Users are growing increasingly frustrated with the rollercoaster price action of memecoins on the leading Solana-based launchpad platform.
Considering the hype around memecoins in 2024, one would expect that a large number of market participants would be profitable, but data indicates the exact opposite.
Only 3% of traders interacting with Pump.fun tokens have made over $1000, and less than 0.8% have made over $10,000 according to a Dune dashboard.
Frustration surrounding the platform began to pick up after the Donald Trump and Elon Musk Twitter space on August 12, where just 38 out of 15,000 Pump.fun tokens floated on the day launched successfully on Raydium, leaving traders and speculators in the dust while the platform itself shattered revenue records.
While the average percentage of tokens graduating isn’t much better than that, 157 tokens out of 10,758, or 1.4%, launched in the last 24 hours, graduated to Raydium.
A token is considered “graduated” after it fills the Pump.fun bonding curve, reaching a market capitalization of roughly $60,000. Once the threshold is reached, the funds held by the Pump.fun bonding curve are transferred to a liquidity pool on Raydium.
Even with market participants losing faith in the oft-touted “memecoin super-cycle,” Pump.fun’s revenue is still near all-time high levels, with the platform earning $6.3 million between August 10 and August 17, which is more than double the weekly average of $2.5 million from April, and just over 50% more than the weekly average of $4 million in May.
Pump.fun updated its launch mechanism on Aug 8. Previously, coin creators used to be charged roughly $2 to create new tokens, but as of the new update, the “developer” is no longer required to pay anything, and the first buyer of a new token covers the $2 fee.
This update also introduced a 0.5 SOL reward for tokens that fill the bonding curve. Instead of being charged $2 for every token they generate, creators are now incentivized to push their tokens to complete the bonding curve.