General Introduction

In the Web3 landscape of 2025, token launch platforms like Pump.fun have transformed how crypto tokens come to life. Launched in January 2024, Pump.fun has reshaped token creation by prioritizing accessibility, speed, and community engagement, particularly for meme-oriented tokens on the Solana blockchain. Its meteoric rise has captured a significant share of the token launch market, generating substantial revenue and driving Solana’s decentralized exchange (DEX) dominance. 

Introduction to Pump.fun

Since its debut in January 2024, Pump.fun has become a cornerstone of Web3, facilitating the creation of over 6 million tokens by January 2025. Built on Solana, it offers a free, community-driven platform that empowers startups, creators, and retail users to launch tokens with minimal effort. Here’s a breakdown of its innovative model:

Business Model

Pump.fun’s brilliance lies in its zero-barrier entry: token creation is free and takes literally 3 clicks. This democratizes access, enabling anyone—startups launching DeFi tokens, creators building meme coins, or retail users exploring Web3—to participate without coding expertise. Its bonding curve mechanism dynamically increases token prices as purchases grow, ensuring liquidity and incentivizing early adopters. This model fuels viral launch cycles, amplified by social engagement on platforms like X and Telegram, where communities often turn tokens into trending sensations overnight. Tokens reaching a market cap of ~$69,000 “graduate” to PumpSwap, Pump.fun’s native DEX launched in March 2025, for seamless trading without reliance on external exchanges like Raydium.

Unlike centralized exchange (CEX) launchpads or listings, which require complex processes like liquidity pool setups, presale structuring, and regulatory compliance, Pump.fun’s bonding curve model simplifies token launches. CEX launchpads often involve high listing fees (thousands to millions of dollars), rigorous vetting, and technical expertise to manage smart contracts and liquidity. In contrast, Pump.fun’s bonding curve automates price discovery and liquidity provision: as more users buy tokens, the price rises predictably along a curve, eliminating the need for manual liquidity setup or developer intervention. This hands-off approach reduces costs, accelerates launches, and ensures immediate tradability, making it ideal for community-driven, speculative projects like meme coins.

Revenue

Pump.fun’s revenue model has proven highly lucrative. In the first half of 2024, it generated $60 million in transaction fees, with daily peaks exceeding $1.2 million in May 2024. By November 2024, cumulative revenue surpassed $355 million (1.48 million SOL), driven by a 1% swap fee on trades (0.25% per transaction, with 0.05% allocated to token creators since May 2025) and a 0.5 SOL ($80) reward for creators when tokens complete their bonding curve. In April 2025, PumpSwap’s trading volume reached $11.2 billion, potentially distributing ~$5.6 million to creators via the revenue-sharing program. On January 24, 2025, Pump.fun hit an all-time high of $15.8 million in daily revenue, fueled by viral tokens and Solana’s market surge.

Technology

Built on Solana, Pump.fun leverages the blockchain’s high throughput (2,000–4,000 transactions per second in real-world conditions) and low-cost transactions (~$0.00025 per transaction). This speed and affordability are critical, as every trade and token creation occurs on-chain, with each new token paired to SOL in a bonding curve. The bonding curve adjusts prices dynamically: as demand increases, the price per token rises, ensuring liquidity and incentivizing early investment. For example, a token starts with 1 billion tokens (800 million tied to the curve), and as buyers purchase, the price incrementally increases until the bonding curve completes at a ~$69,000 market cap. At this point, the token migrates instantly to PumpSwap, Pump.fun’s native DEX launched in March 2025, using a constant product automated market maker (AMM) model similar to Uniswap V2. This eliminates the previous 6 SOL migration fee to Raydium, streamlining the process and locking liquidity for secure trading.

Lazy Ants’ Take on Pump.fun and Token Launchers

Pump.fun has revolutionized Web3 by democratizing token creation, minting over 6 million tokens since its 2024 launch. Its one-click, free model on Solana has set a new standard for accessibility, enabling rapid launches of meme coins and DeFi tokens. However, its simplicity comes with trade-offs. Designed for quick, community-driven projects, Pump.fun lacks customization for complex token lifecycles, such as advanced promotion or governance features. Moreover, ~99% of tokens launched on Pump.fun fail to survive beyond two weeks, contributing to its reputation as a hub for speculative “shitcoins.” This high failure rate underscores the need for robust post-launch support.

At Lazy Ants, we view Pump.fun as a groundbreaking starter platform that’s paving the way for a new industry standard. Its success highlights the potential for token launchers to evolve into comprehensive ecosystems that cover the entire token lifecycle—creation, promotion, and growth. Emerging trends like AI agents are already transforming platforms by automating token performance analytics, optimizing launch strategies, and personalizing user engagement. Integration with Twitter’s API and Telegram mini-apps on TON’s blockchain taps into massive user bases (Telegram boasts 1 billion+ users), fostering vibrant communities. Gasless transactions for stablecoins like USDT/USDC via account abstraction enhance user experience by removing fee barriers, driving mass adoption. These advancements position token launchers as hubs for launching, promoting, and scaling Web3 projects.

“Pump.fun established a whole new direction in token launches. It’s literally a three-click action now. The shift in the industry is obvious, and we at Lazy Ants are super excited about evolving it and building more complex solutions on top of this technology.”

Ostap Harasymchuk

CBDO