Pump.fun has been plastered all over CT of late. To begin with, the Solana-based memecoin launchpad raised $500 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) during the weekend. It all sold out like hot pancakes in just 12 minutes.
PUMP tokenomics
The PUMP token has an upper-cap supply of 1 trillion tokens. About 1/3rd of that was allocated to the ICO (18% to institutional investors, and 15% was offered to retail traders).
Out of the remaining, around 24% of the supply has been kept aside for ecosystem and future community projects, while 13% has been earmarked for existing investors.
The average ICO buy per wallet amounted to roughly $44,209. According to a thread by Dune Analytics,
“High avg skewed by whales, but median reveals most are small retail investors. This mix fuels Solana's meme economy, democratizing creation but highlighting whale influence.”
Interestingly, the website presale contributed 76%, while CEX sales made up for the remaining 24%. According the thread,
“Website dominance minimizes CEX reliance, empowering direct platform-user ties and reducing intermediary power.”
The accidental burn
A blockchain researcher at Taiwan-based SuDo Research accidentally burned 10 million PUMP airdrop worth over $75k while using a tool to clean up airdropped junk tokens.
Funny part, he says,
“Didn’t even notice till I saw myself on the fucking news that night.”
He added,
“But no worries, I’m not that upset, at least I won’t make the same mistake next time. Here’s one of my life rules: Focus on what u can control. Now it’s just about figuring out how to make it back. Simple.”
The community debate
Coinbase's head of product, Conor Grogan, has time and again pointed out that the “great majority” of tokens launched on Pump.fun and other similar launchpads are created by automated bots.
Despite the craze and the hyped ICO, several are on the “pump not fun” side of the boat, and opine,
“Pump.fun and those supporting it, even if at arm’s length, are Pied Pipers leading Gen Z to ruin.”
In fact, data further reveals that out of the 202 wallets who bought $1 million worth of PUMP in the public sale, around 63.9% (129) have made an outbound transfer or a sale so far. Resultantly, a section of the community is also viewing this from the the lens of an "extraction event."
While some reckon that the net outcome is going to be negative for everyone involved, others believe that the platform is meeting a need, and in hindsight, that's what permissionless networks are all about.
