Pump.fun starts direct investment, aiming to spend 3 million dollars to buy 12 new memes

Original | Odaily Planet Daily Azuma

On the morning of January 20, Pump.fun officially announced the launch of its investment division, Pump Fund. Pump Fund will kick off its first project, Build in Public (BiP) hackathon, this month, investing $3 million in 12 new tokens issued through the platform, with each token receiving an investment of $250,000, corresponding to a valuation of $10 million. In addition to financial support, Pump.fun will also provide professional guidance and other rich resources, including its founders.

As the project with the strongest revenue-generating ability in the entire Meme track, this seems to be Pump.fun's first time clearly expressing support for specific Meme tokens through official channels with real money (the attitude may be more important than the scale of funding), so the selected tokens are likely to become seed players in the Meme track for the upcoming period.

Pump.fun's Revenue Generation Ability

Pump.fun's exaggerated revenue capabilities are no secret. Data analyst Adam (@Adam_Tehc) has compiled data on Dune, showing that Pump.fun's total historical revenue has reached $954.8 million. Although daily revenue data has significantly declined with the cooling of Memes, daily revenue still amounts to several hundred thousand dollars.

Holding a substantial amount of real money, Pump.fun is also exploring other ecological feedback paths beyond the buyback of PUMP tokens. Pump Fund and the associated BiP hackathon are Pump.fun's latest attempts.

BiP Hackathon Details

According to the description on the BiP hackathon dedicated page, the project aims to support founders who issue tokens on Pump.fun and build products publicly. Unlike traditional hackathons where participants rely on VCs or judges for evaluation to compete for prizes, the BiP hackathon hopes to introduce token performance as a variable, allowing the market to judge whether the project is worth pursuing, while enabling users to become the earliest investors in the project.

When discussing this key distinction, Pump.fun founder Alon stated on X: "Before Pump.fun appeared, my co-founders and I tried many different ideas. Consumer finance, DeFi, SocialFi, NFTs— but all failed. One of the biggest problems we encountered was that we found it extremely difficult to promote products to users. Trying to reach the right user group is an incredibly tedious job…"

Specifically, the BiP hackathon requires:

• Participants must issue a token on Pump.fun and then build a product publicly;
• Participants must also hold at least 10% of the token supply to align interests;
• Finally, the event strongly encourages founders to publicly voice their projects on social media like X or conduct live streams on Pump.fun to maintain effective communication with the community.

As for the types of projects that can participate, Pump.fun has not imposed any restrictions, and projects from different market stages and verticals, not limited to cryptocurrency-related products, can join.

Regarding how the 12 winning projects will be selected, Pump.fun has not provided specific rules but has indicated two main principles: first, naturally growing users and genuine appeal are preferred over relationships and flashy promotions; second, in addition to the product itself/social media appeal, the event will also assess the long-term sustainability of the project.

Key Time Points to Note

According to the timeline of the BiP hackathon, the project opened for applications on January 19, and participants must launch their tokens and begin building publicly (including live streaming development progress, sharing updates regularly, and maintaining community interaction) at the time of application; the application window will be open for 30 days, on February 18, Pump.fun will announce the first batch of winning projects and provide funding (at least one will be announced); considering that some projects may take longer to gain market attention and demonstrate market appeal, this plan will run long-term.

So the timeline is quite clear. If you want to pay attention to potential opportunities among this batch of Meme tokens, you need to start monitoring new tokens issued on Pump.fun from now on, especially those tagged with Pump Fund or BiP. Although the first batch of winning tokens will not be announced until 30 days later, tokens likely to be selected by Pump.fun will undoubtedly show competitiveness before that.

In summary, while this activity by Pump.fun may not significantly boost the collective sentiment of the Meme market, it can at least contribute some new tokens with clearer evaluation dimensions.