"Pump.fun Plummets Post-LIBRA: Users, Tokens, Fees Drop Amid Memecoin Market Turmoil"

Pump.fun, a Solana-based token launchpad, has witnessed a significant decline in fees, users, and token launches following the LIBRA incident. According to data from Dune Analytics, the number of new users onboarded on the platform fell by 16.4% to 601,516 between February 7 and 13, marking the first time since late November that the weekly average of new users dropped below 100,000.

The LIBRA incident also led to a 26.3% decrease in the number of tokens deployed weekly on Pump.fun, from 344,607 to 253,955. Despite this decline, the platform has deployed close to 8 million tokens in 13 months as of February 21. The decrease in token deployments also resulted in a 32% drop in fees collected, with 124,623 SOL collected between February 7 and 13, falling to 85,196 SOL the following week. This is the first time since late December that the weekly average of fees collected fell below 15,000 SOL.

The LIBRA controversy also cooled off the memecoin market on Solana. On February 14, Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, endorsed the memecoin LIBRA, causing its price to soar to a $4.5 billion market cap before crashing by 95% over the weekend. A report by Nansen highlighted that two wallets profited over $10 million by buying the token a few seconds after Milei's endorsement and selling it at its peak price of $4.55. This episode raised questions about insider trading activity in memecoin markets and prompted debates on how memecoins affect Solana's trustworthiness, potentially contributing to Pump.fun's significant slump in numbers over the past week.

As a result of the debates and investor unease toward memecoins, this sector fell by 13.4% since February 14, registering the third-largest drawdown in altcoin sectors in the period, according to Artemis' data.