United Kingdom Bans Pump.Fun

PumpFun is now geo-blocked in the United Kingdom (UK), less than two weeks after the memecoin launchpad caught severe pushback for the content shown in its livestreams.

The short-lived livestream “meta” resulted in users threatening self-harm, as well as harm to animals and family members if users of the platform didn’t buy their respective memecoins. The livestream feature also led to live videos of adult content, drug use, and other illegal activities despite PumpFun’s “large team of moderators working around the clock” to ban such users.

The launchpad has been controversial since its launch, and contention has only grown as the platform scaled. Livestream meta aside, the platform abstracts the token launch process, making it a go-to hub for scam token launches.

While there has been no official comment from either PumpFun or a UK regulator that enforces such bans, the geoblock is presumably a result of the potential pitfalls of a decentralized token launching service.

Despite the criticism, PumpFun metrics are near all-time highs, processing $280 million in volume on Dec. 5, compared to $171 million on Nov. 5 and $98 million on Oct. 5.

The protocol remains one of the largest revenue generators in all of DeFi. PumpFun earned $103 million in the last 30 days, barely behind its parent chain, Solana, which earned $104 million in the same period, according to DeFiLlama.