The crazy rise of the Memecoin factory pump. Fun

In one of The strange parties of the Internet, a Unicorn with human breastsA The cheetah smokes a cigaretteand Elon musk cartoon In traditional cloaks they sit side by side – the crew of a bad flight. The Word Art logo tops the page, a floating anachronism. Icons sparkle, vibrate, bounce, and in other ways evade the pursuing eye. Messages appear barely legible in green, red, and yellow, then disappear.

However, beneath this combination of Internet weirdness and low-key web design lies one thing Fastest Growing Cryptocurrency Companies never: Pump.Funa launching pad com. memecoinsa type of cryptocurrency whose value rises and falls in line with the popularity of the memes it refers to.

The platform launched in January 2024. In the 12 months since, third parties have reported bringing Over $350 million in revenue By cutting 1 percent of trades.

Pump.Fun was created by three entrepreneurs in their early 20s: Noah Tudell, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerler. The trio started out as memcoin traders themselves, but grew tired of repeatedly falling victim to rug sweeps – a type of scam where the coin issuer steals their funds, leaving investors sitting on worthless tokens.

“It used to be very unsafe to buy memecoins… The whole thing was designed to suck money out of people,” Tudell told WIRED late last year. “The idea with Pump was to build something where everyone was on the same playing field.”

The three Pump.Fun founders, who met in England, have tried to keep their identities secret — Tweedale and Cohen continue to appear publicly under their online aliases, Sapijiju and A1on, while Kerler’s public association with Pump.Fun is sparse. But their names It appeared last year In the company documents associated with the process.

Tweedale agreed to be interviewed by WIRED, but on the condition that his whereabouts and details of his appearance remain undisclosed. When we met, he seemed serious but somewhat nervous, talking at a mile a minute. He declined to answer questions about where Operation Pump.Fun is based or how many people it employs.

The secrecy is partly a reflection of a common attitude in the crypto world that the right to privacy is sacrosanct, Tweddell claims. It’s also about “security and personal safety,” he adds. In theory, the amount of cryptocurrency passing through Pump.Fun wallets could make the team a target They will be blackmailers.

Tweddell claims the goal is for the founders to become more public-facing in the future. But in the meantime, there’s the question of how best to reinvest the money Pump.Fun has made to strengthen and expand the platform in the face of increasing scrutiny and inevitable growing pains. “We’re not here to make a quick buck, close the site, and run away. We want to build something that lasts,” says Tudell.

He claims the long-term vision is to transform Pump.Fun from a one-dimensional memecoin launcher into a competitor to the biggest social platforms, but where the lion’s share of revenue flows to users and creators. “Imagine Instagram or TikTok, where everything is monetizable,” says Tudell. “The Pump UI — everything we have so far — is the oldest possible version of what you can imagine we would want to do.”

Before Pump.Fun, relatively speaking A few meme coins have been released on the market; only DogecoinThe original memecoin and a handful of other currencies like Shiba Inu, babyand Bonk– Achieve any kind of fame. The complexity of developing the memecoin and the cost of providing the liquidity needed to make it easily tradable limited the amount it was issued.