Pump.fun: What 18 Million Token Launches Teach About Launching

Pump.fun has hosted 18.67 million token launches, the biggest launch experiment ever run. Two-thirds of those tokens died on launch day and about 1% graduated, and the survivors share one unglamorous trait.

By AnkhLabs Research, Growth research team··6 min read

Key takeaways

  • Pump.fun, the Solana memecoin launchpad, has hosted 18.67 million token launches since January 2024, and 68.67% of those tokens made their last trade on the day they launched.

  • Only about 1% of pump.fun tokens ever graduate to open trading, while the platform itself has earned more than $1.2 billion in revenue, so the house is the most reliable winner.

  • A 2026 study of 832,941 pump.fun launches found tokens with a Telegram channel graduated about nine times as often, and although the authors later found the effect didn't hold on a fresh sample, the lesson for founders is to build the community before the launch.

Pump.fun is what a crypto launch looks like with everything stripped away, so there's no product, no roadmap, no team and no audit, just a name, a picture and a price curve. It's easy for serious builders to laugh at. We'd suggest studying it instead, because when you remove every other variable from a launch, what's left is marketing in its purest form, tested at a scale no experiment in history has come close to.

The results are merciless. CoinGecko counted 18.67 million tokens launched on pump.fun between January 2024 and June 2026, and found 68.67% saw their last trade on the same day they launched, only 4.55% were still trading after 90 days and roughly 1% ever "graduated". Across eighteen million tries, the typical outcome of a pure attention play is death before the first sunset.

Attention with nothing to hold it is worth exactly its resale value.

What is pump.fun?

Pump.fun is a memecoin launchpad on the Solana blockchain that lets anyone create a token in minutes without writing any code. Each new token trades on a preset price curve, and if enough people buy to fill that curve, it "graduates" to open trading on a decentralized exchange. The platform earns a fee on the trading along the way.

That design made launching a token as easy as posting a meme, which is why the numbers are so large. It also means pump.fun is the cleanest dataset crypto has on what attention alone can do, because almost every token on it is a pure marketing bet with nothing else underneath.

How many pump.fun tokens fail?

Almost all of them. CoinGecko's count of 18.67 million pump.fun tokens found 68.67% recorded their last trade on launch day, only 4.55% were still trading after 90 days and about 1% graduated. CoinGecko notes the 90-day figure may understate survival for graduated tokens, but for the typical launch, death comes within hours.

The trend isn't improving at the top of the funnel either. The same academic study we come back to below measured a pooled graduation rate of 0.198% across 832,941 launches in May and June 2026, which the authors put at less than a third of the rate an earlier study measured for September and October 2025.

Who actually makes money on pump.fun

The blockchain keeps honest books, and they say the house wins. Pump.fun has earned $1.222 billion in cumulative revenue as of August 2026, according to DefiLlama data, which makes it one of the highest-earning apps crypto has produced. Its own $500 million token sale at $0.004 per token sold out in twelve minutes in July 2025, and today the PUMP token trades just under that sale price, about 55% below its peak. Even the casino's own token obeys the casino's rules.

The players do worse than the house. CoinGecko found that even in April 2026, its best month on record, 73.3% of 3.14 million active wallets were in profit, but 65.1% of those winners made $500 or less and only 5.4% cleared $1,000, and in June 2025 just 30.1% of wallets made any profit at all. A thin layer of professionals and the platform absorb nearly everything, and that's the honest price of attention with nothing underneath it.

The launchpads themselves live by the same rule. In July 2025 a rival called LetsBONK overtook pump.fun as Solana's top launchpad with 47.4% of the market, and six weeks later pump.fun had taken back 73.6%. The top spot in an attention market flipped twice in six weeks, because nothing built purely on attention keeps itself alive.

What do surviving pump.fun tokens have in common?

The clearest signal in the research is a community that existed before launch. A study of 832,941 pump.fun launches found tokens that advertised a Telegram channel graduated at 1.485%, against 0.166% for tokens without one, roughly nine times the rate. The authors later warned the effect didn't hold on a fresh sample, so treat it as a strong pattern rather than a law.

The first version of that study, published in July 2026, described social presence as a large effect. The revised September 2026 version is more cautious, reporting that the Telegram link still carried much higher odds of graduating in the original sample but failed when the model was tested on a later two-week window. We think the honest reading is simple. In the most cynical launch arena ever built, where the product is literally nothing, having a room full of people before launch day is still the most useful signal in the data, even if it isn't a guarantee.

What we'd tell a founder about pump.fun

Build the room before the launch. If a channel full of humans is the strongest survival signal when the product is nothing, it matters at least as much when the product is real. The community isn't the audience you announce your launch to, because it's the thing that makes the launch survivable, and that's as true for a serious token launch strategy as for a memecoin.

Plan day two harder than day one. Two-thirds of pump.fun tokens die on launch day because the launch was the only event on the calendar. The next feature, the next milestone and the next reason to come back all need to be written before the first moment fires, and if your plan ends at the announcement, so does your chart.

