rewards; since there are bots targeting hard caps, there will inevitably be "traps" set against those bots. Meme speculation is always a high-risk game. Currently, Pump.fun is still a relatively early platform, and whether it can bring sufficient surprises to meme enthusiasts in the future remains to be seen. BlockBeats reminds readers that meme liquidity is highly volatile, and caution should be exercised in risk assessment.