Solana Meme Coin Factory Pump.fun Is the Fastest Growing Crypto App in History

Pump.fun has notched $100 million in revenue in just over seven months, making it the fastest-growing protocol by revenue growth in the cryptocurrency ecosystem—even as activity on the platform has slowed in recent weeks. 

The memecoin launchpad, which debuted in January, hit $100 million in revenue in 217 days, data from Dune Analytics shows. That’s 34 days less than it took the next fastest-growing protocol, ENA, to hit the same revenue benchmark, according to an analysis from Ryan Watkins, data-focused hedge fund Syncracy Capital’s co-founder.

“[Pump.fun] revenue growth was partially due to it appealing best to retail speculators, but also because it charges the highest fees of any DEX on chain,” Watkins told Decrypt.

Other fast-growing protocols include CVX, CAKE and AERO, which took 306, 325, and 338 days to notch $100 million in revenue, respectively, the analysis—which cites data from Token Terminal, DefiLlama and Syncracy—shows.

DeFi protocols’ revenues are made up of the total fees they charge their users minus the portion paid out to their liquidity providers.

Pump.fun has collected 684,716 SOL in revenue, worth roughly $92,066,900, as of writing, according to CoinGecko data.

Pump.fun’s record-smashing revenue growth follows the Solana-based protocol’s whirlwind adoption by degens, who created more than 500,000 tokens on the platform in a month—many promoted with wild antics. In early July, the protocol’s daily revenue hit $1.99 million, surpassing that of the Ethereum network, DeFiLlama data shows.

Watkins noted that revenue is only one metric by which to measure success, adding that “active addresses interacting with Pump’s contracts” are also significant.

Last month, the platform made it possible to launch tokens for free, and offered incentives for successful releases. But facing backlash for the unrelenting volume of token launches, activity on the platform has since tapered off, leading to a slowdown in the protocol’s revenue growth.

Solana Meme Coins Slump as Degens Ditch Pump.fun

Meme coins on Solana are some of the biggest losers over the past week as token launchpad Pump.fun fell out of favor, with the category as a whole dropping by 21.7% on the week, per data from CoinGecko. On Saturday, Pump.fun was responsible for 5,388 new tokens created on Solana, according to Dune data. To put this into perspective, just three weeks ago the protocol peaked, deploying 20,465 tokens. With Pump.fun statistics falling, so have the prices of some major tokens created by the protocol....

On Saturday, memecoin degens created just 5,388 tokens on the altcoin launchpad—or  roughly 73% fewer tokens than the number they deployed on the platform roughly three weeks ago, according to Dune Analytics data. 

As token creation on the platform has fallen off, so has the pace at which Pump.fun’s revenue has grown: in the past week, Pump.fun has raked in an average of roughly 2,819 SOL in 24-hour revenue. That's 20% of the 13,511 SOL all-time-high daily revenue it recorded on June 30. 

Pump.fun’s dip in average daily revenue comes shortly after Justin Sun launched SunPump, a competing memecoin launchpad, on the Tron network on August 15.