Don't build your house inside someone else's casino. The LetsBONK whiplash is what platform risk looks like at full speed. Launch wherever the liquidity is, but make sure your identity, your community and the channels you'd need to launch again belong to you, because the venue's market share isn't your problem until it's the only distribution you have.

Respect the base rate you're up against. Roughly 99% of pump.fun tokens never graduate, and every point of survival above that comes from something the attention can land on, whether that's a working product, a real community, a channel you own or a reason to exist next week. A team spending most of its launch budget on awareness and little on what happens after is marketing to the same ten million people with the casino's favorite strategy.

Eighteen million launches is more go-to-market attempts than the rest of the tech industry has produced in its lifetime, compressed into two and a half years and recorded on a public ledger, and it would be malpractice not to read the answer. Attention is real and attention is buyable, but by itself it's worth nothing. The one percent that survived didn't out-shout the other ninety-nine. They had somewhere for the noise to go.

Frequently asked questions

Is pump.fun safe to use?

Pump.fun itself is a working platform, but most tokens launched on it lose nearly all their value quickly. CoinGecko found 68.67% of 18.67 million pump.fun tokens stopped trading on launch day, and even in its best month most profitable wallets made $500 or less. Anyone buying should treat it as high-risk speculation.

What does it mean when a pump.fun token graduates?

A pump.fun token graduates when buyers fill its starting price curve, at which point it moves to open trading on a decentralized exchange with a proper liquidity pool. Only about 1% of the 18.67 million tokens launched between January 2024 and June 2026 reached that point.

How does pump.fun make money?

Pump.fun charges a fee on trades of the tokens launched through it. Those fees have added up to more than $1.2 billion in cumulative revenue by August 2026, according to DefiLlama data, which makes it one of the highest-earning applications in crypto even though most tokens on it fail within a day.

What is the PUMP token?

PUMP is pump.fun's own token. It raised $500 million in a public sale at $0.004 per token in July 2025, selling out in about twelve minutes at a $4 billion fully diluted valuation. As of September 2026 it trades just under that sale price, about 55% below its all-time high.

Are there alternatives to pump.fun?

Yes. Other memecoin launchpads compete for the same users, and in July 2025 LetsBONK briefly overtook pump.fun as Solana's biggest launchpad with 47.4% of the market. Pump.fun won the lead back within about six weeks, reaching 73.6%, which shows how quickly share moves between venues built on attention.



Pump.fun: What 18 Million Token Launches Teach About Launching

Pump.fun has hosted 18.67 million token launches, the biggest launch experiment ever run. Two-thirds of those tokens died on launch day and about 1% graduated, and the survivors share one unglamorous trait.

By AnkhLabs Research, Growth research team··6 min read

Key takeaways

  • Pump.fun, the Solana memecoin launchpad, has hosted 18.67 million token launches since January 2024, and 68.67% of those tokens made their last trade on the day they launched.

  • Only about 1% of pump.fun tokens ever graduate to open trading, while the platform itself has earned more than $1.2 billion in revenue, so the house is the most reliable winner.

  • A 2026 study of 832,941 pump.fun launches found tokens with a Telegram channel graduated about nine times as often, and although the authors later found the effect didn't hold on a fresh sample, the lesson for founders is to build the community before the launch.

Pump.fun is what a crypto launch looks like with everything stripped away, so there's no product, no roadmap, no team and no audit, just a name, a picture and a price curve. It's easy for serious builders to laugh at. We'd suggest studying it instead, because when you remove every other variable from a launch, what's left is marketing in its purest form, tested at a scale no experiment in history has come close to.

The results are merciless. CoinGecko counted 18.67 million tokens launched on pump.fun between January 2024 and June 2026, and found 68.67% saw their last trade on the same day they launched, only 4.55% were still trading after 90 days and roughly 1% ever "graduated". Across eighteen million tries, the typical outcome of a pure attention play is death before the first sunset.

Attention with nothing to hold it is worth exactly its resale value.

What is pump.fun?

Pump.fun is a memecoin launchpad on the Solana blockchain that lets anyone create a token in minutes without writing any code. Each new token trades on a preset price curve, and if enough people buy to fill that curve, it "graduates" to open trading on a decentralized exchange. The platform earns a fee on the trading along the way.

That design made launching a token as easy as posting a meme, which is why the numbers are so large. It also means pump.fun is the cleanest dataset crypto has on what attention alone can do, because almost every token on it is a pure marketing bet with nothing else underneath.

How many pump.fun tokens fail?

Almost all of them. CoinGecko's count of 18.67 million pump.fun tokens found 68.67% recorded their last trade on launch day, only 4.55% were still trading after 90 days and about 1% graduated. CoinGecko notes the 90-day figure may understate survival for graduated tokens, but for the typical launch, death comes within hours.

