Pump.fun and the illusion of volume: 93% of top wallets are bots. What does it really mean for the airdrop?

Pump.fun, the platform that made memecoin trading on Solana go viral, is approaching its much-anticipated airdrop.

The rumors are becoming increasingly persistent, with sources close to the team reportedly confirming, albeit unofficially, the imminent distribution of the token $PUMP.

However, a recent discovery risks changing the game: 93% of the top active wallets on Pump.fun and PumpSwap are managed by bots.

This revelation, made public through dashboards on Dune Analytics curated by @adam_tehc, raises crucial questions about the actual human activity on the platform, the effectiveness of volume as a metric for an airdrop, and, more generally, about the sustainability of an ecosystem where human interaction seems to be marginal.

The data: a platform dominated by automated wallets

According to the analysis, out of 100 wallets with the highest trading volume, as many as 93 are tagged as “Automated”, meaning operated by bots. These wallets carry out millions of weekly transactions, with volumes exceeding $400 million in the case of the top-ranked ones.

In detail:

• The first 25 wallets generated volumes between $100M and $494M, but all are bots.
• The only two human wallets in the $100M+ range are recognized as @Cupseyy and @TheMisterFrog.
• Out of over 32 million wallets monitored, only 785 have exceeded $10M in volume, and only 11,843 have surpassed the million threshold.

These numbers highlight an abysmal disparity between automated activity and real, human activity.

Why it is a problem (even for the airdrop)

The idea behind a volume-based airdrop is simple: to reward the most active and engaged users. But if the leaderboard is dominated by bots, then the airdrop risks:

1. Reward only those who have the technical skills to automate trading.
   
2. Exclude the real community, the one made up of retail investors, curious individuals, memecoin lovers, and retail users who form the narrative base of Pump.fun.
3. Weaken post-airdrop engagement, because bots do not create community, do not post on X, do not make memes, do not add value to the token.

In summary, an airdrop without anti-bot filtering would be an own goal, moving millions of tokens to inactive or robotic wallets, with a high risk of immediate dump.

Airdrop and farming: the dark side of automation

Bot farming is now a widespread phenomenon in the crypto world. Since the era of airdrops on Arbitrum and Optimism, the race for automation has changed the landscape. Those who know how to program or use bots are increasingly advantaged. But Pump.fun is not (just) a DEX: it is also a social experiment, a game, a narrative challenge.

The fact that the majority of top wallets are bots undermines the very credibility of the experiment. Bots do not believe in projects, do not participate in memes, do not create social value. They only make the numbers artificially inflated, transforming a potentially community-driven ecosystem into an algorithmic simulation.

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Possible solutions: filtering, snapshot, multiple criteria

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To make the airdrop more fair and sustainable, Pump.fun should adopt anti-bot criteria. Some possible solutions include:

• Exclude wallets with the tag “Automated” in public dashboards (like the one on Dune).
• Multiple and weighted snapshots, with evaluation of consistency over time and not just volume peaks.
• Social or reputational criteria, such as the use of social media, interaction with projects created by others, or participation in verified communities.
• Integration of Sybil-resistant mechanisms, such as Proof of Humanity, or links with verifiable Web3 identities.

What to expect (really) from the airdrop Pump.fun

Even though there is no official date yet, the launch of a $PUMP token seems imminent. All the signs are there: growth of hype, ready infrastructure, public leaderboard, and increasing community interaction.

But if Pump.fun wants to be more than a passing phenomenon, it must learn from the history of other airdrops. The $PUMP airdrop can become a catalyst for the future of memecoin trading on Solana — but only if it manages to reward humans, not just machines.

Conclusion: is the future of Pump.fun human?

The success of Pump.fun will depend on the team’s ability to manage this critical phase with intelligence, transparency, and a sense of community. An ecosystem dominated by bots can be efficient, but it will never be alive. A fair airdrop can represent a turning point, transforming the narrative from “automated market” to “decentralized game for true participants”.

In a world where algorithms dominate, managing to reward the human component is the true revolutionary act.