What is Pump.fun (PUMP) crypto coin? The ultimate guide to the meme coin launchpad

Ever heard of a token called Pump.fun? It’s not a coin you buy to hold. It’s a platform - and one that’s turned everyday internet users into token creators overnight. If you’ve seen tokens like Fartcoin, Peanut the Squirrel, or Moo Deng explode in price and vanish just as fast, you’ve seen Pump.fun in action. This isn’t some fancy Wall Street tool. It’s more like a digital vending machine for memes that just happened to become a billion-dollar business.

What exactly is Pump.fun?

Pump.fun is a crypto launchpad built on Solana that lets anyone create their own cryptocurrency in under 30 seconds. No coding. No lawyers. No waiting for approval. All you need is a Solana wallet like Phantom, a name, a ticker symbol (like $DOG or $PEANUT), and an image. It costs about $1 to $2 in SOL to launch. That’s it. The platform then automatically sets up a trading pair, prices the token using a bonding curve, and lets people start buying and selling right away.

It launched in January 2024, and by mid-2025, over 12 million tokens had been created on it. That’s more than all other meme coin platforms combined. Most of these tokens are jokes, memes, or inside jokes with no real utility - and that’s the point. People aren’t investing in businesses. They’re betting on virality.

How does Pump.fun make money?

Pump.fun doesn’t charge you to create a token. It doesn’t take a cut of your profits. Instead, it makes money every time someone trades. For every swap - whether you’re buying $MOO or selling $CHILL - Pump.fun takes a 1% fee. That adds up fast when millions of trades happen every day.

There’s another revenue stream: graduation. When a token hits a market cap between $69,000 and $90,000, it automatically moves to Raydium, Solana’s main decentralized exchange. To make that happen, the creator pays a 1.5 SOL fee (around $45-$60). That’s not a lot for someone who just made $50,000 from their token - but it’s pure profit for Pump.fun.

By late 2025, Pump.fun had generated nearly $780 million in revenue just from these fees. That’s more than most crypto exchanges make in a year.

What is the PUMP token?

In July 2025, Pump.fun launched its own native token: PUMP. It wasn’t sold in a traditional ICO. It was offered in a public sale that raised $600 million in just 12 minutes. Another $720 million came from private investors. That gave Pump.fun over $1.3 billion in cash reserves - more than most crypto startups ever see.

As of December 2025, PUMP has a market cap of $1.6 billion, making it the 80th largest cryptocurrency in the world. Its price sits around $0.003126, with daily trading volume over $167 million. The token’s purpose? To capture a share of the platform’s revenue. Holders of PUMP get a portion of the fees generated by token trades and graduations - though exactly how that works isn’t fully public.

It’s not a governance token. You can’t vote on changes. You can’t influence the platform. It’s a speculative asset tied directly to Pump.fun’s usage. If more people create tokens, PUMP goes up. If the meme craze dies, it crashes.

How does the bonding curve work?

Most crypto tokens use liquidity pools - like Uniswap - where someone has to put in money to start trading. Pump.fun doesn’t need that. It uses a bonding curve, which means the price of the token automatically rises as more people buy it.

Here’s how it works: The first person to buy $FART gets it at 0.000001 SOL. The next person pays a little more. The tenth person pays more than the first. The 10,000th person pays a lot more. There’s no fixed price. No order book. No market makers. The smart contract adjusts the price in real time based on how many tokens are sold.

This creates a classic pump-and-dump pattern - but it’s built into the system. Early buyers can cash out for big profits. Late buyers often get stuck with a token that’s now worth almost nothing. And because the platform doesn’t require creators to lock their tokens, they can sell their holdings anytime - even if they’re the ones who started the hype.

What’s a ‘graduation’?

Graduation is Pump.fun’s way of moving a token from its own platform to a real exchange - Raydium. When a token hits $69,000-$90,000 in market cap, the system automatically adds liquidity to Raydium and removes it from Pump.fun. The creator pays the 1.5 SOL fee to make this happen.

Why does this matter? Because once a token graduates, it becomes tradable on a more stable, higher-volume exchange. That’s when it can really take off - or crash. Many tokens never graduate. They die on Pump.fun with only a few hundred buyers. Others explode. Peanut the Squirrel hit $120 million in market cap before graduation. MoonRocket? It graduated with no community, no roadmap, and no future.

