‘Alarming’ 99% of Memecoin Launches on PumpFun are Pump-and-Dumps or Rug Pulls: Report

Almost 99% of memecoin launches on Solana’s PumpFun launchpad are rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes. And the scammers are going for quantity over quality.

That’s the takeaway from a new report by crypto-native risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs, which also found that 93% of liquidity pools on the decentralized exchange (DEX) Raydium show signs of rug pulls and pump-and-dumps.

Individually, the amounts are often small: On Raydium, 25% involved amounts of less than $732, and the median rug pull was $2,832. But, there were 361,000 pools in the study.

“Unchecked, these fraudulent activities pose serious risks, not just financial loss to traders but significant regulatory and reputational threats to crypto institutions facilitating memecoin trading,” the report warns. “Crypto institutions face a pressing challenge: How can they safely enable their customers to participate in memecoin trading without exposure to significant financial harm?”

Millions of Dead Coins

Between January 2024 and March 2025, just over 97,000 tokens maintained liquidity of more than $1,000 on PumpFun. That’s out of seven million that were deployed with at least five trades.

Meanwhile, PumpFun’s daily volume has dropped below $100 million only five times since early February, according to Dune Analytics.

“A staggering 98.6% of tokens on PumpFun collapse into worthless pump-and-dump schemes shortly after launch, highlighting the extreme risk traders face,” the report notes.

One culprit is PumpFun’s bonding curve mechanism, in which token prices increase with every purchase. That “inherently” is good for early buyers and bad for later ones, it said.

“Creators stand to profit directly from each incremental purchase, while traders who join later invariably face inflated token prices and heightened risk of severe losses when creators liquidate their holdings,” Solidus concluded.