This week, in the Eastern Eight Time Zone, Pump.fun announced the establishment of a new investment department, Pump Fund, and simultaneously launched a $3 million Build in Public (BiP) hackathon, attempting to rewrite its role in the crypto world through a centralized investment of funds and resources. This event plans to support 12 projects, with a standard configuration of $250,000 funding per project, corresponding to an early pricing framework of approximately $10 million valuation, binding funds, valuations, and ecosystems under the same competitive rules. Accompanying this move is Pump.fun's ambition to transition from a single minting platform to an "ecosystem investor," along with the accompanying concerns—when funds, traffic, and discourse are further concentrated on one side of the platform, are participants truly receiving support, or are they exchanging for a pre-set power structure? This article will follow three main lines: hackathon design, valuation terms, and open boundaries, to question one issue: is this BiP hackathon genuinely supporting entrepreneurs, or is it reshaping Pump.fun's own landscape and order?
$3 Million Hackathon: Pump is Transforming into an "Ecosystem Investor"
The establishment of Pump Fund marks Pump.fun's attempt to transition from a tool-based platform to an "ecosystem investor" with capital allocation capabilities. In the past, it was more viewed as a space for issuance and trading; now, under the name of an independent investment department, it consolidates functions such as funding, project selection, and long-term cooperation into a more strategically colored entity. According to public information, this fund is not merely a one-time activity budget but is packaged as a platform's own "investment arm" aimed at promoting the long-term development of startup projects within the ecosystem, with the hackathon being the first concentrated action of this arm reaching out to projects.
In terms of specific design, the BiP hackathon has built a standardized template around 12 slots: each selected project can receive $250,000 in funding, corresponding to an estimated project valuation anchor of approximately $10 million. This means that Pump Fund is not participating in a piecemeal sponsorship manner but is directly placing each successful project into an "early financing" scenario, establishing a prototype of equity or token investment relationships. Beyond funding, the founding team of Pump.fun will provide guidance and multiple supports for these projects, from product strategy and community operations to ecological resource connections. Both the official and media have clearly pointed out that this is the starting point for Pump.fun to build a long-term cooperation project pool and ecological moat. On the surface, it is a hackathon; in essence, it resembles a batch early incubation experiment under unified terms and in the name of ecological collaboration.
Open Construction Competition: Transparent Narrative or New Traffic Barriers
The core requirement of BiP is to advance projects in a "Build in Public" manner: participants need to issue tokens and publicly share the product iteration process, community operation strategies, and key decisions on-chain and through social channels, exposing the entire construction process to the spotlight. This mechanism completely flips the traditional hackathon's "closed-door problem-solving" into "public rehearsal." Project teams must not only prove their ability to write code and produce products but also demonstrate their storytelling skills and community maintenance; public construction itself becomes a coherent performance.
For projects, this design of public construction has obvious practical benefits. First, it can help teams complete cold starts more quickly, attracting early users and potential supporters during the event cycle by leveraging Pump.fun's platform exposure and topic effects. Second, the continuously public development and operation records accumulate a "transparent resume" for the project, helping to build community trust and providing a basis for subsequent external investors or partners to evaluate. Third, public construction naturally facilitates multidimensional judgments on project quality, no longer relying solely on a one-time presentation of demos or roadshows, but rather observing a team's real performance under pressure, time constraints, and public scrutiny.
However, this mechanism may also bring significant side effects. When reviews and traffic revolve around "publicity," projects may be tempted to sacrifice long-term construction to attract attention, investing more energy into short-term narrative packaging and event performance rather than building product structures and governance designs that can withstand the test of time. What the competition encourages—deep refinement or short-term speculative narrative offensives—has not been clearly delineated at the rule level. Moreover, whether public construction truly improves information asymmetry remains an unresolved question. On the surface, everyone can see the project's progress and decisions, but in key dimensions such as evaluation criteria, internal resource matching, and subsequent support rhythms, information remains highly concentrated within Pump Fund and the platform. Thus, public construction may evolve from a transparent narrative into a tool that deepens Pump.fun's information advantage and discourse dominance.
