Howdy!

Sad to see pump.fun’s token could siphon liquidity out of the market at a time when crypto is focused on such serious things like the TRUMP-not-Trump wallet and MicroStrategy for houses. 

Today, we’ve got a market update, the Solana Foundation’s MOU with Dubai, and a DM from the chief strategy officer of a Solana treasury company:

SOL slips on pump.fun token news. Is the market overreacting?

Pump.fun is launching a token. Maybe you've heard? Blockworks first reported yesterday that the memecoin launchpad is looking to raise an eye-watering $1 billion at a $4 billion valuation via a token sale.

The timing has raised a few eyebrows, with some industry watchers noting that the launch follows a cooling in platform activity from its January peak. At that time, bonding curve volume topped $10 billion, revenue approached $150 million, and nearly 1.7 million tokens per month were launched. Those figures have all dropped by more than half.

To some, it seems that pump.fun rode a euphoric wave of speculative mania, and now it's converting that attention into capital while the window's still open. Opportunism in crypto? Say it isn't so.

The resulting skepticism may account in part for the market's sharp reaction following the token rumors.

Solana (SOL) fell 3% on the pump.fun token news and has slid roughly 7% over the week, from recent highs near $170 down to around $156 at the time of publication. 

Some on social media cite memecoin fatigue. Intraday swings showed heightened volatility, underscoring uncertainty amid heavy retail speculation.

But is this cynicism a bit unfair?

Perhaps. It's not hard to argue that pump.fun has earned its moment: The platform bootstrapped its early growth with very limited VC backing and popularized a novel product that brought thousands of new users to Solana. 

Looking at the data, Blockworks Research shows that pump.fun’s bonding curve and AMM products routinely generated between $150m and $250m in daily trading volume, with platform fees peaking above $2m per day during May. The majority of trades remain small in size (often under $100), suggesting continued high-frequency activity from retail participants.

On the token side, pump.fun has been responsible for the vast majority of new token launches on Solana in recent months, with spikes of 30,000-40,000 launches per day observed in early May.

This onboarding funnel fed into a broader explosion of Solana usage. 

And while it’s true that wallet funnel data shows that only a minority of pump.fun participants go on to use core Solana infrastructure, those who do often move into Jupiter trading, Raydium LPing and experimental dapps, suggesting real (if limited) downstream conversion. 

But competition continues to intensify. Raydium's LaunchLab, Meteora's high-profile celebrity token launches, and Believe's startup-centric platform represent direct threats, leveraging flexibility and unique narratives pump.fun currently lacks. This fragmentation has reshaped Solana's token-launch landscape in short order, threatening pump.fun's once entrenched dominance by offering diversified launch strategies that appeal to broader segments of the market.

As for the token itself, little is known at this stage. That information vacuum has left watchers to speculate whether it will function as a fee-back asset, governance token, or participate in future launch rights. 

The launch — which pump.fun has indicated in the past could include an airdrop to users — could reignite some of the segment's lost speculative fervor. Or, it might immediately collapse like most of the assets launched through its ecosystem and catalyze deeper skepticism toward memecoin-based speculation. Either outcome could drastically impact not just pump.fun's future but the broader Solana ecosystem's market dynamics and sentiment.

— Jeffrey Albus

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The Solana Foundation recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), laying the groundwork for long-term collaboration between Solana builders and local regulators. The partnership would include founder-focused workshops, data-sharing on economic impact and talent development programs. According to the Solana Foundation, it also opens the door to a dedicated Solana Economic Zone in Dubai.

The startup Forma has explored developing so-called Solana Economic Zones in Argentina and Kazakhstan.

If that economic zone does indeed materialize, one imagines it could offer dev teams tax incentives, custom legal frameworks or expedited licensing, similar to how free zones work in TradFi. It would also likely attract infrastructure partners, capital allocators and ecosystem funds looking to operate in a jurisdiction with clear crypto regs.

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Brian Rudick, chief strategy officer at Upexi: