Yesterday (24th) at 4 AM, pump.fun co-founder @a1lon9 conducted a voice interview live stream on the Twitch channel of crypto KOL @notthreadguy.
Before the live stream, some in the English-speaking community joked that this was the "FOMC" of the crypto world. As the result showed, this live stream indeed profoundly affected the token price, with $PUMP dropping nearly 15% during the stream and falling close to 20% for the day, temporarily dropping below a $3 billion market value.
For pump.fun, alon's interview was undoubtedly a PR disaster.
What did alon say in the live stream?
About $PUMP Airdrop
threadguy: Will there be a $PUMP airdrop? If so, when?
alon: As we promised during the TGE announcement, $PUMP will have an airdrop. We will keep our promise and reward the community that has helped us grow over the past year and a half. We hope the airdrop can be executed well, drive the ecosystem's trading volume, and ensure long-term development, which is crucial for us. We are now focused on bringing attention and hype back to pump.fun. However, the airdrop will not happen in the immediate future.
There are many rumors about the $PUMP airdrop, such as its standards and activities, but I believe no more than 5 people on Earth currently know the exact plan. So, all the rumors you see are not credible. We are very serious about the airdrop and hope to ensure it is worthy of the community.
threadguy: What percentage of $PUMP will be used for the airdrop?
alon: I can't disclose that now, but it will be fair to the community.
threadguy: How will you handle the selling pressure after the airdrop?
alon: I can't reveal any specific mechanisms now, but we will seriously consider it.
About $PUMP Buyback
threadguy: Will you continue to buy back $PUMP from the open market?
alon: I can't fully disclose the specific plans, but our on-chain actions will answer this question.
threadguy: Can you reveal how much $PUMP you have bought back since TGE?
alon: Initially, we bought back $PUMP worth about $20 million, and in the past 4 days, it was approximately $550,000. (After hearing about the $550,000 in the past 4 days, threadguy repeatedly said, "You guys have a lot of money!")
About Competition from Bonk
threadguy: Why do you think Bonk was able to surpass pump.fun's trading volume and market share in such a short time?
alon: There are certainly many short-term hype and competitive strategies, but we always focus on the long term. What I mean is that in the past few months, the products used haven't substantially changed, and the market hasn't seen significant growth. To continue growing this field 10 or even 100 times, we need some substantial changes.
Although long-term is important, short-term is equally crucial for long-term development. We will inject a large amount of liquidity into our ecosystem and work on community interactions to ensure these communities have the best chance of success.
threadguy: How can pump.fun regain absolute leadership in the "launchpad war"?
alon: In the short term, we need to support the currently active communities in our ecosystem. It's these active communities that have brought us to where we are today. But looking long-term, besides ensuring the success of tokens launched on our platform, we also need significant product improvements. Everyone remembers the hot market from late last year to early this year. While cryptocurrencies are cyclical, our current downturn is not just due to cycles but also requires transformation.
We need a better ecosystem and mechanism that can more effectively coordinate various forces like communities, creators, and traders. We need a better way to bring outsiders into this field. We need to ensure that meme always has new, interesting narratives instead of the same group repeatedly hyping something everyone is tired of. For the first point, we have invested a lot of time and effort. For the second point, the pump.fun mobile app was created for this purpose. For the third point, we need to continuously invest resources to bring in better creators.
But let me emphasize again: focusing on the short term and recycling resources back to pump.fun is indispensable for long-term development.
threadguy: Is your recent strategy of buying one pump.fun ecosystem meme coin every day viable and effective in the long term?
alon: This is just a small step in our plan.
About meme Market
threadguy: Do you think the meme market will return to its previous peak?
alon: Of course. If I didn't believe the market could grow 10 or even 100 times, I wouldn't be here. The market still has tremendous upward potential; it's just a matter of time and specific actions. However, I believe we need a more sustainable way to attract users. Rapid surges can indeed attract attention, but the subsequent sharp drops might drive away newly attracted users, leaving a bad impression that could make them never return.