Fixed Valuation: $250,000 for $10 Million Imagination
One of the most controversial terms in the BiP design is the "fixed price structure of $250,000 corresponding to approximately $10 million valuation." This term provides a unified valuation anchor for all selected projects, compressing what should be a negotiation-filled early financing price discussion into a pre-set framework. For teams, accepting this $250,000 means accepting a valuation and equity or token dilution reference system dominated by the platform, and subsequent financing is likely to be re-priced by the market based on this anchor.
In the current financing environment for early crypto projects, this valuation range has its subtleties. On one hand, against the backdrop of overall tightening of funds and difficulty in landing early rounds, a $10 million valuation paired with $250,000 in immediate funding still holds practical appeal for many teams, especially for developers who have not yet entered the traditional VC radar; this is akin to a "first-round capital ticket with a mentor." On the other hand, standardized valuation also means that projects are bound to a relatively fixed price level at an early stage, leaving less room for high-potential teams to capture premiums, and dilution pressure may amplify from a medium to long-term perspective.
From Pump Fund's perspective, the benefits of entering with a unified valuation are equally clear. First, it greatly simplifies the decision-making process, avoiding case-by-case tug-of-war, making it easier to complete a concentrated layout for 12 projects in a short time. Second, this standardization allows Pump Fund to more easily form a batch investment portfolio, thereby creating synergies in subsequent ecological operations through a "project matrix." Furthermore, unified valuation helps construct a clear brand narrative in external communications: the platform is willing to provide clear pricing and support templates for early projects, forming a label of "standardized early capital entry."
However, all of this also constitutes a source of potential controversy. When the ecological side enters with a unified valuation, it is essentially locking in a significant amount of future upside potential at the most vulnerable stage of the projects, leveraging its own funding advantages and traffic position. For cash-hungry teams, bargaining power is further weakened, especially in the absence of alternative financing channels, making it feel more like being forced to accept a fixed price on a track laid out by the platform. In the long run, whether this arrangement can genuinely achieve "win-win" depends on Pump Fund's performance in subsequent governance, exit mechanisms, and value-added services; otherwise, the $250,000 may be seen as a "ticket" for the platform to gain long-term control and profit rights.
Open to Non-Crypto Projects: How Wide Does Pump Want the Entry to Be?
Another major highlight of BiP is the explicit opening of participation eligibility to non-crypto projects, breaking the traditional boundary that only "on-chain native projects" can participate. This means that whether it is a traditional internet product or a team with a physical business foundation, as long as they are willing to introduce a token mechanism to some extent and accept the requirements of public construction, they can enter Pump.fun's ecological vision as participants. This setting echoes external media interpretations: the plan provides opportunities for non-crypto projects to participate, potentially expanding the diversity of the ecosystem.
When traditional internet or physical product teams introduce tokens and public construction narratives, Pump.fun's ecological structure will be forced to become more three-dimensional. On one hand, a more diverse range of application scenarios and user types helps the platform break free from the limitations of a single track, bringing new storylines and user entry points to the ecosystem, such as guiding users who may not have originally focused on on-chain products into token-driven interactions and participation. On the other hand, the product thinking, operational experience, and business model innovations brought by cross-domain teams may also reshape Pump.fun's platform capabilities, shifting it from a single minting tool to a foundational entry that accommodates more diverse applications.
However, this open strategy also comes with significant challenges. First is the compliance issue; non-crypto projects often carry certain regulatory and contractual obligations in their existing businesses. After introducing tokens, how to balance innovation and compliance across different jurisdictions will directly affect the depth of these teams' participation. Second, there are significant adaptation costs between traditional products and token economies; teams need to make difficult trade-offs between value capture, user incentives, and long-term governance, which places higher demands on Pump.fun's support system—requiring not only technical and traffic understanding but also feasible paths in economic models and institutional design. Third, when the influx of cross-domain teams meets the reality of limited platform resources, how Pump Fund allocates guidance and exposure will become a key variable determining the success or failure of this open strategy. Overall, the strategic significance of this move lies in attempting to push Pump.fun from a single minting platform towards broader applications and community entry points, truly building an ecological framework that can accommodate various types of projects.
