$170 million buyback and AI features still fail to mask the decline, Pump.fun trapped in the Meme cycle

Core Viewpoint

2025-11-16 23:47:00

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Can this Meme aircraft carrier really make a comeback in the face of a complex market environment and internal challenges?

Author: Frank, PANews

Pump.fun, as the "Meme Minting Factory" of the Solana ecosystem, has accumulated astonishing revenue and wealth. However, the price of the platform's token PUMP has struggled under continuous selling pressure. To reverse the downturn, Pump.fun is attempting a dual approach with aggressive token buybacks and the experimental introduction of a new feature, "Mayhem Mode," which incorporates AI agents.

In the face of a complex market environment and internal challenges, can this Meme flagship truly rally?

Significant Data Decline, Yet Relatively Resilient Compared to the Industry

To understand Pump.fun's predicament, one must grasp its complex data.

As of November 14, Pump.fun's average daily revenue still exceeds $1 million, ranking it among the top five protocols. However, compared to the $4 million daily revenue at the beginning of the year, this figure has seen a notable decline.

Meanwhile, the daily issuance of new tokens on Pump.fun has decreased from a peak of 70,000 to around 20,000. The number of active wallets per day has also declined, but this figure has remained above 100,000 over the past three months, indicating a relatively mild drop. The graduation rate of issued tokens has clearly decreased; since February of this year, the graduation rate of tokens on Pump.fun has remained below 1%, dropping to as low as 0.58% in September. This reflects a diminishing success rate in the Meme market.

However, much of this data decline is attributed to the overall industry downturn. Compared to its peers, Pump.fun's market share has actually increased. For example, on November 12, Pump.fun accounted for approximately 93.4% of the token issuance on Solana's Meme launch platforms, with 14,800 tokens issued that day. Previously, during the Meme launch platform wars, its market share had dropped as low as 16.8%.

From an overall data performance perspective, while Pump.fun's metrics have indeed declined compared to its peak, they appear more resilient when compared to its peers.

"Buybacks" and "Corrections": The Ineffective Token Business Model

Faced with slowing platform growth and the continuous decline in PUMP token prices, the Pump.fun team is attempting to revitalize the market through "cash capability" buybacks and the launch of "Mayhem Mode."

Since the launch of the PUMP token in July, Pump.fun has used approximately 98% of its platform revenue to buy back over $173.7 million worth of PUMP tokens, equivalent to 11.19% of the total circulating supply.

This buyback effort ranks second among all buyback protocols, with daily buyback volumes only surpassed by Hyperliquid.

However, the price performance of PUMP does not seem to correlate with the extent of the buybacks. The token's performance has declined sharply from its September peak, with a maximum drop of over 83% to a low of $0.0015. Currently, the correction stands at about 60%, while Bitcoin's maximum correction during the same period was around 23%, and HYPE's was about 40%.

In the context of ineffective "cash capability," the team is trying to create a new narrative through product innovation. On November 12, the platform launched the experimental "Mayhem Mode." This feature aims to automatically engage AI agents in trading new tokens. According to the documentation, these AI agents will mint an additional 1 billion tokens for selected tokens (doubling the total supply to 2 billion) and then conduct "random trades" within 24 hours to increase early liquidity, ultimately destroying any unsold portion.

However, this highly anticipated update faced "chaos" upon launch. Community feedback indicated that the new feature was not user-friendly, with numerous bugs reported, including "minting excess token supply," "depleting creator funds," and "locking user funds."

KOL in the Meme space, pepe boost, bluntly stated: "In actual observation, there is no more trading volume than ordinary tokens," adding, "I thought it would be significant, but it turned out to be just an experimental AI messing around on Pump."

The Market is Selling Off the "Meme Track," Not Pump.fun

Why can't the daily buybacks of millions of dollars support the price? The once-promising new feature has become a laughingstock. The fundamental reason for the market's lack of confidence may not lie solely with Pump.fun but rather with broader narratives, structural flaws, and the forces of the cycle.

First, the trend is undeniable, and no one is immune.

Recently, the market has seen increased corrections, with almost all tokens declining. In this environment, buybacks can only serve to "slow the decline" rather than "reverse the trend." As mentioned earlier, Hyperliquid has a similarly strong revenue and buyback mechanism, yet its token has also experienced a significant 40% correction. This demonstrates that in a bear market, relying solely on protocol revenue for buybacks cannot counteract macro selling pressure.

Second, there has always been skepticism in the market: the high revenue and trading volume of Pump.fun are seen as a significant "bubble," generated by high-frequency trading bots rather than real users.

Once this bubble bursts, the corresponding prices will struggle to hold. PANews conducted a survey, randomly selecting the most recent few hundred transactions of 10 ungraduated tokens for behavioral analysis. It found that the proportion of bot trading volume for these tokens is about 54.7%, with each bot averaging 22 trades per token, while real users only average 1.8 trades. In terms of transaction value contribution, each bot contributes an average of $68 per trade, with the overall bot contribution to transaction value being approximately 45.6%. However, in reality, this proportion is even lower than previous survey results. Therefore, from this perspective, the "bot bubble" is a long-standing structural issue for Pump.fun, but it has not worsened recently. It does not seem to be the primary factor for the token's decline.

Third, after excluding the macro and bot factors, the core reason may not be that Pump.fun is failing, but rather that the Meme track itself is faltering.

The fundamental reason for the market's lack of confidence is that investors have lost faith in the overall "Meme coin" track. As the infrastructure of this track, the price of Pump.fun's token reflects the future expectations for the entire track. Currently, this expectation is pessimistic.

This is evident from the performance of the Solana ecosystem, where overall activity on the Solana chain is shrinking. Data shows that the number of active wallets on Solana recently hit a 12-month low. As the main battleground for Meme coins, Solana's "fuel" is running out.

Not only Pump.fun, but other Meme launch platforms are also showing "bleak" data. LetsBonk.fun, which once threatened Pump.fun's position in July, saw its activity "collapse" after August, with the daily issuance of new tokens now only around 200. In this environment of an industry-wide retreat, Pump.fun is ironically the "most resilient one."

Thus, we seem to arrive at the conclusion: the decline of the PUMP token is not the market selling off Pump.fun, but rather the market selling off the Meme track.

Pump.fun is merely the most luxurious first-class cabin on the "sinking Meme Titanic."