PumpFun is making millions from a market where 81% of memecoins crashed 90%

Pump.fun, a leading Solana token launchpad, keeps generating millions of dollars from memecoin trading even as most established tokens struggle to recover from steep losses.The platform produced about $18.6 million in protocol revenue over the seven days through Oct. 7, according to DefiLlama data. Separately, a Talos study found that 81% of a selected group of memecoins had fallen at least 90% from their all-time highs, and recoveries from deep collapses were rare.The contrast exposes a central fault line in the memecoin economy: trading across Pump.fun can enrich the platform, support PUMP buybacks, or reward selected users without necessarily helping someone holding a token whose demand has already disappeared.Talos examined 150 memecoins for its survival analysis and 151 for return comparisons, requiring each asset to have pricing available on at least one centralized exchange. That threshold already selects for relatively successful tokens, meaning the results may understate the failure rate across the much larger universe of launchpad coins that never secure such listings.Even among that stronger cohort, losses were severe.The median token peaked about 17 days after exchange ...