Pump.fun’s recent token sale has reignited debate around the sustainability of Solana’s meme launchpad model, according to a July 16 report by Alea Research titled “PumpFun: Asymmetric Upside or The Final Extraction.”
The report explores whether the PUMP token offers asymmetric upside tied to Pump.fun’s revenue engine or reflects an extractive pivot during a waning memecoin cycle.
Launchpad model and fee engine value
Alea outlines how Pump.fun built a “meme casino” product that abstracts away bonding curves, listings, and liquidity steps for retail coin issuance. A key shift came in early 2025, when Pump.fun launched its own AMM, PumpSwap, removing reliance on Raydium and internalizing trading fees, token creation, and liquidity migration.
That vertical integration, Alea notes, has proven highly profitable. The firm estimates Pump.fun generates between $30 million and $40 million in monthly protocol fees and has cleared more than $100 billion in cumulative volume. Lifetime revenues exceed $650 million, placing it above many flagship DeFi protocols in raw fee performance.
The PUMP token’s public sale filled its $600 million target within 12 minutes, which, according to Alea, drew liquidity at a moment when memecoin volumes were already declining and competitors were gaining share.
The current total raised comes to $1.3 billion across seven rounds of funding, with a fully diluted value of over $4 billion.
While some in the market dubbed it “the great extraction,” Alea notes that Pump.fun moved quickly to announce structured buybacks to crystallize protocol cash flows for tokenholders. The report states that a $30 million wallet was funded, with $20 million already deployed into open market purchases.
Supply breakdowns shared by the team showed allocations across community, team, investors, and treasury buckets, now tracked closely by traders for unlock activity.
Competitive pressure
Alea identifies BonkFun as the strongest current challenger, citing its Solana-native incentive model. The platform routes 58% of protocol fees to BONK token burns, 15% to SOL staking, and rewards meme creators, moves Alea sees as aligning well with Solana’s retail-driven user base.
Though BonkFun’s raw volumes trail those of Pump.fun, Alea reports that it now accounts for more than 50% of new token launches on certain aggregator dashboards.
LaunchCoin, meanwhile, has lost momentum. Alea highlights that despite early interest in its multi-chain ambitions and celebrity backers, its trading activity and fee metrics now lag behind both Pump.fun and BonkFun.
The report concludes that Pump.fun’s ICO reflects strong fundamentals, consistent revenue, vertical control, and brand recognition, as well as market unease around capital concentration and liquidity rotation. Whether PUMP represents the start of a broader consumer cash flow phase or the peak of speculative cycles remains open.
However, with Ethereum finally gaining ground on Bitcoin, memecoins and broader alts have started to see strong momentum post-Pump.fun ICO.
Still, Alea frames Pump.fun as “the closest thing Solana has to an app-chain success story,” integrating the full meme launch lifecycle within a single protocol.
