Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Golem ( @web3_golem )
According to Blockworks , pump.fun plans to raise $1 billion through ICO at a valuation of $4 billion. The source added that the token sale will be divided into private and public rounds, but could not confirm when the token will be launched or whether it will be issued on the pump.fun platform.
Velocity Capital investor DeFi Cheetah said that through an unconfirmed private channel, he heard rumors about pump.funs financing, including: there will be no airdrop, but a whitelist will be set for the public sale; the financing target for the public sale is US$800 million, with a valuation of US$5 billion; VC will also have a quota of US$200 million, with a valuation of the same US$5 billion; the public sale will be conducted on most mainstream CEXs, and these exchanges are preparing for it.
As the engine of last years Meme bull market and one of the most profitable protocols, pump.fun has been rumored to issue coins many times in the market. However, each time it is a wolf cry drama, and pump.fun co-founder Alon has also denied rumors about pump.fun tokens.
But times have changed. Changes in the Meme market environment and intensified competition among coin issuance platforms have forced pump.fun to make a choice. The wolf may really be coming this time.
Solana Meme Trend Fades, Pump.fun Issues Token to Save Themselves
In January this year, the market value of TRUMP, the personal meme coin issued by US President Trump, exceeded 10 billion US dollars in one day, which not only created many leaders on the chain, but also attracted funds from outside the circle to enter the currency circle. When the Argentine president issued his own token LIBRA in February to harvest the market and make this wave of celebrity coin issuance subside, people naively thought that this was just a short-term sentiment correction in the meme market, but in hindsight, this money-making market has become the last carnival before the decline of the Solana Meme wave.
According to Dune data, the number of tokens created and the graduation rate (the ratio of successfully launched tokens from the internal market to the total tokens created) on the pump.fun platform have dropped sharply since February. The number of tokens created has dropped from 50,000 to 70,000 per day at its peak to 20,000 to 30,000 per day, and the weekly graduation rate of tokens is less than 1%.
Number of pump.fun tokens created daily
pump.fun token weekly graduation rate
At the same time, the number of active users of pump.fun is also decreasing. According to Dune data, the number of daily active wallets on the pump.fun platform reached 150,000 to 200,000 from December 2024 to February 2025. Since February, the number of daily active wallets has decreased by about 50%. Only 70,000 to 100,000 are left.
pump.fun Daily Active Wallets
When the coin issuing group and user activity decline, the transaction volume and revenue of the pump.fun platform will also decline. According to Dune data, the weekly transaction volume of the pump.fun platform from November 2024 to early February 2025 can reach 2-3 billion US dollars, while after mid-February 2025 (after the Argentine president issued the coin), the weekly transaction volume is only between 700 million and 1.5 billion US dollars, a decrease of about 50%.
pump.fun platform weekly trading volume
The pump.fun platform has accumulated approximately US$700 million in transaction fee income. According to overseas KOL BREAD , its labor efficiency ratio has surpassed top Web2 technology companies such as Nvidia and Apple.
Web2 vs Web3 company labor efficiency ratio, source: BREAD
But no one complains about the slow pace of making money, they will worry about not making enough. At the peak of the Solana Meme (November 2024 to February 2025), the daily fee income of the pump.fun platform was between 2 million and 5 million US dollars, and after the Solana Meme wave subsided, even with the launch of pumpswap, the daily fee income was reduced to 1 million to 2 million US dollars.
Daily commission income of pump.fun platform
Many times, the success of a project may only depend on grasping the trend, then doing fewer wrong things or even not doing more things; however, when the trend is not there, a project needs to do more and do it right if it wants to survive. The success of pump.fun is attributed to the rise of the Solana Meme trend and the upgrade of the Meme market narrative ability, but it cannot prevent the decline of the trend and the exhaustion of the market narrative.
In this final sunset moment, issuing coins naturally becomes the last means of self-rescue. For tool-type or shovel-selling projects, if they have a stable business model and continuous cash flow, they will not easily issue coins, because the regulatory risks and project operation pressure brought by issuing coins at this time are not as good as the existing income; but when the project is in trouble or the shovel supply exceeds demand in the market, reorganizing, expanding the project narrative angle, and taking the traditional path of listing and issuing coins can also make the project last long.
Meme distribution platforms are flooding, pump.fun may issue tokens to solve the problem
I am afraid of my brothers suffering, and I am also afraid of my brothers driving a Land Rover. If a good business is too profitable, it will naturally attract competition and backstabs, even if it was once the best brother. Pump.fun is in such a situation. The meme market broke out, and each chain started the battle of launchpads. Solana was the most intense, such as LetsBonk.fun, Boop, Believe, Moonshot, and even Raydium, a former good brother of pump.fun, wanted to get a piece of the pie.
But even though these new meme distribution platforms have their own characteristics and were very popular at the beginning, they are no longer able to survive when the Solana meme trend declines. According to Dune data, the daily token graduation rate of mainstream Solana launch platforms (Pump.fun, Boop, LaunchLabs, LetsBonk) in May was less than 1%. Boop and LetsBonk had a daily token graduation rate of more than 1% in early May, but the popularity did not last long.
Mainstream Solana Launch Platform
The meme trend is no longer there, and the issuance platform is flooded. It is not an exaggeration to assert that pump.fun is in dire straits. If pump.fun wants to solve the problem, issuing a coin may be a good choice.
As a tool product, pump.fun has a very fragile moat. In essence, it is just a Web2 tool that serves Web3 assets, and its business model of charging platform service fees is highly replicable. If it chooses to issue coins, it also means that pump.fun will transform to a pure Web3 business model. Although pump.fun has not personally disclosed the coin issuance and future project roadmap, it is conceivable that in the future pump.fun may be committed to building a huge Meme ecosystem, transforming from a tool to a platform or even infrastructure.
Even if it is a coin-issuing harvest, at least it is better than OpenSea
However, some people questioned that the 4 billion valuation of pump.fun was too high, which destroyed the project valuation system of Web3. Independent researcher Haotian wrote that the valuation of a MEME launch platform surpassed most DeFi blue-chip protocols, which might not be reasonable, because the monetization ability of pump.funs business model is entirely a product of the short-term market spotlight effect, rather than a sustainable normalized profit logic. When the MEME craze subsides or the market returns to rationality, pump.funs revenue model will collapse instantly.
From the perspective of profitability, pump.fun is indeed worthy of this valuation. StarkNet, one of the four kings of L2 and the king of ZK technology, was valued at $8 billion in the last round of D financing. According to DeFiLlama data, its daily network fee income was only $760,000 at its peak. Now, its daily network fee income is only more than $1,000, and the cumulative network fee income to date is $43.61 million, which is not at the same level as pump.funs profitability.
But from the perspective of product and narrative, pump.fun, as a tool-type product, is indeed not as good as StarkNet, so the valuation is inflated. However , Haotian also said that the key may lie in whether pump.fun can truly build a sustainable business moat after obtaining huge capital. So, in the end, it comes back to that topic. If the existing business model is profitable enough, why do tool-type products need to issue coins...
Even if pump.fun chooses to issue coins now, although the effect will not be better than the peak period of Solana Meme, the timing is not over yet. The market is still strong, the worlds regulation of cryptocurrencies continues to improve, and Meme coins still have a group of P junior users. In short, there are still people willing to take over the coins now.
Otherwise, the outdated opensea next door is a counter-example. It did not choose to issue tokens when the NFT trend was at its peak and the platform valuation was at its highest. Now it can only wake up and realize that things have changed. Whether pump.fun can seize this last opportunity to complete the token issuance, O Daily will continue to follow up and report.
