Solana's memecoin mania pushes Pump.fun revenue above $30 million

The memecoin renaissance is back in full swing. 

Over the past month, we’ve seen a lot of meme-centric news. Roaring Kitty, the face of the 2021 meme stock rally, made his return to X. Pump.fun, the memecoin launchpad, was exploited for $1.9 million by a former employee. The face of dogecoin, the Shiba Inu Kabosu, passed away . 

In general, the crypto market has also been buoyed by excitement around the surprise approval of the spot Ethereum ETF 19b-4 approvals and some more optimistic inflation data coming out in the U.S. this month. 

But if we zoom in on just the past week, the meme energy remained quite strong. For one, the new subsector PolitiFi (Political Finance), with memecoins linked to legislators (only by name, no official affiliation), has once again become a hotbed of trading activity in the wake of the guilty verdict of former president Donald Trump in his hush-money trial. 

What is maybe the most exciting is that celebrities seem to be back on the crypto bandwagon. Many A-list celebs seemed to have dabbled in crypto in 2021 and 2022, during the height of the bull market but then dropped the subject as the hype faded. Even though Justin Bieber still holds $450,000 worth of crypto, according to Arkham, he’s not posting about his BAYC on Instagram anymore.

But Caitlyn Jenner jumped in on the scene, launching her own token on pump.fun and promoting it on both her X and her Instagram. Many people thought the accounts were possibly hacked, but she posted a video seemingly verifying it was her behind the posting. Jenner later launched the token on Ethereum, as well, and is using fees collected from it to support Trump. Rapper Iggy Azalea also launched her token $MOTHER independently on Solana SOL +0.11% , seemingly to clap back at a promoter who was trying to launch an IGGY token. 

The next crypto re-entrant, while unconfirmed, was Katy Perry, who simply posted “LFG” on X, a common phrase in the crypto lexicon, short for “let’s f*cking go.” This is not necessarily crypto-related, but many on crypto twitter engaged with the post. Perry was somewhat of a meme herself in the past bull market, most well known for her infamous photo with Three Arrows co-founder Su Zhu and her “ crypto claws ” nail art. 

Boosting pump.fun revenue

Even though only Jenner seems to have used pump.fun for her Solana memecoin, the meme energy was transcendent. Despite being exploited less than two weeks ago, pump.fun managed to rebound and post its highest day of revenue on May 30th, bringing in $1.48 million. 

Similar to the last time we saw a spike in the platform’s revenue, it is indicative of users launching a plethora of tokens, hoping to create the next memecoin that generates sizable returns. 

In total, pump.fun has now seen $31.8 million of revenue since it went live. This isn't particularly surprising as it's the home of new tokens on Solana — where nearly half a million tokens were created in the last month alone.

This is an excerpt from  The Block's Data & Insights newsletter . Dig into the numbers making up the industry’s most thought-provoking trends.