Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)
Recently, the Robinhood Chain ecosystem gained popularity, driving the token issuance platform PONS to become a new hotspot for Meme trading. However, as the ecosystem's momentum quickly cooled, PONS's protocol revenue over the past 7 days amounted to only about $550,000, a 74% decline compared to the 30-day average daily revenue.
Meme coin momentum has cooled, but Pump.fun remains highly profitable. According to DefiLlama’s latest data, Pump.fun generated $65.63 million in protocol revenue over the past 30 days, nearing Hyperliquid’s $71.05 million; its 7-day revenue of approximately $16.63 million even surpassed Hyperliquid’s $14.30 million.
However, compared to its revenue scale, PUMP’s valuation is significantly lower than HYPE’s, with their respective circulating market caps at approximately $2.325 billion and $18.198 billion—a difference of nearly eightfold. Based on a simple annualization of the past 30 days’ protocol revenue, the corresponding ratios of circulating market cap to annualized revenue are approximately 3x and 21x, respectively.
The failure to distribute token airdrops to early participants and the team’s withdrawal of SOL from platform revenues have long been sources of community dissatisfaction with Pump.fun. However, these controversies have not significantly deterred users from continuing to create memes and trade. Perhaps the valuation logic behind PUMP warrants reevaluation.
The repurchase ratio has been halved, but approximately one million dollars worth of PUMP tokens are still bought back daily.
After the buyback program launched in July 2025, Pump.fun allocated 100% of net protocol fees toward purchasing PUMP. In September last year, monthly buybacks reached $55.3 million, exceeding the protocol’s $42.8 million in revenue for that same month.
In April this year, Pump.fun announced it would reduce its buyback ratio from 100% to 50%, with the other half retained by the company for hiring, marketing, and acquisitions. In June, the monthly buyback amount dropped to as low as $9.2 million; now, the buyback amount over the past 30 days has rebounded to $30 million, approximately 3.2 times the June level. Although the buyback ratio has been halved, actual buying activity has clearly recovered as platform revenue has improved.
According to official data, Pump.fun has repurchased and burned a total of approximately $484 million, destroying around 171.52 billion PUMP tokens, which represents 17.15% of the total supply. Daily repurchase and burn expenditures have recently remained at approximately millions of dollars.
Additionally, according to DefiLlama data, PUMP-related buyback expenditures over the past 30 days amounted to approximately $29.48 million, averaging about $980,000 per day. With the current circulating market capitalization of approximately $2.325 billion, the monthly buyback expenditure represents about 1.27% of the market cap.
Even with the repurchase ratio halved, Pump's revenue scale can still support daily token buybacks of approximately $1 million. This directly links the platform’s “money-printing” capacity to the PUMP token—revenue funds repurchases, which absorb circulating supply, and subsequent burns reduce total supply.
No concentrated selling occurred after the first large-scale unlock, and subsequent selling pressure has significantly diminished.
The largest single token unlock for PUMP occurred on July 12 this year. The team and early investors ended their one-year lock-up period, with 82.5 billion PUMP tokens unlocking, representing 8.25% of the initial total supply and approximately 20.23% of the circulating supply prior to the unlock.
After the first centralized unlock, the crypto research firm Four Pillars tracked the flow of 52.7 billion PUMP tokens, which were ultimately distributed to 84 addresses. Their research showed that over the subsequent 27 days, these addresses collectively sold approximately 4.03 billion PUMP tokens, cashing out around $6.97 million—7.6% of the tracked allocation. Of these, 62 addresses did not sell any tokens, while 13 sold all of theirs; 84% of the sold tokens were concentrated in addresses active before July 20. In this sample, over 90% of the unlocked tokens were not sold during the observation period, indicating that the first unlock did not trigger widespread selling.
Further unlocking still involves token transfers. On October 13, according to Yujin monitoring, three team or early investor wallets transferred 1.458 billion PUMP tokens to Coinbase Prime, valued at approximately $7.58 million. These three wallets collectively hold 70 billion allocated tokens; the transferred amount represents the本月 unlock volume, which may have already been sold.
The unlocking of 82.5 billion PUMP tokens on July 12 accounted for one-quarter of the total allocation to the team and early investors. The remaining 247.5 billion tokens will be released monthly over the next three years, at a rate of approximately 6.875 billion tokens per month—just one-twelfth the size of the initial concentrated unlock. Thus, the largest single unlock by the team and early investors has already occurred, and subsequent potential selling pressure is significantly reduced.
From token launch platform to trading app, what’s next for Pump.fun?
High income and buybacks are current supports for PUMP; whether future valuation can expand depends on whether Pump can attract more trading users.
First, the adjustment to Callout Rewards. Recently, Pump.fun founder Alon stated that the platform will reduce the reward weight for promoting low-market-cap tokens, de-emphasize trading volume metrics, prioritize actual profits made by followers, and decrease incentives for low-quality callouts. This adjustment addresses the core conflict in social trading: promoters earn rewards while followers may bear losses. Pump.fun aims to reward callouts that consistently help users profit, rather than simply generating more trades.
Secondly, there is the expansion of trading products. On October 10, market reports indicated that Pump is developing perpetual contracts powered by Hyperliquid; however, this feature has not yet been officially launched. If implemented, users will be able to trade perpetual contracts within the same app, in addition to issuing and trading meme tokens, giving Pump.fun the opportunity to capture greater trading demand.
These changes have also made more traders bullish on PUMP. Ansem previously stated that he had converted part of his SOL into PUMP, believing that buybacks are still ongoing and that cross-chain mobile applications are gaining increasing attention. Additionally, with the introduction of features such as custom trading pairs and Callout Rewards, Pump.fun could evolve into infrastructure upon which other issuance platforms can build, gradually acquiring valuation logic similar to that of an L1, and positioning PUMP to become a super app in this cycle.
Pump.fun’s ability to “print money” is undeniable, and ongoing buybacks convert platform revenue into demand for PUMP. Next, whether adjustments to the reward system can retain traders and whether perpetual contracts can expand revenue streams will determine if it can evolve from a meme coin launch platform into a more complete trading application.