Despite the Meme market cooling off significantly from its peak, Pump.fun remains one of Web 3's most profitable protocols. According to DefiLlama data, in the past 30 days, Pump.fun's protocol revenue reached $28.4 million, higher than Polymarket (monthly revenue $22.12 million) and second only to Hyperliquid (monthly revenue $43.93 million).
Someone mints a coin, it takes a cut; someone trades, it takes a cut; from birth to death, a Meme coin can skim fees from every transaction. Since its launch over two years ago, Pump.fun has minted over 120 million tokens, with a platform revenue of approximately $1.05 billion, briefly becoming the first application on Solana to exceed $1 billion in revenue.
Pump.fun uses part of its revenue to buy back and burn PUMP, converting the platform's earnings into token buy pressure. However, last night at 10 p.m., this value circulation mechanism faced its toughest challenge. PUMP's team and investor tokens were unlocked for the first time, totaling 82.5 billion tokens, accounting for 8.25% of the total supply, equivalent to 20.23% of the circulating supply pre-unlock, valued at approximately $125 million.
In contrast, PUMP's trading volume in the past 24 hours was only $28 million. So, will this potential $125 million worth of sell pressure cause a cliff-like price drop for PUMP? How much of the platform's buy pressure can absorb it? Is PUMP still worth buying?
In April, 129 billion PUMP tokens were burned, so why can't it withstand the unlocking pressure?
On April 29th of this year, Pump.fun burned a total of 129 billion PUMP tokens in one go, accounting for 12.9% of the maximum supply, marking the largest burn in PUMP's history.
In terms of quantity, the 129 billion tokens burned even surpassed the 82.5 billion tokens unlocked this time, but the two cannot directly offset each other. The burned PUMP tokens, most of which were previously repurchased by the platform and held in specific wallets, were not freely circulating in the market. The concentrated burn simply removed these tokens entirely, without creating an additional 129 billion buy pressure on that April day.
This unlocking, on the contrary, involved the release of 82.5 billion chips held by the team and investors that were originally non-transferable, flowing into the secondary market starting last night. The reduction in April was related to the total on-chain supply, while the increase in July pertains to the potential sellable chips.
Moreover, the 82.5 billion chips are just the first batch. The team and investors collectively hold 330 billion PUMP chips, with only a quarter of them unlocked this time, leaving the remaining 247.5 billion chips still locked. It is worth mentioning that there are also 240 billion community tokens with no clear release schedule announced yet.
The two parts together total 487.5 billion chips, equivalent to 1.2 times the pre-unlocking circulation. The market not only needs to absorb the current 82.5 billion chips but also faces long-term uncertainty regarding the subsequent supply.
Unlocking Floodgates While Buybacks Recede
The most stable buying pressure from Pump.fun in the past came from the platform's token buyback.
Following the buyback launch in July 2025, Pump.fun once used 100% of its net protocol fees to buy PUMP. In September last year, the monthly buyback amount surged to $53.1 million, even surpassing the monthly protocol revenue of $42.8 million.
However, in April this year, Pump.fun announced a reduction in the buyback ratio from 100% to 50%, allocating the other half of the funds to the company for hiring, marketing, and acquisitions. In June this year, the monthly PUMP buyback amount was only $9.2 million, shrinking by over 80% from its peak.
Looking at the past six months, the disparity becomes more apparent. In the second half of 2025, Pump.fun spent approximately $217 million on repurchasing PUMP; in the first half of 2026, they only put in $72.2 million, a 67% decline, while the protocol revenue dropped by only 18% during the same period.
Pump.fun is still profitable, but the funds flowing into PUMP have significantly reduced. Based on the $9.2 million buyback scale in June, selling about 7% of the chips unlocked this time would be enough to offset the platform's monthly buyback.
In a Group of Dwarfs, Pump Stands Out: A Scarce Target in a Bear Market
While sell pressure is looming, there are not many platforms in the market that can generate sustained high income.
Hyperliquid, with higher income than Pump.fun, had a protocol revenue of about $43.93 million in the past 30 days, but HYPE's current market cap is close to $15 billion, more than 20 times that of PUMP. Polymarket had a revenue of about $22.12 million in the past 30 days, has not yet issued a token, and the company's rumored valuation has already reached $15 billion. Even if a token is issued in the future, the valuation is unlikely to be cheap.
In contrast, Pump.fun had a revenue of $28.40 million in the past 30 days, but PUMP's market cap is only about $610 million. It faces unlock pressure, the buyback is decreasing, but at least the platform's revenue is real, the business model is stable, and the token has dropped to a lower valuation.
More importantly, Pump.fun does not rely on a trending meme coin. As long as the market continues to issue and trade tokens, the platform can continue to collect fees. Betting on PUMP is essentially not a bet on the next meme coin but a bet that the meme market will continue to create hotspots, whether in a bear or bull market, and that Pump.fun can continue to hold onto this traffic entrance.
In a bear market, choosing a long-term investment target is not about finding a project without any problems but about prioritizing protocols that still have users, are still profitable, and still have the ability to buy back tokens amid various risks. From this perspective, PUMP is not perfect, but it is still one of the few high-income platform tokens that have not been pushed to sky-high valuations.
The test of unlocking 82.5 billion tokens is a test of short-term resilience, and Pump.fun's income will determine how far PUMP can go. As long as this meme machine continues to make money, PUMP may not necessarily follow the script of "unlock equals to zero." Instead, the current situation presents a good opportunity for long-term investment.
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