in one Stranger Borders of the Internet, A unicorn with human breastsA cheetah smoking cigaretteand one animated elon musk Sit face to face in a traditional cloak—a symbol of a bad trip. At the top of the page is a Word Art banner, a floating chronological image. Symbols shine, sparkle, bounce, and in other ways escape the pursuing eye. Barely legible messages flash green, red and yellow, then disappear.
Yet behind all this barrage of Internet weirdness and lo-fi web design lies one thing. Fastest Growing Cryptocurrency Businesses Sometimes: pump.funA platform for launching memecoinsA type of crypto coin whose value rises and falls in line with the popularity of the memes it references.
The platform went live in January 2024. In the following 12 months, it has been reported to be brought by third parties Revenue over $350 million Through a 1 percent cut in trades.
Pump.Fun is the creation of three entrepreneurs in their early twenties: Noah Twedale, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerrler. The three started out as Memecoin traders themselves, but grew tired of repeatedly falling victim to rug pulling – a type of scam whereby a coin issuer steals funds, leaving investors holding on to worthless tokens.
“Buying Memecoin was a very unsafe thing to do… the whole thing was designed to suck money out of people,” Tweedale told WIRED in an interview late last year. “The idea with Pump was to create something where everyone is on the same playing field.”
Pump.Fun's three co-founders, who met in England, have attempted to keep their identities secret – Twedale and Cohen continue to go publicly by their respective online pseudonyms, Sapizziju and A1on, while Keller's Pump There is little public engagement with .fun. but their names came out last year In corporate documents related to operations.
Tweedale agreed to meet with WIRED, but only on the condition that the details of his whereabouts and appearance remain unknown. When we met, he appeared serious but somewhat laid-back and he talked at the pace of a mile a minute. He declined to answer questions about where the Pump.Fun operation is based or how many people it employs.
Tweedale claims that privacy is partly a reflection of the common view in the cryptosphere that the right to privacy is sacrosanct. But it's also about “personal safety and security,” he says. In theory, the volume of crypto passing through the Pump.Fun wallet could target the team will be extortionists,
Tweedale claims that the founders intend to be more public-facing in the future. But in the meantime, there's the issue of how to reinvest the money Pump.Fun has made into strengthening and expanding the platform despite increased scrutiny and inevitable growing pains. “We are not here to make a quick buck, close the website and run away. We wanted to create something that would last,” says Twedale.
He claims that the long-term vision is to transform Pump.Fun from a one-dimensional memecoin launchpad into a competitor to the largest social platforms, but where the bulk of the revenue flows to users and creators. “Imagine Instagram or TikTok, where everything is investable,” says Tweedale. “The Pump UI – everything we have so far – is the very first possible version of what you can imagine we want to do.”
Before pump. fun, relatively Some memecoins hit the market; Only dogecoinThe original Memecoin, and a few others – like Shiba Inu, pepeAnd bonk-Achieved any kind of prominence. The complexity of developing the memecoin and the cost of supplying the liquidity needed to make it easily tradable limited the volume issued.