Author: Frank, PANews

Pump.fun, as the "Meme Minting Factory" of the Solana ecosystem, has accumulated astonishing revenue and wealth. However, the price of the platform's token PUMP has struggled under continuous selling pressure. To reverse this trend, Pump.fun is attempting a dual approach with aggressive token buybacks and the experimental introduction of a new feature called "Mayhem Mode."

In the face of a complex market environment and internal challenges, can this Meme flagship truly regain its momentum?

Significant Data Decline, Yet Relatively Resilient Compared to the Industry

To understand Pump.fun's predicament, one must grasp its complex data.

As of November 14, Pump.fun's average daily revenue still exceeds $1 million, ranking it among the top five protocols. However, compared to the $4 million daily revenue at the beginning of the year, this figure has seen a notable decline.

Meanwhile, the daily issuance of new tokens on Pump.fun has decreased from a peak of 70,000 to around 20,000. The number of active wallets per day has also declined, but this figure has remained above 100,000 for the past three months, indicating a relatively mild drop. The graduation rate of issued tokens has significantly decreased; since February of this year, the graduation rate on Pump.fun has been below 1%, dropping to as low as 0.58% in September. This reflects a decreasing success rate in the Meme market.

However, much of this data decline is attributed to the overall industry downturn. Compared to its peers, Pump.fun's market share has actually increased. For instance, on November 12, Pump.fun accounted for approximately 93.4% of the token issuance on Solana's Meme launch platforms, with 14,800 tokens issued that day. Previously, during the Meme launch platform wars, its market share had dropped as low as 16.8%.

Overall, while Pump.fun's data performance has indeed declined compared to its peak, it appears more resilient when compared to its peers.

"Buybacks" and "Corrections": The Ineffectiveness of Token Business Strategies

Faced with slowing platform growth and the continuous decline in PUMP token prices, the Pump.fun team is attempting to revitalize the market through "cash capability" buybacks and the launch of "Mayhem Mode."

Since the launch of the PUMP token in July, Pump.fun has used approximately 98% of its platform revenue to buy back over $173.7 million worth of PUMP tokens, equivalent to 11.19% of the total circulating supply.

This buyback effort ranks second among all buyback protocols, with daily buyback volumes only surpassed by Hyperliquid.

However, the price performance of PUMP does not seem to correlate with the extent of the buybacks. The token's performance has declined from a peak in September, with a maximum drop of over 83%, reaching a low of $0.0015. Currently, the correction stands at about 60%, while Bitcoin's maximum correction is around 23%, and HYPE's correction is about 40%.

In the context of ineffective "cash capability," the team is trying to create a new narrative through product innovation. On November 12, the platform launched the experimental "Mayhem Mode." This feature aims to automatically engage AI agents in trading new tokens. According to the documentation, these AI agents will mint an additional 1 billion tokens for selected tokens (doubling the total supply to 2 billion) and then conduct "random trades" within 24 hours to increase early liquidity, ultimately destroying any unsold portions.

However, this highly anticipated update faced "chaos" upon launch. Community feedback indicated that the new feature was not user-friendly, with numerous bugs reported, including "minting excess token supply," "depleting creator funds," and "locking user funds."

KOL in the Meme space, pepe boost, bluntly stated: "In actual observation, there is no more trading volume than ordinary tokens," adding, "I thought it would be significant, but it turns out to be just an experimental AI messing around on Pump."

The Market is Selling Off the "Meme Track," Not Pump.fun

Why can't the price be supported despite millions of dollars in daily buybacks? The newly introduced feature has become a laughingstock. The fundamental reason the market is not buying in may not lie with Pump.fun itself, but rather with broader narratives, structural flaws, and the forces of the cycle.

First, the trend is undeniable; no one can escape it.

Recently, the market has seen increased correction levels, with almost all tokens experiencing declines. In such an environment, buybacks can only serve to "slow the decline" rather than "reverse the trend." As mentioned earlier, Hyperliquid has a similarly strong revenue and buyback mechanism, yet its token has also experienced a significant 40% correction. This proves that in a bear market, relying solely on protocol revenue buybacks cannot counteract macro selling pressure.

Second, there has always been skepticism in the market: the high revenue and trading volume of Pump.fun are seen as a significant "bubble," generated by high-frequency trading bots rather than real users.

Once this bubble bursts, the corresponding prices will struggle to hold. PANews conducted a survey on this, randomly selecting the most recent hundreds of transactions from 10 ungraduated tokens for behavioral analysis. It was found that the proportion of bot trading volume for these tokens is about 54.7%, with a single bot contributing an average of 22 transactions per token, while real users only contribute 1.8 transactions. In terms of transaction value contribution, each bot's single transaction contributes $68, with the overall bot contribution to transaction value being approximately 45.6%. However, in reality, this proportion is even lower than previous survey results. Therefore, from this perspective, the "bot bubble" is a long-standing structural issue for Pump.fun, but it has not worsened recently. It does not seem to be the primary factor for the token's decline.

Third, after ruling out macro and bot factors, the core reason may not be that Pump.fun is failing, but rather that the Meme track itself is failing.

The fundamental reason the market is not buying in is that investors have lost confidence in the overall "Meme coin" track. As the infrastructure of this track, Pump.fun's token price reflects the future expectations of the entire track. Currently, this expectation is pessimistic.

This is evident from the performance of the Solana ecosystem, where overall activity on the Solana chain has been shrinking. Data shows that the total number of active wallets on Solana recently hit a 12-month low. As the main battleground for Meme coins, Solana's "fuel" is running out.

Not only Pump.fun, but other Meme launch platforms are also showing "bleak" data. LetsBonk.fun, which once threatened Pump.fun's position in July, saw its activity rapidly "collapse" after August, with only about 200 new tokens issued daily now. In this environment of a full industry retreat, Pump.fun is actually the "most resilient one."

Therefore, we seem to be able to conclude that the decline of the PUMP token is not the market selling off Pump.fun, but rather the market selling off the Meme track.

Pump.fun is merely the most luxurious first-class cabin on the "sinking Meme Titanic."

Recommended Reading:

Rewriting the 2018 Script, U.S. Government Shutdown Ends = Bitcoin Price Will Soar?

$1 Billion Stablecoin Evaporation, What’s the Truth Behind the DeFi Chain Reaction?

MMT Short Squeeze Event Review: A Carefully Designed Money-Making Game

Click to learn about job openings at ChainCatcher

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。