In recent weeks, Pump.fun’s revenues have skyrocketed, as have those earned by creators. Why are we seeing such a resurgence of interest? Let’s take a closer look.
Pump.fun revenues are skyrocketing
In recent weeks, the Pump.fun token launch protocol seems to be back in the spotlight, particularly in terms of revenues, as the app climbed to the top of the rankings this week, overtaking Hyperliquid. At the time of writing, its 24-hour revenue stands at $2.93 million, compared to $2.51 million for the decentralized exchange (DEX) of perpetuals.
We explored this point in more detail last week, but Pump.fun’s daily revenue is coming back strong after a slump lasting several months, and now easily exceeds $2 million every day:
More specifically, this resurgence in activity is also evident among token creators, as shown in several Dune dashboards by on-chain analyst Adam_Tehc.
Over the last 24 hours, the top 25 creators in terms of revenue earned shared $930,800, or 34% of the $2.73 million in creator fees claimed over the same period.
These creator fees deserve special attention, as they are central to Pump.fun’s revival. According to Alon Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Pump.fun, these fees are more than 100 times more advantageous than elsewhere. In addition, Pump.fun would provide instant audience reach, a model designed to encourage streamers:
Project Ascend: the new creator fee model
Earlier this month, the Pump.fun team unveiled Project Ascend, a new dynamic fee model.
The concept is simple: the more a token’s capitalization increases, the more the fees decrease. Here, it is the share reserved for creators that acts as an adjustment variable, while the increase in a token’s capitalization, which is supposed to be accompanied by an increase in volume, compensates for the gradual decrease in the new Creator fee schedule:
Here, creator fees drop to 0.05% when a token reaches a capitalization of 98,240 SOL, or $23.15 million at the current price.
With creator fees reaching $21.72 million in recent days, this new model seems to be convincing. And for good reason: creator revenues have simply skyrocketed since the launch of Project Ascend:
A model with limitations?
With such promising revenues, it may be tempting to jump in and try to get a piece of the pie. However, there are a few things to consider first. First, remember that to earn creator fees, a token must be launched on the PumpSwap DEX, which requires reaching a certain level of capitalization with the famous “bonding curve.”
However, most memecoins fail before reaching this point. Over the last 30 days, Jupiter’s data shows that out of more than 700,000 tokens launched on Pump.fun, just under 5,400 have reached this stage, or 0.77%.
Furthermore, we pointed out above that a significant portion of these revenues was concentrated among a handful of players.
On X, analyst Duncan Matthes also questioned the viability of the model over the weekend, given that in order to generate significant revenue, creators must maintain a certain level of hype around their token to create volume.
This can lead to abuses:
Last time, Pump.fun’s streaming efforts went awry. They have since revised their approach and security measures, but the overall threat remains the same. Perhaps AI mitigates this problem somewhat. But how do you deal with miners who launch tokens and achieve absurd returns? Large-scale streaming is a complex business. It’s no coincidence that streaming platforms are always backed by large parent companies (Amazon for Twitch, Stake for Kick).
As for Pump.fun, the platform temporarily withdrew its streaming features last year after several cases of violence, nudity, and even simulated suicide.
Although this has nothing to do with Pump.fun, we recently saw how far the “race for views” could go with the Raphaël Graven case in France.
Furthermore, the longevity of the memecoins launched remains to be proven, as it is easy for creators to make promises during their streams and then sell their holdings in a pump and dump scheme.
A new assessment can therefore be made in the coming months to judge the relevance of Pump.fun’s new features. In the meantime, the price of the PUMP token stands at $0.0079, down 5.3% over 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $2.79 billion.