The trend isn't improving at the top of the funnel either. The same academic study we come back to below measured a pooled graduation rate of 0.198% across 832,941 launches in May and June 2026, which the authors put at less than a third of the rate an earlier study measured for September and October 2025.

Who actually makes money on pump.fun

The blockchain keeps honest books, and they say the house wins. Pump.fun has earned $1.222 billion in cumulative revenue as of August 2026, according to DefiLlama data, which makes it one of the highest-earning apps crypto has produced. Its own $500 million token sale at $0.004 per token sold out in twelve minutes in July 2025, and today the PUMP token trades just under that sale price, about 55% below its peak. Even the casino's own token obeys the casino's rules.

The players do worse than the house. CoinGecko found that even in April 2026, its best month on record, 73.3% of 3.14 million active wallets were in profit, but 65.1% of those winners made $500 or less and only 5.4% cleared $1,000, and in June 2025 just 30.1% of wallets made any profit at all. A thin layer of professionals and the platform absorb nearly everything, and that's the honest price of attention with nothing underneath it.

The launchpads themselves live by the same rule. In July 2025 a rival called LetsBONK overtook pump.fun as Solana's top launchpad with 47.4% of the market, and six weeks later pump.fun had taken back 73.6%. The top spot in an attention market flipped twice in six weeks, because nothing built purely on attention keeps itself alive.

What do surviving pump.fun tokens have in common?

The clearest signal in the research is a community that existed before launch. A study of 832,941 pump.fun launches found tokens that advertised a Telegram channel graduated at 1.485%, against 0.166% for tokens without one, roughly nine times the rate. The authors later warned the effect didn't hold on a fresh sample, so treat it as a strong pattern rather than a law.

The first version of that study, published in July 2026, described social presence as a large effect. The revised September 2026 version is more cautious, reporting that the Telegram link still carried much higher odds of graduating in the original sample but failed when the model was tested on a later two-week window. We think the honest reading is simple. In the most cynical launch arena ever built, where the product is literally nothing, having a room full of people before launch day is still the most useful signal in the data, even if it isn't a guarantee.

What we'd tell a founder about pump.fun

Build the room before the launch. If a channel full of humans is the strongest survival signal when the product is nothing, it matters at least as much when the product is real. The community isn't the audience you announce your launch to, because it's the thing that makes the launch survivable, and that's as true for a serious token launch strategy as for a memecoin.

Plan day two harder than day one. Two-thirds of pump.fun tokens die on launch day because the launch was the only event on the calendar. The next feature, the next milestone and the next reason to come back all need to be written before the first moment fires, and if your plan ends at the announcement, so does your chart.

Don't build your house inside someone else's casino. The LetsBONK whiplash is what platform risk looks like at full speed. Launch wherever the liquidity is, but make sure your identity, your community and the channels you'd need to launch again belong to you, because the venue's market share isn't your problem until it's the only distribution you have.

Respect the base rate you're up against. Roughly 99% of pump.fun tokens never graduate, and every point of survival above that comes from something the attention can land on, whether that's a working product, a real community, a channel you own or a reason to exist next week. A team spending most of its launch budget on awareness and little on what happens after is marketing to the same ten million people with the casino's favorite strategy.

Eighteen million launches is more go-to-market attempts than the rest of the tech industry has produced in its lifetime, compressed into two and a half years and recorded on a public ledger, and it would be malpractice not to read the answer. Attention is real and attention is buyable, but by itself it's worth nothing. The one percent that survived didn't out-shout the other ninety-nine. They had somewhere for the noise to go.

Frequently asked questions

Is pump.fun safe to use?

Pump.fun itself is a working platform, but most tokens launched on it lose nearly all their value quickly. CoinGecko found 68.67% of 18.67 million pump.fun tokens stopped trading on launch day, and even in its best month most profitable wallets made $500 or less. Anyone buying should treat it as high-risk speculation.

What does it mean when a pump.fun token graduates?

A pump.fun token graduates when buyers fill its starting price curve, at which point it moves to open trading on a decentralized exchange with a proper liquidity pool. Only about 1% of the 18.67 million tokens launched between January 2024 and June 2026 reached that point.

How does pump.fun make money?

Pump.fun charges a fee on trades of the tokens launched through it. Those fees have added up to more than $1.2 billion in cumulative revenue by August 2026, according to DefiLlama data, which makes it one of the highest-earning applications in crypto even though most tokens on it fail within a day.

What is the PUMP token?

PUMP is pump.fun's own token. It raised $500 million in a public sale at $0.004 per token in July 2025, selling out in about twelve minutes at a $4 billion fully diluted valuation. As of September 2026 it trades just under that sale price, about 55% below its all-time high.

Are there alternatives to pump.fun?

Yes. Other memecoin launchpads compete for the same users, and in July 2025 LetsBONK briefly overtook pump.fun as Solana's biggest launchpad with 47.4% of the market. Pump.fun won the lead back within about six weeks, reaching 73.6%, which shows how quickly share moves between venues built on attention.