Rumors of Pump.fun issuing coins caused MEME coins to fall in risk aversion. Is Solana's number one "cancer" worthy of its title?

Author: Nancy, PANews

As the news of Pump.fun's coin issuance came out again, the already fragile liquidity defense line on the Solana chain was broken, and the market confidence that was still in the recovery period was torn apart, and the risk aversion sentiment on the chain quickly heated up.

On-chain "slot machines", only 3.6% of users made profits of more than $500

Recently, rumors about Pump.fun's upcoming token issuance have stirred up the market again. According to Blockworks, citing multiple people familiar with the matter, Pump.fun plans to raise $1 billion through token sales, with a valuation of $4 billion. The tokens will be sold to the public and private investors. Although the official release date has not yet been confirmed, the platform's social account hinted that it may be launched within two weeks.

In fact, this is not the first time that a coin issuance plan has been reported. As early as February this year, according to Wu Blockchain, Pump.fun planned to issue tokens through a Dutch auction within CEX and provided CEX with detailed coin issuance preparation documents. However, at that time, market liquidity was greatly absorbed by the personal MEME coins issued by Trump and his wife Melania, and the plan ultimately failed to land. Today, the market environment has slightly warmed up, and Pump.fun's coin issuance plan seems to be on the agenda again.

However, this on-chain “money printing machine” is facing a situation where market enthusiasm has waned significantly.

According to Dune data, as of June 4, the platform's cumulative revenue has exceeded US$730 million, with a peak daily revenue of nearly US$15 million. However, since February 2025, the platform's revenue growth has slowed significantly, and most daily revenues are currently stable in the millions of dollars.

In terms of trading volume, Pump.fun set a record of $3.3 billion in a single week at the end of 2024. Although it rebounded to the $1 billion level several times afterwards, it was difficult to return to the peak. The trend of weakening liquidity has weakened the popularity of the platform and the willingness of users to participate to a certain extent.

In terms of the number of tokens created, Pump.fun has created more than 11.02 million tokens so far, with a peak of 70,000 tokens created per day (January 2025). However, the current figure has dropped to an average of about 30,000 per day, indicating that user participation enthusiasm has cooled.

It is worth noting that behind the massive amount of MEME coins, there are only a few projects with a certain market value. According to Dune statistics, there are currently only 14 tokens with a market value of more than 50 million US dollars, and only 259 tokens with a market value between 1 million and 50 million US dollars. The remaining approximately 14,000 tokens are in the stage of small market value. This also shows that the vast majority of tokens remain in the stage of self-entertainment in the internal market and lack the ability to undertake external funds.

At the user level, Pump.fun is also facing a situation where new traffic is plunging and old users are struggling. Dune data shows that Pump.fun reached its peak at the end of January 2025, with the number of active wallets exceeding 400,000 per day. At that time, the influx of new users was the key to driving the surge in the number of users. However, as market sentiment cooled, the number of active wallets declined, and the platform's activity was mainly maintained by the reuse of old users, while the contribution of new users declined significantly. This trend also proves that a large number of Pump.fun users frequently try to create and hype MEME coins, but there are very few projects that can truly establish sustainable value, resulting in a short user cycle and weak sedimentation.

Not only that, behind Pump.fun's narrative of getting rich quickly is a naked survivor bias. Dune data shows that the number of wallets participating in transactions this month is about 594,000, of which only 3.6% of users have achieved substantial profits of more than $500. Even more shocking is that only 27 wallets have made profits of more than $100,000, accounting for only 0.0045% of the total traders; and 577 wallets have made profits of more than $10,000, accounting for only 0.1%. Relatively speaking, the loss ratio is even higher, as high as 52.5%, and there are many extreme cases of losses at the million-dollar level. These data clearly show that a very small number of bookmakers have made the vast majority of profits, while the vast majority of retail investors only serve as liquidity fuel.

At a time when user growth has peaked, token quality is worrying, and liquidity is overdrawn, whether Pump.fun's coin issuance can leverage market sentiment and support a valuation of up to US$4 billion is a matter of considerable uncertainty.

Solana's risk aversion rises, and its high-valuation coin issuance sparks controversy

The news of Pump.fun's coin issuance at a high valuation has caused many investors to worry whether it will repeat the last wave of carnival when APE coin was released.

"The last superstar with a valuation of 4 billion was Yuga Labs, which issued APE. It was known as the last wave of glory in the bull market that year. After that, all the copycats in the market were cut in half. Now Pump.fun also has a valuation of 4 billion, but the amount of funds raised is more than twice that of APE that year. In the past few days, various exchanges have accelerated the frequency of listing coins, probably to avoid the big bloodsucking of PUMP in two weeks." Crypto KOL @AB said in a post.

