The Anatomy of a Solana Memecoin: pump.fun

In 2024, the Solana blockchain experienced a rapid expansion in the memecoin market, with pump.fun being at the forefront.

2024 was a year of rapid expansion for the Solana blockchain, particularly in the memecoin market, where pump.fun emerged as the leading platform. The platform quickly captured a large audience seeking fast profits, prompting Crypto.news to conduct an in-depth analysis of the profitability of investing in pump.fun tokens.

While a few early adopters did manage to secure profits, the vast majority of investors ultimately lost money. Here's a closer look at the findings and their implications for investors.

Pump.fun was the clear forerunner in Solana's memecoin ecosystem, holding 50% of the market share. The platform achieved this by streamlining token launches, making them both quick and easy. It also focused on ensuring a fair process for creating and trading tokens, avoiding problems like presales or team allocations.

To gather data for this article, we used various queries and scripts inspired by Dune analysts @adam_tehc, @hashed_official, and @evelyn233 and developed our own versions.

Due to the ease of use and the rise in popularity, around 300,000 tokens were created on Solana each month since March 2024. However, not all of these tokens even reach a market cap of $69,000. Over six months, 33,683 tokens made it to Raydium, while a total of 1,883,578 tokens were deployed on pump.fun. This results in a graduation success rate of only 1.79%.

Pump.fun further provides a token burning mechanism. Around 100 pump.fun tokens were burned each month, while an average of 13,308 new pump.fun tokens were minted monthly. This puts the net burn rate at around 99.8%.

The statistics for investors on the pump.fun platform paints an even grimmer picture. Out of 29,601,462 total wallets involved, a majority experienced negative outcomes:

Around 14,987,034 wallets (50.6%) lost less than $100.

Another 8,038,836 wallets (27.1%) lost between $100 and $1,000.

Only 1,000,704 wallets (3.4%) managed to lose more than $10,000.

On the other hand, only 5,574,898 wallets (18.8%) experienced profits, and a vast majority of these earned less than $100.

The distribution of profits further shows the low probability of winning through memecoin investments. To provide a clearer picture of the probabilities associated with different profit levels on pump.fun, here are some realistic comparisons:

The probability of losing less than $100 is comparable to rolling a six-sided die and getting a one or a two.

The probability of making a profit is roughly equivalent to rolling the die and getting a five or a six.

The probability of losing more than $100,000 is similar to rolling the die and getting a specific number, like a three.

Many individuals are searching for a quick way to transform their financial situations, and stories of random people making huge profits overnight certainly add fuel to the fire. But the harsh reality is that most will lose, often catastrophically.

Instead of gambling on unproven tokens, investors should focus on assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL — assets with a proven track record. These won’t turn $100 into a million tomorrow, but they will grow an individual’s wealth steadily and sustainably. At the end of the day, investing is for making money and not losing. The sooner one abandons the dream of instant riches and embraces this truth, the sooner they’ll start making decisions that truly increase their net worth. Anything else is a reckless path to financial ruin.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only