Pump.fun (PUMP)

Pump.fun is a Solana venue that reduces launching a meme token to a few minutes, with neither starting capital nor a liquidity pool required from the creator. Price follows a bonding curve along which the contract sells the token, and once proceeds hit a threshold — the same threshold for everyone — the liquidity is moved onto a decentralised exchange and trading continues normally.

The design closes off one common scam, the creator draining the pool, because the creator never holds it. It also turns issuance into a firehose: the overwhelming majority of launched tokens never reach the threshold and find no buyers. Fees are taken both on the curve and after the migration, so the platform earns regardless of what happens to any particular token.

PUMP is the platform's own token, sold publicly. Its economics rest on fees from issuance and trading volume — that is, on the intensity of the meme segment and nothing else.

The contract, not the creator, holds the liquidity, so the classic rug pull is impossible here; that does nothing about how many launches simply fail.