pump.fun: how the meme pipeline and its bonding curve work

pump.fun removed everything from token launches: code, liquidity, listing. A button, an image, a couple of dollars - and the token is trading. This changed the structure of the entire meme market.

Bonding Curve Mechanics

The token starts not with a pool, but with a curve: the contract sells tokens at a price that rises with each purchase, and buys them back on sale. Liquidity isn't needed - the curve itself is the market maker. Early buyers get in cheap mathematically, not through connections. You can't rug the liquidity - it simply doesn't exist until graduation.

Graduation

Once a token reaches the target market cap, it "graduates": the collected SOL moves into a real pool on a DEX, and liquidity is burned/locked. This is the watershed moment: before graduation, the risk is failing to reach it (the vast majority of tokens die on the curve); after graduation, the usual meme risks of distribution and attention take over.

Platform Economics

The fee on every trade on the curve, multiplied by millions of launches, has made pump.fun one of the most profitable apps in crypto. Waves of evolution - streaming, its own DEX, clone wars - change the details, but the essence stays the same: the platform sells lottery tickets and takes a cut of every transaction without risking anything. Being the casino is more profitable than being the player - lesson zero of the entire sector.

We cover graduation statistics and analysis in the section.