Tokens created on Pump.fun have accounted for 62.3% of all decentralized exchange (DEX) transactions on Solana so far in November, according to Dune data. In terms of volume, the value of what’s changed hands, this is slightly less pronounced at 42.3%.
The data bolsters arguments that the protocol has become a cornerstone in the Solana ecosystem.
Pump.fun debuted in January this year, enabling anyone to launch a token. Originally it only cost a few bucks to do it, but the team eventually made it completely free. In turn, it has become one of the most culturally significant crypto projects, birthing some of the biggest meme coins of the year—the likes of PNUT, GOAT, and CHILLGUY.
However, the platform has also come under immense pressure following a slew of controversial, morally questionable, and illegal tokens appearing on the platform. This all began when an apparent mom shook her boobs on a livestream to pump her son’s meme coin. While this was weird, the platform took a disturbing turn when another meme coin dev set himself on fire for his token.
Following this, Pump.fun decided to add livestreaming as a native feature. Previously users had been streaming on third-party sites, such as Kick. At first it was painfully glitchy and degens ignored it. But last week, it became the meta again. With this, some took to the platform to perform goofy stunts for money—such as sitting on a toilet for days on end.
A number of disturbing livestreams have since appeared on the platform that disturbed viewers. Decrypt has seen screengrabs and videos of Pump.fun livestreams featuring threats to animal life, the actual beheading of a chicken, bestiality, and an apparent suicide—although the last instance is rumored to be fake.
This caused outrage across the industry, and calls for the platform to shut down the livestreaming feature started to echo.
Pseudonymous on-chain sleuth WazzCrypto predicted that the United States Department of Justice would shut down the site. And Preston Byrne, a crypto lawyer, claimed the project was likely breaking the law.
This happening to pumpfun is not priced in yet pic.twitter.com/kYWXDCx9Wc
— Wazz (@WazzCrypto) November 25, 2024
“Pumpdotfun does a lot very incorrectly from a social media law POV,” Byrne, Head of UK Legal at Arkham Intelligence and Managing Partner at Byrne & Storm, posted on Twitter. “No terms of service, no DMCA registration, and copyright policy, no privacy policy.”
He believes that this puts the future of Pump.fun in a precarious position legally, especially in the UK—where the company is based. As such, he agrees it’s the correct decision to shut down streaming until it has sorted its legal affairs, which Byrne told Decrypt should only take 10 hours of legal work.
If the worst case happens, and Pump.fun is banned, this could have a knock on effect on Solana as a network. As mentioned, Pump.fun has accounted for 62.3% of transactions so far in November but it’s been a similar case for some months now.
In September and October, Pump.fun accounted for 60% and in August it accounted for 57% of all Solana DEX transactions. This isn’t even including the amount of transactions that happen prior to a token migrating to decentralized exchanges once the token hits a market cap of $69,000. According to Dune, only 1.2% of the nearly 50,000 tokens launched over the past 24 hours have achieved this.
For this reason, some have started to fear the worst for Solana as it leans too heavily on the degenerate nature of Pump.fun. “An economy built on this will not make it,” Project Lead at Ethereum news protocol TrueMarkets, known as Millie, posted on Twitter.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
