- Pump.fun has received a significant amount of attention for its record-breaking growth, but beneath it lies a concerning trend.
- Token issuers on Pump.fun have been seeding sniper wallets with funds to purchase their own meme coins, affecting more than 15,000 token launches on the platform.
Recent research by Pine Analytics found that over 15,000 memecoins that debuted on the Solana blockchain through the Pump.Fun platform was manipulated by coordinated pump-and-dump operations. Pump.Fun, launched in early 2024, has emerged as one of the leading platforms for memecoin creation and trading within a very brief period.
The platform’s simple user interface has fueled the creation of more than 8 million tokens, with some days seeing as many as 36,000 new releases. However, the same efficiency has turned the platform into an incubator for manipulative behaviors and bad actors who try to game the system, and in turn tarnish Solana’s image.
Key Findings of Pine’s Analysis
Pine Analytics revealed that over the past month alone, more than 15,000 SOL in realized profits were extracted using this tactic. It captured over 15,000 token launches, over 4,600 sniper wallets, and 10,400 deployers.
For context, sniping refers to the strategy where traders deploy automated bots to purchase newly launched tokens at the earliest opportunity, typically within the first few seconds or minutes. These bots are funded by the token creators, artificially creating the impression of demand and inflating the price of the token. The moment the price is inflated, these bots instantly offload their holdings, causing the value of the token to plummet and leaving investors with losses.
One of the findings is that deployer-funded sniping is not only widespread but also highly automated and profitable, with activity heavily concentrated during U.S. business hours. In addition, the use of multi-wallet farming structures is common, deployers often rely on temporary wallets and coordinated exits to create the illusion of organic demand and mislead retail investors.”Despite its limitations, our one-hop funding filter surfaces the clearest and most repeatable examples of insider-style activity at scale.” Pine emphasized.
One case study offered a clear example of how these tactics unfold in practice. The deployer wallet distributed 1.2 SOL across three separate wallets, each prepped to act in sync. Shortly after, the deployer launched a token called SOL>BNB, and all three wallets sniped the token in the same block it was created.
According to the report, “These wallets consistently demonstrated high success rates, with 87% of snipes resulting in profitable token swaps. The execution was clean, with minimal failed transactions, and profits typically ranged between 1–100 SOL per wallet, although some outliers exceeded 500 SOL.” Over 55% of snipes were fully executed within the first minute, while nearly 85% were completed within five minutes.
As reported by CNF, the platform’s controversial practices have even caught the attention of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who criticized Pump.Fun for reflecting a misguided social philosophy that places hype over substance.
