Pump.fun is finally going to issue a coin.
At 22:00 on July 12, Pump.fun will launch the PUMP token public sale. Of the total 1 trillion tokens, 150 billion will be sold at a unit price of 0.004 USDT, with a valuation of 4 billion USD for this round of fundraising with a target of 600 million USD. In addition, the project also plans to sell tokens worth 700 million USD to institutions through private placement.
These numbers are not the first to appear on social media, but when they are put in front of us in the form of an official announcement, it still seems a bit ridiculous. A Memecoin Launchpad is going to sell $600 million worth of coins in the summer of 2025 when liquidity is low, narratives are cooling, and community nerves are tense. This is the most watched token issuance in the Meme track this year, and it may also become a landmark event for the Meme ecosystem to enter the "post- large MC memecoin era."
Criticisms such as "too greedy" and "harvesting the last liquidity" have long been heard. But before we really ask "is it worth it?", we must first admit one thing: the entire Meme narrative has relied on the power of Pump.fun alone over the past year.
Is the sophisticated meme money printing machine worth $4 billion?
Pump.fun is a well-deserved "money printing machine".
According to DefiLlama data, Pump.fun has earned over $30 million in the past 30 days, $370 million in annual revenue, and over $700 million in cumulative historical revenue. It has become the undisputed traffic core in the Solana ecosystem, and even one of the most profitable protocols in the entire Web3.
But Pump.fun brings more than just digital shocks. It reconstructs the production and dissemination logic of Memecoin, transforming it from an accidental, handmade, marginal cultural product into a standardized, process-based, and scaled content commodity. On the Pump.fun website, anyone can issue coins with one click, without review or approval, and with only a few dollars in handling fees.
Going online means opening, opening means spreading, and spreading means gaming - this is a nearly industrialized Meme model and also a new attention economy.
At that time, the most eye-catching news in the Solana community changed from which DePIN completed financing to the large MC memecoin that was born on Pump.fun and increased a thousand times overnight.
Pump.fun does not tell stories itself, but teaches people how to “narrate”. Anyone can tell stories, hype stories, and monetize stories. Moreover, it directly pushes Memecoin to the center of the entire industry narrative and becomes the main line of the Web3 attention market.
The biggest controversy surrounding this coin issuance is the $4 billion platform valuation marked by Pump.fun.
This number is not groundless. Pump.fun's historical cumulative revenue ranks among the top of all Web3 applications, second only to infrastructure-level projects such as Tether and PancakeSwap. The price-to-sales ratio (PS) calculated based on the revenue in the past year is 10.8 times - from a purely financial perspective, although it is higher than traditional SaaS companies (generally 5 to 10 times), it is not overvalued in the high-growth, high-profit Web3 industry.
Related reading: Is pump.fun worth $4 billion now?
But the problem is that these revenues are highly dependent on the overall popularity of the Meme track. In November last year and January this year, when market sentiment was high, the "graduation rate" of the Pump.fun platform once exceeded 1.6%, and the platform's daily revenue exceeded tens of millions of dollars many times, which can be called an industry money printing machine. However, as the market receded, the number of token launches, active trading volume and user participation all showed a significant decline, the popularity dropped sharply, and the momentum was gone.
The outside world's doubts do not deny Pump.fun's past glory days, but rather doubt whether it can still support its $4 billion value in the current sluggish market environment.
From casino to media, Pump.fun's "self-rescue transformation" failed
Faced with the simultaneous decline of liquidity and popularity, Pump.fun is trying to position itself as a "launch factory" and turn to an entertainment platform with more narrative and content. This transformation is unfolding in the form of "live broadcast" and "making internet celebrities".
Pump.fun launched a $1 million anchor incentive plan at the end of May this year to support native content creators to live broadcast on its platform. Among them, Israeli Gainzy is regarded by the community as a representative figure of this round of live broadcast transformation. This anchor, who became popular for scolding Vitalik during the live broadcast, has become the most popular ecological IP of Pump.fun. The live broadcast currency $GAINZY under his name once exceeded the market value of tens of millions of dollars, and it rose before and after each live broadcast due to the influence of live broadcast traffic and emotions. Gainzy's live broadcast even attracted the founders of Web3 head projects such as Yuga Labs and Pudgy Penguins to watch and interact with him online.
Compared to traditional memes that rely on community users to spread on X, Pump.fun is creating content anchors as traffic nodes to keep the heat and attention within its own ecosystem.
At the same time, some tokens that originally seemed nonsensical have also been given a clearer "identity" narrative. For example, $NEET used the image of a group of "no jobs, no education, no training" created by nihilism to hit the era anxiety of GenZ; $CHILLHOUSE used the nonsensical question "Thoughts on chillhouse?" to set off a viral imitation in multiple live broadcast rooms.
From "pulling the plate" to "narrative", from "sense of satisfaction" to "resonance", Pump.fun is trying to extend the life of the meme - it is no longer just a PvP money-making platform, but also attempts to become a subculture stage for young people to express themselves and carry a sense of belonging.
But while Pump.fun was trying to tell a new story, the external competitive pressure became increasingly severe. LetsBonk.fun attacked Pump.fun’s leading position by leveraging Bonk’s community status, close ties with Raydium and Solana Foundation, and the wealth effect of leading tokens such as $USELESS.
According to on-chain data, as of July 7, LetsBonk.fun has surpassed Pump.fun in multiple key indicators:
Market share: LetsBonk has reached 55.22%, while Pump.fun has dropped to 34.86%;
Revenue of the agreement in the past 24 hours: LetsBonk is $1.04 million, surpassing Pump.fun for the first time;
The number of coins launched and user activity are also significantly ahead of Pump.fun
This overtaking is not accidental. Compared with Pump.fun's long-term high commission and highly centralized mechanism, LetsBonk has chosen a completely different route: 50% of the platform's handling fee will be used for the repurchase and destruction of BONK tokens, and another 8% will be used for strategic reserves and community incentives. In terms of revenue structure, it clearly binds the interests of users and developers, making every creator a beneficiary of the platform's growth.
Related reading: " Fully suppressing Pump.fun, what has LetsBonk done recently? "
More importantly, LetsBonk founder Tom has been "highly online" to maintain the reputation of the community. Since June, he has frequently fixed bugs, optimized the interface, and actively used Chinese characters such as "hello" in the Chinese community, showing obvious "local affinity". This founder's attitude, which is rare in the Solana ecosystem, has greatly enhanced the stickiness of the community.
As a result, more and more users "voted with their feet" and turned their attention and funds to the Bonk ecosystem before Pump.fun officially issued its token. The rapid rise in the market value of $BONK also became a market-side confirmation of this trend.
You can hate Pump.fun, but Memecoin is not dead yet
4 billion US dollars is the price that Pump.fun offered to the market. This price may be too high, or it may underestimate its potential as a "narrative factory". But no matter how you judge it, it was once the most important attention aggregator in the industry.
It is not the end of Meme, nor is it a heroic savior. It is just a node in the wave of Web3 grassroots culture - imperfect, immoral, and even a little greedy, but it does push the story forward.
Who will be the next Pump.fun? No one knows. But we know that the story will continue. Because there will always be people who want to issue coins, make fortunes, and change their fate.
And this is the power of Memecoin.
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