How meme coins are made: bonding curves, Pump.fun, and the math behind rug pulls

Most meme coin guides explain culture and community. This one explains plumbing: the bonding curve formula that sets the price, the graduation threshold that moves a token to a real exchange, and the arithmetic that shows why the vast majority of buyers lose money before a single meme goes viral. Summary A bonding curve is a smart contract that mints tokens on demand and prices each successive unit higher than the last, removing the need for a traditional order book or market maker. Pump.fun, the largest meme coin launchpad, allocates 800 million of each token’s one billion supply to its bonding curve and graduates the token to a decentralized exchange once the curve accumulates roughly 85 SOL. Fewer than two percent of all tokens launched on Pump.fun ever reach graduation, meaning the bonding curve itself is where the overwhelming majority of trading activity and losses occur. A rug pull on a bonding curve platform does not require removing liquidity in the traditional sense; it requires only that insiders accumulate tokens cheaply at the bottom of the curve and sell into the buying pressure of later arrivals. The math of any convex bonding curve guarantees that late buyers pay ex...