Experiencing the Platform

Do you enjoy dangerous adventures and the excitment it may bring? Well Pump.fun has officially launched a mobile app for IOS & Android!

While some users might not have even been aware of pump.fun just 6 months ago, roughly half the age of the platform today, many people have been brought awareness in the recent months. The majority of this spotlight stems from the Quant Kid and Trump Meme coin reaching a viral audience from news publications and media. 

Despite such a strong outreach, pump.fun did not fully tap into it's potential as gaining access to the platform would either require a PC for simple function and layout or using a mobile web browser to access the platform which was coded around a desktop UI and not fully mobile responsive.

Having the launch of a mobile application solves this issue for the pump.fun developers and officially taps into it's market potential.

But what does this mean for consumers?

Technical Operations Posing Hidden Dangers

I would like to keep this simple and skip the explanation of how to use all the bells and whistles on the platform as I have made previous post "Solana Influencer Scams Gone Rampant" that includes some detail. Assuming my readers understand what pump.fun is - let me continue to explain the technicalities further and reveal the hidden danger.

Introduction into pump.fun during intial launch was a curiosity to investors. A risky but certainly interesting platform with many hidden dangers in hindsight - bundled wallets, insider trading, rug pulls and false promises - with minimal legal reprocussion for the beneficiaries. 

So what has changed? They made a mobile app!

Did it solve the consumer risk issues? No! 

Did it make the pump.fun developers and insiders richer? Yes!

With every trade executed by it's users, pump.fun imposes a 0.5% fee.

Most recent reports show pump.fun reaching over $400 million in revenue. Keep in mind that this platform was only launched on January 19th, 2024.

Meanwhile recent analysis from Dune Analytics made some interesting notes: "If you've realized $10,000 trading pump.fun's tokens, you're a top 0.412% wallet". Data shows that of the 13.55 million pump.fun wallet addresses, only 55,296 wallets have report profits exceeding $10,000. (Jan 12,2025)

The launch of pump.fun's mobile app could potentially be tapping into a market 200% larger than previously, as an estimated ~63% of global internet access derives from mobile phones, ~35% from desktops and ~2% from tablets respectively. (Stats here)

The Actual Danger

While Crypto has been around for over a decade now, billions of people still don't even understand the basics or even what Bitcoin is or how it works. Some people just don't care and maybe never will. When someone genuinely becomes interested and learns about a new subject, they aren't just going to be an expert overnight. The reality is, a lot of crypto noobs have taken space and are generally easily led by speculation.

What if I told you that there are people out there using highly sophisticated trading bots such as Photon or Nova which have an actual technological advantage buying and selling the same coins you're trading on? Completing the transaction before yours even registers. Would you still trade that coin on your own or would you get the bot and have that advantage too? Well not everyone has these bots. Not everyone knows about them. Not every bot is publicly available. There could be better bots and most likely is!

So why could it actually be dangerous? Mobile app will assumably increase the volume of transactions on the platform, which could increase the price of whatever coin has hype, but ultimately not lower insider and technical risks. Overall this will just create more volatility in price and leave a larger number of people with lost money, while only increasing a small portion of people taking large profits.

If you enjoy gambling and have minimal knowledge trading, you're playing with luck.

If you enjoy investing and have deep knowledge on trading, you're playing with luck.

If you enjoy investing and have insider knowledge, you're laughing to the bank.

Conclusion

While i personally love innovation and adoption of new technology in support of the crypto movement, the instability of the platform and the nature of audience that it brings isn't the ideal outlook I have for blockchain technology. However I do speculate that  this could be another testament to the maximal workload the blockchain can sustain. I am not excited the same way others might be towards the possible outcomes, but everyone has different goals, narratives and ideas on what can be built, which is why pump.fun will forever be a historical launch which has really put Solana in the spotlight as a whole.