Why is Pump.fun so controversial?

On one hand, it’s revolutionary. It gives anyone with a joke and a Twitter account a shot at making money. Creators like @CryptoNut made 1,200x returns in 72 hours. On the other hand, it’s a free-for-all. There’s no KYC. No verification. No way to tell if a token is a scam or just a bad idea.

Reddit and Twitter are full of stories. One user lost $85 on a token where the creator slowly sold off their 15% stake over two days - a “soft rug pull.” Another made $5,000 from a token called DogeKiller. Trustpilot reviews show 78% of positive feedback is about how easy it is to use. The negative reviews? 82% say it’s full of scams.

Regulators are watching. The U.S. SEC has called out Pump.fun for enabling token creation without investor protections. The EU’s MiCA rules will likely force changes by early 2026. If Pump.fun has to add identity checks, it loses what makes it unique.

How is Pump.fun different from Uniswap or Raydium?

Uniswap and Raydium are decentralized exchanges. You need to provide liquidity, manage pools, and understand tokenomics. Pump.fun is a launchpad. You don’t need to know any of that. You just click, type, upload, and go.

Uniswap is for serious DeFi projects. Raydium is for Solana-based tokens with real use cases. Pump.fun? It’s for memes. For chaos. For the kind of wild, fast, unpredictable trading that only happens when people aren’t thinking about fundamentals - they’re thinking about viral trends.

Token Tool? It’s for businesses. Pump.fun? It’s for TikTok trends.

Who uses Pump.fun?

Almost no institutions. No hedge funds. No venture capital. It’s 98% retail users - teenagers, night shift workers, crypto enthusiasts, and people who saw a meme and thought, “I could make that.”

The most successful creators aren’t developers. They’re social media marketers. They know how to write a viral tweet. They know how to get a Telegram group buzzing. They know when to post a video of themselves dancing with a token logo behind them. That’s the real skill here.

Bitbond’s analysis found that 92% of the tokens that went viral started with a Twitter post. Not a whitepaper. Not a roadmap. A meme.

What are the risks?

There are no safeguards. No customer support. No chargebacks. If you lose money, it’s gone. If a creator dumps their tokens, you can’t stop them. If the platform goes down, your token might disappear.

Even the “fair launch” model has flaws. Yes, creators can’t hoard tokens before launch - but they can sell them right after. And because everyone sees the wallet addresses, you can track when a creator starts selling. Most people still buy anyway, hoping they’re the last one in.

And then there’s the platform itself. The interface looks like a 4chan board. No logos. No names. Just wallet addresses and nicknames. It’s intentionally chaotic. It’s not designed to be safe. It’s designed to be fast.

What’s next for Pump.fun?

Pump.fun isn’t stopping. It’s expanding. It now supports Ethereum’s Base layer-2 and the Blast blockchain, not just Solana. That means more users, more tokens, more fees.

The team is working on Pump.fun v2, set to launch in Q1 2026. It’s rumored to include basic scam detection - maybe flagging tokens with high creator holdings or suspicious trading patterns. It might even lock a small portion of creator tokens for 24 hours after graduation.

But here’s the catch: if they add too much safety, they lose their edge. The whole point of Pump.fun is that it’s wild, unfiltered, and dangerous. That’s what makes it addictive.

Should you use Pump.fun?

If you want to create a token as a joke - and you’re okay with losing $2 - go ahead. It’s fun. It’s easy. You might even get lucky.

If you want to invest? Don’t. Treat every token like a lottery ticket. Do your own research. Check the creator’s wallet. See how many tokens they still hold. Look at the trading volume. If it’s mostly buy orders from new wallets, it’s probably a pump. If it’s mostly sell orders from one address, it’s probably a rug pull.

And if you’re holding PUMP? You’re betting on Pump.fun’s future. If meme coins keep trending, it could go higher. If regulators shut it down or users move on, it could crash to zero. There’s no middle ground.

Pump.fun isn’t crypto’s future. It’s crypto’s carnival. It’s loud, messy, and thrilling. And like any carnival, you walk away with either a stuffed animal - or nothing at all.