Memecoin Platform Pump.fun Sees 80% Token Listing Decline Amid Scandals

Pump.fun, a memecoin platform, has seen a significant decline in its token listings, with successful new tokens down more than 80% from their January highs, according to data from Dune Analytics. The daily number of tokens completing Pump.fun’s “bonding curve,” a prerequisite for listing on a decentralized exchange (DEX), has dropped to around 200 on Feb. 26 from a peak of nearly 1,200 on Jan. 23 and 24. Bonding involves bootstrapping trading liquidity in Solana (SOL) tokens directly on Pump.fun before a memecoin migrates to Raydium, Solana’s most popular DEX.

Overall Pump.fun token launches, irrespective of whether they finish bonding, have followed a similar trajectory, falling from highs of more than 70,000 on Jan. 23 to approximately 25,000 on Feb. 26, Dune data showed. This decline in activity on Pump.fun and the Solana network in February can be attributed to a series of memecoin-related scandals that have soured sentiment among retail traders.

The explosive growth of Solana in 2024 was largely driven by memecoin trading, with the chain’s total value locked (TVL) increasing from around $1.4 billion to more than $9 billion that year, according to DefiLlama. In the fourth quarter of 2024, application revenues on Solana increased by 213%, primarily due to memecoin speculation, according to a report by crypto research firm Messari. However, in 2025, insider selling and huge losses for retail traders began to negatively impact sentiment on Solana’s memecoin ecosystem.

On Feb. 14, Libra (LIBRA), a memecoin seemingly endorsed by Argentine President Javier Milei, erased some $4.4 billion in market capitalization within hours of launching. Pump.fun co-founder Alon expressed his disgust at the events surrounding Libra, stating that he designed Pump.fun as a way to “democratize coin creation to build in a baseline level of safety, simplicity, and fairness for every launch.”

Since January, traders have lost approximately $2 billion across 800,000 wallets