Pump.fun Earns $18.6M as 81% of Memecoins Crash 90%

Pump.fun produced about $18.6 million in protocol revenue over the seven days through Oct. 7, even as a Talos study found that 81% of a selected group of memecoins had fallen at least 90% from their all-time highs. The platform's fee stream comes from aggregate trading activity across its Solana-based launchpad, not from any individual token recovering. That creates a fundamental asymmetry: Pump.fun, PUMP holders, and selected creators can capture fees while the buyers of older memecoins wait for demand to return to assets that rarely revisit their highs.

Why it matters

The Talos study examined 150 memecoins for survival analysis and 151 for return comparisons, requiring each to have pricing on at least one centralized exchange. That threshold already selects for the relatively successful cohort, meaning the 81% failure rate likely understates the carnage across the broader universe of launchpad coins that never secure such listings. The median token peaked just 17 days after exchange trading began. Talos defined collapse as a 95% decline from the eventual peak and estimated a median of about 370 days from high to that threshold. Only five of the 151 coins in the return sample remained above their first-day price, and roughly two-thirds of Solana-era memecoins never staged a meaningful second rally after their initial run. Active addresses holding at least $1 in major Solana memecoins had also fallen to no more than 7% of their respective peaks.

Market impact

The mechanics separate cleanly. Traders paid about $52.5 million in fees over the same seven-day window, with $18.64 million accruing to the protocol. Over 30 days, fees totaled $184.5 million and protocol revenue hit $60.7 million. Pump.fun has committed part of designated revenue to buy and burn PUMP for a year starting in April, with DefiLlama recording $8.45 million in PUMP burns over seven days and $27.29 million over 30 days. Co-founder Alon Cohen said more than 140,000 users received about $4.46 million over a recent 24-hour period: $730,000 in Holder Rewards, $330,000 in Callout Rewards, and $3.4 million in creator fees.