Who Gets the Cake: Resource Tilt and Discourse Power Boundaries
Around the operational logic of Pump Fund, the conflict between "ecological construction" and "interest distribution" is almost an unavoidable starting point. When the platform shifts from a neutral tool provider to a distributor of funds and resources, the power to select projects, allocate resources, and tell stories will naturally become further concentrated internally. The hackathon appears to be an open track for all developers, but once a few projects are included in the investment and long-term cooperation list, their advantages in funding, traffic, and official endorsement will quickly widen the gap, and the sense of fairness for projects that are not funded and the broader community may also expand accordingly.
For funded projects, the direct guidance and resources provided by the Pump.fun founding team undoubtedly bring positive effects in terms of efficiency and quality. From product positioning to market strategy, and to collaboration with other projects on the platform, there are opportunities to complete adjustments in a shorter time. However, this deep involvement also means a certain relinquishment of project independence and decision-making power. When key directions need to align with platform strategy, and when judgments on important nodes heavily rely on "mentor opinions," project teams may appear to be entrepreneurial in form but gradually approach being a "department" of the platform in substance. If this structure lacks clear boundaries and governance arrangements, it can easily evolve into a closed group with tightly bound interests and difficult external access.
Therefore, observing whether this BiP hackathon will lead to healthy ecological co-construction or slide towards a closed interest group, several details will be particularly critical: first, the transparency of subsequent terms, including but not limited to whether the core logic of investment agreements, governance arrangements, and exit paths have sufficient transparent explanations; second, whether the rules for evaluation, resource allocation, and follow-up investment opportunities are clear and subject to external supervision; third, whether the platform has mechanisms to ensure that unfunded projects can still receive basic tool support and fair traffic opportunities within the ecosystem. Only by establishing verifiable boundaries in these dimensions can Pump Fund potentially avoid gradually sliding into an overly centralized discourse power structure while assuming the role of centralized resource distribution.
Can a Hackathon Support a New Ecosystem?
Overall, the Pump Fund and BiP hackathon exhibit strong experimental characteristics in terms of fund allocation, competition design, and participation boundaries. On one hand, with a total pool of $3 million, combined with a standardized plan of $250,000 per project and an estimated valuation of approximately $10 million, along with the "Build in Public" requirement for public construction and an open stance towards non-crypto projects, it indeed provides early teams with a more visible and resource-concentrated growth path. For many developers who originally found it difficult to access professional investment institutions or lacked an early community foundation, this is a practical and direct form of assistance.
On the other hand, the risks of this experiment are equally evident. The potential bargaining imbalance hidden behind the unified valuation rules, the ecological hierarchy solidified by resource tilt, and the possible concentration of power under Pump.fun's multiple roles in funding, traffic, and discourse will determine whether this mechanism leads to a "win-win ecosystem" or evolves into a capital apparatus that benefits the platform unilaterally. The ultimate direction will not only depend on how this $3 million is spent but also on how the terms are explained, how governance is designed, and how to reserve genuine participation space in ecological construction for projects at different levels.
The future observation window has already emerged: the actual quality of the first batch of selected projects, whether they truly implement long-term product iteration and governance exploration in public construction; whether the execution depth of public construction can surpass performative updates and become a reliable evaluation benchmark for the community and external investors; how the boundaries of Pump Fund's follow-up investments, exits, and governance participation are defined—these will all be key dimensions for measuring the success or failure of this experiment. In the current context of a funding winter and narrative fatigue, Pump.fun is clearly betting not just on the short-term heat of a hackathon but on a long-term experiment about "whether we can collectively write a new story." The results will be gradually validated over the course of multiple project cycles in the future.
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