Pump.fun is now leading among Solana—projects in buybacks of its native token. Over the past five months, the team has spent more than $205 million on buybacks.
Pump.fun continues to buy back PUMP and still sends almost all commissions to reduce its token supply.
At the moment, the team has spent $205 million on buybacks, which is more than 99% of daily commissions. In total, 13.86% of the supply has been bought back, which helped PUMP bounce from local lows.
Pump.fun has allocated over $205 million for regular buybacks. Source: Pump.fun fees
The approach of Pump.fun stands out among other Solana projects, which mostly keep a significant share of commissions for themselves. The company announced buybacks after months of criticism for collecting fees outside the Solana ecosystem. According to preliminary estimates, Pump.fun has generated about $1 billion in fees in total, most of which came during the peak of the altseason last year.
Do the PUMP buybacks bring real value?
Despite regular buybacks, the PUMP token continues to trade near the lower range. The buybacks effectively burn all commissions from meme coin creation and trading, but some in the community doubt that this value actually returns to holders.
Currently, PUMP is trading at $0.0027 and has dropped by 54.7% over the past three months. Additionally, Pump.fun commissions have slightly decreased, so the team cannot buy enough tokens to noticeably impact the market.
The community also criticizes the project for allegedly misusing its SOL reserves and selling them for PUMP instead of staking. Even with constant buybacks, many PUMP holders remain at a loss and receive no additional benefits or profit distribution.
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The open interest on PUMP is also close to a historical low at $183 million, with about 60% being longs. On Hyperliquid about 51% of traders hold long positions, although there are more and more attempts to play on a new price decline.
The token has often dropped, liquidating longs, and has not managed to trigger a full short squeeze. On Hyperliquid only ten major traders hold significant positions in PUMP.
PUMP reflects declining activity in the meme coin segment
Pump.fun switched to decentralized trading after its daily fees from new token launches decreased. DEX compensates for part of these losses, but still does not reach the revenues the project had at the peak of the meme season.
Pump.fun and its DEX PumpSwap continue to generate about $2.7 million in daily fees and remain among the five most profitable applications. The base level of fees remains high, although Pump.fun has slowed the pace of token launches and their transition to graduation stage.
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On Solana the meme trading structure has also changed and now accounts for only 5% of the total volume. DEX have switched to trading wrapped assets, stablecoins, and old meme coins. New memes and long-standing projects now make up about 5% of Solana-DEX volumes, whereas at their peak their share exceeded 80%.