Achieving sustainable growth still requires many radical changes.
threadguy: What exactly will you do?
alon: First, we are not constructing a single launchpad product, but a large pump.fun ecosystem. So we need an excellent team. The current team is already quite good, but we will continue to recruit talent, even through strategic acquisitions like the previously announced Kolscan. We will continue to observe the market and look for expansion opportunities in social or other fields.
Then, as I mentioned before, there will be significant changes, and one major change will be PumpSwap 2.0. I can't reveal too many details, but the fee structure will be completely different, aimed at incentivizing teams that can produce more interesting meme coins to join and build long-term. The CTO incentive we updated a week ago has laid the foundation to motivate creators to build within existing meme coin communities.
Whether creators, streamers, artists, or startup founders, we are trying to attract them to our ecosystem. Not just to deploy a token and hype it for a few days, but to motivate them to build sustainable things. We still need to make many efforts and iterations to achieve this effect.
Mobile App is important. Although our user numbers have fluctuated recently, the App's user numbers and activity are almost breaking new records daily. We can improve how new people are introduced and become familiar with this circle.
Livestreaming is also something we focus on - how to determine information dissemination through the market rather than social media companies' algorithms? This is also our long-term vision.
threadguy also asked some other questions, such as how pump.fun will avoid becoming the OpenSea of the meme coin track, whether they will sign non-crypto streamers, etc.
But these questions are no longer critical, because the final effect of this livestream was to reignite players' anger towards pump.fun, causing $PUMP to drop nearly 20%.
Why is this a PR disaster?
Perhaps in alon's view, this was not a "PR" targeting recent dissatisfaction with pump.fun, but a "promotion" aimed at a broader audience, which is why he chose to accept threadguy's livestream interview on Twitch. However, the final result was that even his choice of platform for the interview became a point of venting players' dissatisfaction.
After $PUMP's TGE, it briefly rose and then began to fall, which already left players who were originally supportive of pump.fun speechless. More ridiculously, alon's own clearly marked buy-in of 5 pump.fun ecosystem meme coins already shows 4 in loss.
When alon first bought the pump.fun ecosystem meme coin $neet, it momentarily reached a $30 million market cap, with a 365% green candle in 1 minute. Everyone thought this would be a good start, especially players on pump.fun's side who always believed that the most interesting meme coin culture still exists on pump.fun, and these narratives would improve. However, alon did not continue to support it, and the emotional buying quickly depleted. $neet has returned to the market cap level when alon bought in, and the follow-up effect of alon's token purchases has become weaker.
This makes alon's statement during the livestream about "injecting massive liquidity into the ecosystem" sound very hard to believe and ironic. It even became free advertising for competitor Bonk:
The fact that $PUMP airdrop will not happen soon has again ignited players' anger. Even one of pump.fun's largest streamers, gainzy, made "complaints" during the livestream:
Some people make money, more people lose money. Like Hyperliquid, giving loyal users 6 or even 7-figure airdrops, making them happy and recovering their funds, who will continue to trade on Hyperliquid. Especially during Bitcoin's historic high, everyone needs more money. Even if the airdrop allocation is smaller, it would be better than dragging it out. If the airdrop is not satisfactory, pump.fun will face even greater pressure and have a harder time resolving it.
Who ** cares about streamers and creators in the "trenches"? It's the "trenches" that made pump.fun big money. You need to make these people rich - this is not a difficult concept to understand.
Moreover, throughout the entire interview, alon was full of answers that he couldn't reveal this or that. When players' trust in pump.fun has almost completely disappeared, this gave everyone an even deeper sense of distrust - is it really that you can't reveal, or is it that after taking $10 billion, you simply don't care anymore?
Conclusion
If alon's determination expressed in the livestream can still be verified by time, there is one thing that possibly cannot wait any longer - pump.fun, with $10 billion, truly needs a better PR team.
