Pump.fun is back to being a cash-cow app. The platform is on track to generate 1M SOL in total lifetime fees.
Pump.fun has sold again to realize profits, after several record days in new launches and transactions. Pump.fun is one of the most successful fee generators on Solana (SOL), though periodically the app team sells their accrued fees.
Pump.fun is still far from its daily fee record, especially after allowing for zero-fee launches. However, fees on the platform are now more consistently high, raising between 5K and 10K SOL daily. Over the weekend, Pump.fun also launched a record number of tokens in a day, a total of 31,611 new assets. Pump.fun also had around 84K active addresses daily in the past couple of days, of which around 33K were new addresses.
Pump.fun does not only rely on meme hype, which is fickle. The platform also announced the launch of its native token trading market, with no-fee trades for the first month. Pump.fun hinted at a token airdrop, potentially driving up trading activity in the hope of receiving rewards.
Along with the rise of Pump.fun activity, Solana now has more than 4.9M daily active addresses. Transactions on Raydium are near an all-time high, though with empty or low-value wallets. Some of the activity may be due to bots or spam. However, meme token launches are mostly tied to individual launchers and social media presence. Even AI-inspired tokens are launched by human persons.
New addresses are also growing on Solana, going above 5M on a daily basis. Fees and tips for Solana have also expanded, with most going to non-voting transactions. Priority fees and tips are key to sniping meme tokens on time, and always rise together during meme token seasons.
Solana is now catching up with Bitcoin with its rising fees, and far surpasses Base and TRON. Most of the fees also go back to validators, so Solana itself does not retain the earnings or operates at a loss.
Pump.fun splits SOL for selling and staking
In its latest transaction, Pump.fun placed another 40K SOL, making use of the higher market rates to realize profits. The app team has taken in lifetime fees of 969,945 SOL, of which it sold around 56%. The Pump.fun sales achieved a realized SOL price of $156.40. During previous selling rounds, sending the accrued fees to exchanges depressed the market price of SOL.
After the latest deposit from Pump.fun, SOL traded at $168.37, mostly in line with the general market direction. SOL retains a relatively stable range, despite the inflow of new tokens and fees received.
Pump.fun retains reserves of more than $37M in USDC, while also locking some of its SOL for staking with the JitoSOL validator. Pump.fun is responsible for more than $19M in staked SOL. However, the platform does not provide liquidity or support any of the memes. Pump.fun remains tokenless and does not share any of its fees with the community. The platform’s main wallet also does not contain any significant amounts of meme tokens, though some have been sent to its addresses for exposure.
October set up for record meme transfers
The past month is showing a revival of the meme token trend, after slow performance in September. Pump.fun reflects this activity through its wallet, as activity has grown more than 600% since April.
Memes are now growing independently of altcoins and even Bitcoin (BTC), at least in terms of transfers and new launches. Pump.fun registers more than 1.6M transfers daily, up from around 200K in the first half of 2024.
Older meme tokens have also broken out this month, especially assets that were building their user base for the past year. The market is on track to grow its market cap to above $60B, even without listing the latest AI-inspired meme tokens. For now, the meme token market still relies on more liquid assets, as short-term gainers also erase up to 90% of their value within days.
Well-established memes only posted eight total tokens with a valuation above $1B. At the same time, Pump.fun gives rise to new tokens that rally even faster, based on social media cross-promotion.
