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

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 token PUMP is struggling under continuous selling pressure. To reverse the decline, Pump.fun is attempting a dual approach with a strong token buyback and the experimental introduction of a new feature, “Mayhem Mode(”.

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

) The data has shown a significant decline, but compared to the industry, it still remains strong.

To understand the predicament of Pump.fun, it is essential to see its complex data.

As of November 14, Pump.fun's average daily revenue remains above 1 million USD, ranking it in the top five among all protocols. However, compared to the 4 million USD daily revenue at the beginning of the year, this figure has seen a significant decline.

At the same time, the daily new token issuance on Pump.fun has decreased from a peak of 70,000 to around 20,000. The number of active wallets daily has also declined, but this figure has basically remained above 100,000 for the past three months, with the drop not being severe. The graduation rate of issued tokens has clearly decreased, remaining below 1% since February of this year, and in September it even fell to 0.58%. This indirectly reflects that the success rate of the Meme market's speculation is also getting lower.

![]###https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-e714a97c833cb4db3fcdbcf9ce9f9121.webp(

However, a significant part of the decline in these data is due to the overall downturn of the industry. Compared to its peers, Pump.fun's market share has actually increased. Taking the data from November 12 as an example, the token issuance volume of Pump.fun on the Solana meme launch platform that day was 14,800, accounting for approximately 93.4%. In contrast, during the previous meme launch platform battle, its market share dropped to a minimum of 16.8%.

From the overall performance of the data, Pump.fun's data performance has indeed declined compared to its peak period, but it appears to be more resilient compared to its peers.

) “Buyback” and “Pullback”, the Failed Token Business Strategy

In the face of slowing platform growth and the continued decline in the price of the PUMP token, 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, which is equivalent to 11.19% of the total circulating supply.

This repurchase effort ranks second among all repurchase agreements, with a daily repurchase volume second only to Hyperliquid.

However, the price performance of the PUMP token and the extent of the repurchase do not seem proportional. The token's performance has fallen from a high point in September, with the lowest pullback dropping to $0.0015, a maximum decline of over 83%. As of now, the pullback is approximately 60%, while Bitcoin's maximum pullback during the same period is about 23%, and HYPE's pullback is around 40%.

Against the backdrop of the ineffectiveness of “fiat ability”, the team is attempting to create a new narrative through product innovation. On November 12, the platform launched an experimental “Chaos Mode”. This feature aims to automatically participate in the trading of new tokens by introducing AI agents. According to the documentation, these AI agents will mint an additional 1 billion tokens for selected tokens (doubling the total supply to 2 billion), then conduct “random trades” within 24 hours to increase early liquidity, and finally destroy the unsold portion.

However, this highly anticipated update encountered “chaos” as soon as it went live. Community feedback indicated that the new features were not user-friendly, and several bugs emerged, including “excessive token supply minting,” “depletion of creator funds,” and “user funds being locked.”

The KOL in the meme field, Pepe Boost, candidly stated: “In actual observation, there is no more trading volume than ordinary tokens.” They originally thought there would be something big, but in reality, it was just a pump with some experimental AI playing around.

( The market sell-off is about the “Meme track”, not Pump.fun.

Why can't the buybacks worth millions of dollars each day support the price? The new features that were highly anticipated have become a joke. The fundamental reason the market isn't buying it may not lie with just one company, Pump.fun, but rather with the broader narrative, structural flaws, and the forces of the cycle.

First, the trend is unstoppable, and no one can escape it.

Recently, the market has seen an increased degree of correction, with almost all tokens experiencing declines. In such an environment, buybacks can only serve to “slow down the decline” rather than “reverse the trend.” As mentioned earlier, Hyperliquid has equally strong revenue and buyback mechanisms, but its token has also undergone a significant 40% correction. This also proves that, in a bear market, relying solely on protocol revenue buybacks cannot withstand macro selling pressure.

Secondly, there is always a skepticism in the market: the high income and high trading volume of Pump.fun have a huge “bubble,” meaning they are generated by high-frequency trading bots rather than real users.

Once this bubble bursts, the corresponding prices will also be difficult to support. PANews specifically conducted research on this, randomly selecting the most recent several hundred transactions of 10 tokens that have not yet graduated for behavioral analysis. It was found that the proportion of robotic trading volume for these tokens is about 54.7%, with a single robot contributing an average of 22 transactions per individual token, while real users only contribute 1.8 transactions. In terms of transaction amount contribution, each robot contributes a trading volume of 68 USD per transaction, and the overall contribution of robots to the trading volume is about 45.6%. However, in reality, this ratio is somewhat lower than the previous survey ratio. Therefore, from this perspective, the “robot bubble” is a structural issue that has long existed in Pump.fun, but it has not shown continuous deterioration recently. It also does not seem to be the main factor for the decline of the tokens.

![])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-75f7d0d32d69626041b330d950400206.webp###

Third, excluding the macro and robot factors, the core reason may not be that Pump.fun is failing, but rather that the Meme sector itself is failing.

The fundamental reason why the market is not responding is that investors have lost confidence in the overall sector of “Meme coins.” As the infrastructure of this sector, the token price of Pump.fun reflects the future expectations of the entire sector. Currently, these expectations are pessimistic.

This can be seen from the performance of the Solana ecosystem, as the overall activity on the Solana chain is currently declining. Data shows that the total number of active wallets on Solana has recently reached a new low in 12 months. As the main battlefield for Meme coins, Solana's “fuel” is running out.

Not only Pump.fun, but other meme launch platforms are facing even more “bleak” data. LetsBonk.fun, which once threatened Pump.fun's position in July, saw its activity rapidly “collapse” after August, and currently the number of new tokens daily is only around 200. In this environment of a general industry downturn, Pump.fun is ironically the “strongest one.”

Therefore, we seem to be able to conclude that 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 simply the most luxurious first-class cabin on the “sinking Meme Titanic.”