Most Influential: Pump.fun

Memecoin factory Pump.fun became one of the most influential and polarizing forces in crypto this year, powering a surge of token creation, fueling speculative excess, and testing the limits of retail participation.

This feature is a part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2025 list.

Launched in early 2024, Pump.fun offers users a way to create a token in seconds for less than two cents’ worth of SOL, no coding required. That recipe saw the platform start deploying to over 80% of Solana-based tokens by mid-2025.

That breakneck pace drove up blockchain activity and funneled huge volumes of trading into Solana’s decentralized exchanges, with Pump.fun itself seeing more than $150 billion in cumulative volume according to DeFiLlama.

At its peak, Pump.fun generated $138 million in monthly revenue, with daily spikes as high as $15 million. A defining moment came in July, when its PUMP token sale raised an estimated $500 million in under 12 minutes at a $4 billion fully diluted valuation.

The mania spread quickly. Tokens with names like Fartcoin, Goatseus Maximus, and Peanut the Squirrel saw sudden market caps in the hundreds of millions as memecoin trading fever kept on growing.

But behind the froth was also a darker story. The vast majority of tokens collapsed shortly after launch, often due to scams or bot activity. Long-term holders were rare. Analysts flagged rising retail losses, and regulators took notice. U.S. lawsuits alleged fraud and securities violations.

After the hype peaked, revenue fell sharply, down 80% from the peak. Pump.fun’s influence, however, hasn’t faded, and token launchpads remain a relevant part of the DeFi sector.