Pump.fun has long been the king of memecoins on Solana, surpassing all competitors. But times are changing: the share of memes in the market has dropped from 50% to just 10%. The memeeconomy is deflating and the platform also has to adapt.
Instead of standing still, Pump.fun is betting on ICM — tokens with real utility. The new section of the platform called Spotlight works as an incubator. It helps launch not just ‘hype coins,’ but projects with real value.
Against this backdrop, interest in the promised PUMP airdrop is only growing, and traders are clearly on edge.
Pump.fun targets tokens with real utility
After almost two years of dominance in the meme segment, Pump.fun is starting to go beyond the usual: the platform is seriously targeting the ICM market (utility tokens). In a post dedicated to the launch of the new Spotlight direction, the team explained how they came to this step and shared their thoughts on the current state of the market.
Despite its success with memes, Pump.fun admits that launching utility tokens is still far from ideal. With memecoins, everything is simple, expectations are low, and they are easily met, but with ‘utility’ projects, things are much more complicated. Here are the most common challenges creators face:
- Hard to get noticed by the community
- Low liquidity
- Difficulties reaching the crypto audience
- Hard for new users to get started
Spotlight is supposed to help these projects break through, provide support at the start, and adapt to the tough on-chain environment. But despite all the ambition, there are almost no details yet: exactly how Pump.fun will develop startups is not disclosed.
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And this, apparently, is no coincidence. Pump.fun is a top platform for launching tokens on Solana, and its ecosystem is already attractive for new projects. As stated in the description of Spotlight:
‘Now the Pump.fun ecosystem is the best place to launch a utility token we’ve ever seen.’
It is on this reputation that the platform is building its entry into the ICM market, without unnecessary noise, but relying on its already achieved dominance.
The community is still waiting for PUMP — airdrop rumors reignited
While Pump.fun is actively building a new ecosystem through Spotlight and the recent acquisition of the trading terminal Padre, old users can only wait. In July, the team promised an airdrop as part of the token launch, but even the most loyal participants have not received anything yet.
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Recently, the project’s X page updated its banner: it now shows a parachute with PUMP and SOL tokens. That was enough to reignite a wave of rumors, and traders rushed en masse to prediction markets.
At its peak, the Kalshi platform even showed a 91% probability that the airdrop would happen by the end of the year. But later, the odds dropped sharply.
Pump.fun keeps raking in money despite market fears
Even with sluggish market activity, Pump.fun remains a revenue machine. Every day the platform consistently brings in more than $1 million, maintaining its lead among all Solana projects by revenue.
Pump ranks first in revenue on Solana. Source: DeFiLlama
So far, more than $162.5 million has been spent on buybacks of PUMP tokens — that’s 10.15% of the total supply in circulation. The team has not yet disclosed what they will do with these assets.
Despite the uncertainty around the airdrop and declining interest in memecoins, Pump.fun remains one of the most discussed platforms on-chain. The project not only generates revenue but is also restructuring for a new wave of tokens, focusing on utility rather than just hype.
