Essay · July 31, 2025 · 10:24
How Pumpfun ACTUALLY works | Founder Explains for BEGINNERS
The Signal
Pump.fun’s pitch is a coin launch stripped down to a name, ticker and image: for under $2, a user can create a tradable coin without supplying upfront liquidity. Its co-founder says the bonding curve sells every token through the same mechanism, requiring creators to buy alongside everyone else and locking the coin’s basic details after creation. The platform’s early growth came through thousands of direct messages rather than paid marketing, reflecting his broader view that crypto products work when builders understand what users are already doing.
Key Takeaways
- 01
A launch costs less than $2
A creator supplies a name, ticker and JPEG, and Pump.fun puts the coin onchain in under two minutes — or under a minute, by the co-founder’s estimate. Before that model, he says creators needed Solana or Ethereum know-how, paid tools and at least a couple thousand dollars of liquidity; the bonding curve removes that upfront-liquidity requirement.
- 02
Creators enter on the same terms
The co-founder describes 100% of the tokens as being sold through the launch mechanism, with creators required to buy in like everyone else. Once created, the name, ticker and image cannot be changed, and the creator cannot withdraw the liquidity.
- 03
Distribution was manual
Pump.fun paid nothing for traditional marketing. Its co-founder says he messaged 3,000 people while his co-founder contacted many more, learning to start with conversations about people’s holdings and problems before making an honest pitch.
On the Record
“100% of the tokens are sold on it, meaning that no one has any unfair advantage, so to speak, of getting tokens before the coin even launches. So even you as the creator need to buy in like everyone else.”
“I messaged 3,000 people, and that’s how I kind of tried to get Pump.fun off the ground, alongside my co-founder as well, who also messaged a whole bunch of people.”
The Breakdown
From a JPEG to a tradable coin
Threadguy starts with the complete beginner’s version. The co-founder says a user needs only a name, a ticker and an image to create a coin in under two minutes for less than $2. The older route meant either knowing how to interact with Solana or Ethereum or paying for specialized tools, then putting up liquidity so the coin could trade — a minimum cost he places at a couple thousand dollars.
Pump.fun replaced that upfront-liquidity step with a bonding curve. As he describes it, every token is sold through that mechanism, the creator has to buy like anyone else, and the creator cannot pull the liquidity or alter the name, ticker or image after launch. That cheaper launch path also turned the platform into a place where traders could discover new coins early.
Conviction before the acceleration
Asked when the team knew the idea could become large, the co-founder says the conviction arrived early. They had traded in the space, talked with users and focused on the problems people faced trading memecoins on Solana. Earlier experiments across SocialFi, NFTs and more obscure corners of crypto had never felt as promising.
The first activity after launch reinforced that view: the job was to push the product over the edge. What the team did not foresee was the speed of the later acceleration, particularly once celebrities began arriving on the platform.
Three thousand DMs, zero ad spend
There was no paid marketing campaign. The team used its own Twitter presence, but the co-founder credits what he calls door-to-door salesmanship: he messaged 3,000 people, his co-founder contacted many others, and they targeted people already active in memecoins.
The outreach improved through repetition. Rather than forcing an attention-grabbing opener, they learned to ask what someone held, what problems they had and what interested them, then explain the product without hiding the pitch. Starting with only a few hundred followers and few mutual connections meant double- and triple-texting prospects and getting blocked repeatedly.
The gap between users and builders
The final question is why nobody built Pump.fun earlier. The co-founder’s answer is a divide between crypto users and builders: many builders, he argues, neither know their target audience nor spend enough time understanding the products and markets those users inhabit. He contrasts that with successful Web2 founders who were in the trenches themselves.
Memecoins also carried a stigma. He says they contradicted the previous cycle’s promise to build things that matter and prove crypto’s value to traditional finance and Web2, even though Dogecoin had existed for a decade. In his framing, memecoins and NFTs are often the same product repackaged differently. The episode closes as Threadguy asks him to respond to the claim that memecoins distract from crypto’s core ideas.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
