The most profitable applications in the crypto world are starting to go downhill.

Written by: Cookie

From competing with bonk.fun to conducting and completing one of the largest ICOs in cryptocurrency history, Pump.fun this year, while not as spectacular in terms of profits as last year, is still doing quite well. As of today, Pump.fun has spent nearly 1 million SOL (approximately 188 million USD) in transaction fee revenue to repurchase 12.227% of the total supply of $PUMP.

However, the continuous and large-scale buybacks have not improved the price of Pump.fun's tokens, which continue to decline. The actions of Pump.fun and its co-founder alon have increasingly dissatisfied the market. The day before yesterday, Mario Nawfal, a major influencer with over 2.6 million fans on X, publicly criticized Pump.fun on his secondary account:

“Even though Pump.fun is a for-profit company, their actions are astonishing. Solana has been struggling, yet they sold SOL in the magnitude of a billion dollars. They completed the ICO of $PUMP a few months ago and promised an airdrop, but have yet to deliver, nor have they reinvested in the entire ecosystem. Setting aside the moral aspect of what this company should do, from a business perspective, how can we expect their ecosystem to thrive when they are so indifferent to the achievements that have built it?”

This may be the largest public criticism of Pump.fun by a KOL we have seen so far. Just a few hours after this tweet, Pump.fun announced a community grant of $10,000 each for 6 meme coins within its ecosystem, which is purely adding fuel to the fire and has been mercilessly mocked by the “trench”.

There are many tweets like this in the comments section below this tweet:

I c you.

“That's really funny.”

“You make so much money every day, and then you only give these meme coins that are struggling to build in your ecosystem $10,000? What can $10,000 do?”

In August this year, when Pump.fun faced a fierce challenge from bonk.fun, they launched the Glass Full Foundation, spending approximately $1.7 million to purchase some well-performing meme coins from their own ecosystem. However, since then, Pump.fun has not supported meme coins in their ecosystem with real money. About two weeks ago, the 'last survivor' $neet in the Glass Full Foundation also fell below the price at which Pump.fun purchased it. The holdings of the Glass Full Foundation have now all incurred losses, totaling approximately $1.37 million.

Players who firmly stand by Pump.fun in the battle against bonk.fun, as well as those who hope that Pump.fun can take on the important task of revitalizing the meme market, can only be as disappointed as they are. They wish Pump.fun would properly support its own ecosystem instead of suddenly jumping into CCM (live broadcast tokens) and then ICM, ultimately leaving everything in a mess.

Despite the large buybacks, the price of $PUMP is sluggish, and under the increasingly depressed player sentiment and disappointment, it is gradually being questioned.

“How do you explain that $PUMP repurchased over 10% yet still broke below par?”

In this situation, the official Twitter account of Pump.fun, as well as the official Twitter account of Pump.fun co-founder alon, inexplicably fell into a silence lasting about 10 days, with not a single tweet. Even the previous important update from Pump.fun, 'Mayhem Mode', was not mentioned at all by the official Pump.fun account.

By the way, “Mayhem Mode” has also been heavily criticized by players. Because in the context of the stagnant Solana meme market, the lowering of the token graduation threshold and the mechanism of randomly purchasing tokens of this mode through the transaction fees of tokens activated in this mode are seen as Pump.fun exhausting its resources.

The unreasonable silence made aixbt, this AI, come out and fire at Pump.fun:

“Pump.fun charged a fee of 300 million dollars, but the token graduation rate is now only 0.7%. There are 12,610 launches daily, of which 98 are successful. The platform profits from 99.3% of failed token launches. The team suddenly disappeared 13 days ago, during the week with the highest trading volume ever. It is said that their buybacks are just a transfer from one hand to the other, and this product itself is a value juice machine.”

Shortly after, a tweet from Lookonchain sparked rumors in the market that “Pump.fun ran away”:

“It seems that Pump.fun has cashed out at least $436.5 million since October 15.”

This tweet has finally brought Pump.fun back to life. Pump.fun co-founder Sapijiju tweeted that Lookonchain's tweet is completely untrue, stating that Pump.fun has not cashed out any funds, but has only transferred the funds raised from the ICO to different wallets so that the company can use these funds for investment in business development.

This explanation is obviously weak. The only acquisitions that Pump.fun has currently disclosed are Kolscan and Padre, the former being a tool for tracking KOL trading gains and losses, and the latter being a trading terminal. When the news of acquiring Padre was announced, Pump.fun also announced that the Padre token would no longer be used on the platform and that there are no further future plans.

Imagine a company in Web2 being acquired, and the shareholders are just happy for 2 minutes before being told that all their stocks are worthless. This is the cold and ruthless tragedy that happened that night; those who didn't carefully read the end of the tweet thread were left hanging at the top of the mountain, and the original holders of $PADRE had nowhere to seek help.

Finally seeing it acquired by a big company in the industry

In the end, although the rumors about Pump.fun's exit currently lack basis and Pump.fun has responded, this reflects the concentrated expression of dissatisfaction in the market. If Pump.fun is merely a calculating enterprise, but does not take people's feelings into account in its calculations, it cannot be called a shrewd calculator.

Of course, it is also possible that they have made enough money and don't care about anything anymore. After all, the airdrop has been saying “coming soon” since the tweet on July 9, and there are still no signs of any “soon” today. Alon said the fourth quarter would be a brilliant quarter, but the result is a desolate mess. The lack of transparent communication that disrespects the community and the joke-like community incentives have only increased the players' resentment.

How does “Trench” say I love you, Pump.fun?