Judging from the flow of funds on the Solana chain, risk aversion is heating up, and MEME coins are falling collectively. According to CoinGecko data, in the past 24 hours, popular MEME coins in the Solana ecosystem have generally experienced varying degrees of pullbacks. At the same time, Artemis data shows that Solana has become the third blockchain network with the highest net outflow of funds in the past 24 hours.

Independent researcher @Haotian bluntly pointed out that Pump.fun's current valuation level is "extremely frothy". The valuation of a MEME launch platform has surpassed most DeFi blue-chip protocols. He also made the following four core criticisms: (1) The inflated and frothy market valuation is quite unreasonable: Pump.fun's attention economy business is an irrational product that relies on the short-term high Fomo of the market MEME coins. To put it bluntly, it is a traffic monetization driven by "gambling". This means that Pump.fun's business model monetization ability is entirely a product of the short-term market spotlight effect, rather than a sustainable normalized profit logic; (2) The fragile business moat is easy to be overtaken: Pump.fun has seized the technical dividends of Solana's high performance + low cost, as well as the era dividend of MEME culture from a niche to the masses. This business model built on other people's infrastructure is essentially a "living under someone else's roof" business. Once the Solana ecosystem undergoes major changes, the fragility of its business model will be exposed; (3) The tool-based nature of Launchpad makes it difficult to form an ecosystem on its own: at present, no matter how much money it makes, it is just a "coin issuance tool". If it wants to transform from a pure Launchpad into a complex MEME economic ecosystem, there is a paradox in itself: the core of MEME culture is simple, direct, and viral, and excessive function superposition will only make the platform lose its original "wildness"; (4) Super-high valuation will subvert the original value innovation system: Pump.fun's super-high valuation is sending a dangerous signal to the entire industry: in the current Crypto ecosystem, the value of "traffic aggregation + speculative monetization" may exceed "technological innovation + infrastructure". He believes that the key lies in whether Pump.fun can truly build a sustainable business moat after obtaining huge capital, otherwise this abnormal valuation will bring great innovation disasters to the entire industry, foreshadowing a more utilitarian, more short-sighted, and more distant from the origin of technology geeks in the future of Crypto.

KOL @xingpt added from the perspective of valuation that Pump.fun's annualized revenue in the past 30 days was $77.98 million. If the corresponding FDV is 5B, its FDV/annualized revenue ratio is 64, which is a relatively high level. In the long run, Pump is definitely not worth this valuation, and the income certainty is not as good as DeFi leaders such as Ray/Cake; but if the market is good, the team will create fomo, and it may double. At this valuation, combined with the sentiment on X, I don't think it is necessary to be overly bearish or even open short. Just hold cash and wait and see.

However, crypto KOL @加密韋馱said that it is rogue to talk about merits and demerits without considering the historical process. The direct reason why Solana can have the main battlefield status on the chain today is because of Pump.fun, which solves the one-stop liquidity solution from zero liquidity to AMM and then to CEX, standardizes the security on the chain (withdrawal of pools, contract hiding of drugs), builds the PVP chain culture, and forms a real large number of SOL locks. The emergence of Pump.fun is equivalent to the iPhone moment on the chain. It is also the first to recognize that the attention span of the younger generation is extremely short, and they despise traditional values and are happy to PVP. From the perspective of value investment, Pump is the largest consumer application on the entire network, but its price-to-earnings ratio is only 5, which is a veritable price bid. He believes that there are only two moats in the currency circle at present: liquidity and screen time.

"Don't fantasize about Pump.fun airdrops anymore." In response to the market's fantasy about Pump.fun airdrops, Weirdo Ghost Gang founder sleepy pointed out that Pump.fun has already completed a cold start with its products and has no motivation to airdrop. In fact, airdrops are now increasingly becoming a tool for short-term attention capture. It seems to be "motivating users", but in essence, it rarely retains loyal users. Airdrops ≠ user loyalty. Airdrops are just a traffic releaser used to amplify the influence of a project in a short period of time. But Pump.fun already has a stable and large user base, and it does not need to use airdrops to supplement attention or create topics.

In general, although the news of Pump.fun’s coin issuance has once again ignited heated discussions in the market, behind this enthusiasm lies the fragility of the market’s structural liquidity, the decline in user participation sentiment, and the huge bubble of MEME narrative.