Solana’s Pump.fun surpasses $100M in cumulative revenue amid rising criticism

Solana-based memecoin deployer Pump.fun has reached $100 million in generated revenue. The platform launched in January reached the milestone in just eight months, highlighting the rate of memecoin activity on Solana.

Despite the milestone, the crypto community has criticized it, with many describing the platform as a casino. However, that has not prevented other networks from implementing similar platforms to rival Pump.fun’s dominance.

Pump.fun’s total tokens approach 2 million

Pump.fun’s journey to $100 million in revenue has been remarkable. The platform reached the $50 million milestone in July, just six months after launch, and doubled revenue in the last two months. Within the eight months of its existence, it has also launched 1.92 million tokens and is now closer to hitting 2 million.

The platform’s success results from its innovative approach to launching tokens. It has a binding curve that simplifies the token creation process, allowing anyone to create a cryptocurrency for just $2 and then get it listed on Raydium decentralized exchange after it reaches a specific market cap. Its seamless use has made it attractive for creating memecoins.

Most of the platform’s revenue comes from the $2 fee for creating tokens and the 1% commission it charges on every transaction. However, it has also incentivized users with a reward mechanism where successful token creators get 0.5 SOL, and there are no token distribution costs.

Pumpfun success is best highlighted by how transactions related to the platform now dominate the DEX volume on Solana. According to Dune analytics data, 66.7% of transactions on Solana DEX on August 21 were from Pumpfun.

Pumpfun attracts criticism as other platforms copy its model

Meanwhile, the massive revenue of Pump.fun in less than a year proves that its approach works. Unsurprisingly, some other blockchain networks are also implementing it. Most notable is TRON Network, where Sunpump is already gaining momentum as Pump.fun’s biggest challenger.

The platform launched a few weeks ago and has already launched almost 70,000 memecoins, generating over $4 million in revenue. It surpassed Pump.fun revenue in the last 24 hours, pulling in $463,863 compared to  $460,312 on Pumpfun.

However, Pumpfun has also attracted criticism, which has increased with its success. Many in the crypto community claim that the platform is enabling fraud because most of the tokens created on it are rug-pulled. Crypto researcher Ardizor recently explained how scammers who launch tokens on the platform use wash trading and market manipulation to defraud users and rug pull.

Others have also described it as the beginning of the end of memecoins, noting that it would be like Blur was for NFTs. One trader also noted that Pump.fun got rich while most users lost their money, proving that the house always wins.

He said:

“Now we’ve had pumpfun memes where the platform got rich, everyone lost all their money, and everything went to zero never to return. I wonder what we’ll come up with next.”

Nevertheless, some believe that the platform’s baseline token mechanism is a major innovation in the token issuance process. Developers on other networks are copying that idea.