decrypt.co
Traders on Solana are backing away from Pump.fun following its massive ICO, gravitating toward other meme coin launchpads as the project’s native token struggles.
The project that became synonymous with meme coins last year accounted for 19% of tokens deployed through Solana-based launchpads on Saturday, a sharp drop from 88% a month prior, according to a Dune dashboard created by pseudonymous data scientist Adam Tech.
LetsBonk, a project tied to the Solana-based meme coin BONK, meanwhile, accounted for 69% of tokens deployed on Saturday. It debuted in April, and like Pump.fun, LetsBonk allows anyone to create their own meme coin with little to no technical knowledge that others can trade.
LetsBonk has facilitated almost all of the top meme coin starts on Solana over the past week, with a token called DEBT hitting a $14.8 million market capitalization. On Pump.fun, a token called INCEL had achieved a market cap of $531,000.
Although Pump.fun has lost its title as the reigning “meme coin casino,” it’s still the sector’s most recognizable project, Adam Tech told Decrypt. He argued that the project’s team risks losing its reputation as a go-to platform, however, if the trend continues.
“It’s up to them to convince the trenches,” he said.
As competitors eat into Pump.fun’s market share, its ability to generate revenue—the platform charges a 1% fee on all transactions—has suffered. On Sunday, Pump.fun generated under $200,000 in revenue compared to $426,000 a week before and $1 million a month prior.
Earlier Pump.fun’s initial coin offering helped it raise $600 million in under 15 minutes, but most spectators on Crypto Twitter view it as a flop, with its price plummeting 60% over the past 12 days to $0.002, a fresh low, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko.
The token tumbled last week after Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen told crypto influencer Threadguy that an airdrop of the token won’t “be taking place in the immediate future,” but he acknowledged that it would be an "incredible opportunity” to support or sustain activity.
Within Solana’s community, frustration with meme coins has emerged among influential faces. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko dismissed meme coins as “digital slop” on Sunday, arguing that the highly speculative class of tokens has “no intrinsic value.”
Meme coin trading may resemble gambling, but the unveiling of U.S. President Donald Trump’s token in January generated a tsunami of transactions showcasing Solana’s throughput, Adrian Fritz, head of research at Switzerland-based asset manager 21Shares, recently told Decrypt.
On Sunday, Pump.fun and LetsBonk registered 77,200 and 62,000 daily active addresses, respectively. At its peak, the figure totaled 425,000 for Pump.fun in January alone.
But not all attention has been positive. Last week, a revised class action lawsuit alleged that Solana’s ecosystem amounts to a coordinated racketeering enterprise, which ultimately resembles an unlicensed digital casino.