Pump.fun, the Solana-based memecoin launchpad, recorded a six-month high in weekly revenue last week. The platform generated $13.48 million in weekly revenue, driven by a sharp recovery in its market share. Pump.fun has now reclaimed dominance across several launchpad metrics, including token mints, bonded tokens, and active wallets.
Despite this revenue surge, the platform's native token $PUMP continues to experience a steep price decline. According to CoinGecko data, $PUMP is currently trading at $0.002791 at the time of writing. This represents an 11.07% price decline in the last 24 hours and more than 30% price decline from its ICO price of $0.004.
While revenue growth reflects budding activity on the platform, investors have voiced concern about the platform's transparency.
Dumpnotfun: $PUMP Faces Sustained Pressure Despite Buybacks
According to data from the pump.fun website, the platform has used nearly all of its daily revenue over the past week to fund $PUMP buybacks. Despite never officially announcing a buyback program, the platform has spent $44.2 million to repurchase 10.37 billion $PUMP tokens to date, which is just above 1% of the total supply. However, the average cost basis for these purchases stands at $0.004261, above the token's current trading price. This means the buybacks have yet to deliver a net profit.
Despite the buybacks, market participants remain skeptical. One X user described $PUMP's price action as trading "like they're selling millions of it every day instead of buying it back," suggesting that buybacks have not had the intended effect of stabilizing or lifting prices.
Trust Erosion After Token Transfers
A significant source of concern for investors stems from pump.fun's decision on August 18 to deposit 2.5 billion $PUMP, worth approximately $9.19 million, to the cryptocurrency exchange OKX.
The team has not provided any details about the purpose of this transfer, which has fueled speculation and weakened confidence. Some observers have even drawn parallels with the opaque fund movements seen in the FTX collapse.
Other observers have called for calm and speculated that the platform may have given the exchange tokens to deepen liquidity or as part of an incentive program.
However, the wallet responsible for this transfer appears to be an initial distribution wallet rather than one linked to buyback operations. This suggests that the market may have misconstrued the move as pump.fun selling back purchased tokens. SolanaFloor reached out to the pump.fun team for clarification on this issue, but as of now, the team has not responded.
Earlier, on August 13, analysts also flagged large withdrawals from wallets linked to the Glass Full Foundation, an initiative pump.fun introduced to inject liquidity into ecosystem projects. Nearly $350,000 that remained after initial buys was moved to Binance. No new wallets that appear to match the foundation's activity have been identified, which has added to uncertainty about how the initiative will be managed going forward.
However, this could simply reflect rebalancing by the platform to prevent frontrunning by users tracking those wallets, since such activities undermine the purpose of injecting liquidity back into the ecosystem.
Solana Launchpad Wars Rage On
Pump.fun’s dominance has come at the expense of competitors, particularly letsBONK.fun. Once a strong contender, letsBONK has seen its market share fall sharply. In late July, the team announced that it would allocate 1% of its total revenue to buy back tokens within the BONK ecosystem. On August 18, it also rolled out a new Points tab on its launchpad to incentivize creators and traders.
However, these steps have not been enough to counteract pump.fun's resurgence. Pump.fun continues to lead across all major Solana launchpad metrics and is almost $500,000 away from hitting $800 million in lifetime revenue.
Investor Sentiment
$PUMP token recently started outperforming the rest of the market when pump.fun began allocating 100% of its revenue to buybacks, allowing the token to recover to its ICO price levels fully. However, this move by pump.fun to transfer a large amount of tokens to a centralized exchange without transparency or explanation damaged investor confidence that was on the road to recovery.
Despite this, pump.fun remains the dominant force in the Solana launchpad market, supported by record revenues and user activity. Yet its token continues to face downward pressure as confidence weakens. Transparency over large token transfers and clearer communication about initiatives being implemented will likely be key to restoring trust.
Read More on SolanaFloor
Market Sees Sharp Pullback as Solana Onchain Activity Surges
Solana-Based Digital Asset Products Cross $1B in YTD Inflows
Did Orca Just Change Solana Launchpads Forever?
