Pump.fun has become a meme again: when does success turn into failure?

The giant that cannot sustain its own glory

One year ago, pump.fun reigned as the most profitable platform in the crypto ecosystem. Today, despite investing nearly 1 million SOL (approximately 188 million dollars) in buybacks of its token $PUMP to control 12.227% of the total supply, the price continues to plummet. The irony is bitter: massive buybacks with no positive price movement. This has raised an uncomfortable question throughout the community: do these strategies really work or are they just theater?

The breakdown of trust: when promises evaporate

The catalyst was brutal. Mario Nawfal, influential with 2.6 million followers on X, not only criticized pump.fun but questioned its fundamental business logic. He pointed out the inexplicable: while Solana faced difficulties, pump.fun was liquidating massive SOL positions without reinvesting anything into the ecosystem that made it a millionaire. The promised airdrop in July remains a ghost “coming soon.” pump.fun’s response was a blow to the chin: $10,000 for each selected meme coin. For a platform that charges $300 million in commissions, the gesture was so offensive that it instantly sparked mockery across the network.

The Glass Full Foundation disaster: failed investment and silent abandonment

In August, when pump.fun was competing fiercely against bonk.fun, it launched the Glass Full Foundation with $1.7 million to support promising meme coins. Brilliant strategy in theory. In practice, it has been a total disaster. Two weeks ago, even $neet, the “last survivor,” fell below the purchase price. The final balance: losses of approximately $1.37 million. Players who bet on pump.fun versus bonk.fun feel betrayed. They expected the platform to take care of its own ecosystem, not jump from project to project leaving a trail of financial ruins.

The deafening silence and its consequences

What happened afterward was even more concerning: 10 days of complete silence from pump.fun’s official accounts and its co-founder alon. Not a tweet, not an update, not an explanation. They didn’t even mention “Mayhem Mode,” their latest feature, which was met with hostility for being perceived as a more aggressive way to extract value from a declining meme market. With graduated tokens falling at a rate of just 0.7% (only 98 out of 12,610 daily launches succeed), the platform mathematically thrives on 99.3% failed projects. The silence caused even AIs to criticize: aixbt pointed out that pump.fun had turned the platform into a “value squeezing machine.”

The panic over fund withdrawal: when trust collapses

Then came Lookonchain with the bombshell: pump.fun apparently withdrew $436.5 million since October 15. The market panicked over a possible exit scam. Sapijiju, co-founder, emerged from silence to deny everything, but his explanation was empty: the funds were only transferred to different wallets for “business development investments.” The only public acquisitions: Kolscan (KOL tracking tool) and Padre (trading terminal). But here’s the real crime: when they announced the acquisition of Padre, they immediately declared that Padre’s token would no longer have utility on the platform and there were no future plans. Imagine in Web2 that your acquired company’s stock loses all its value in 24 hours. That’s what happened that night. $PADRE Holders were devastated.

The final question: has meme pump.fun returned to itself?

In the end, pump.fun shows that being a “calculating company” without connecting to the community is not clever, it’s business suicide. The promised airdrop on July 9 remains a mystery. Promises of the “glorious fourth quarter” have faded away. The lack of transparency has turned frustration into systematic distrust. How can the community continue to believe in pump.fun when every move it makes seems designed to extract maximum value with minimal return to those who support it? The question is no longer whether pump.fun made enough money to stop caring. The question is: did it ever really care?