Could pump.fun launch its own Axiom competitor?
Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis
remotevfx.com and CryptoFX/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
Apparently, pump.fun’s making buybacks already, just days after the PUMP ICO.
Mind you, the pump team has not publicly confirmed the buybacks, though they did leave us a rather cheeky post on X just after onchain analysts noticed that a wallet tied to pump.fun was making buybacks.
The buybacks are perhaps not surprising, given that we reported that pump planned a 25% revenue share with token holders.
“I think the big question on the buyback is, can the thing keep generating enough revenue to do a buyback in size? You know, Bonk really attacked pump at the right time, and did a really good job. And now it’s on pump to reclaim a lot of those lost volumes. I think that they have the tools to do it, [but] I think perhaps that’s keeping some people on the sidelines, just like the whole Bonk volume flip,” Blockworks Research’s Ryan Connor told me.
In a note to Blockworks Research subscribers last week, Connor also wrote that his team heard buybacks will be “discretionary and programmatic.” Additionally, they fit a need in the market for value capture.
“Modern crypto markets are increasingly wary of low float/high FDV and weak value capture for project tokens,” he noted.
For Connor, the private round showed that crypto may be an ideological market, but it’s not as important nowadays. He told me that, of the $700 million raised in the private round, $100 million of that came from a single check, which shows the amount of weight behind pump.
“If this thing continues to print … if they double revenues over the next 12 months, or if they 5x revenues over the next 12 months, that’s all that matters, because the capital [allocators] are going to come in and support the valuation,” he added.
Going back to the ICO, there were some, well, hiccups along the way. For example, there seemed to be confusion around the allocation. The pump team announced a 15% allocation, but many saw 12.5%, which led folks to believe that perhaps they had lowered it on the day.
As I posted this earlier this week, a source familiar with the ICO told me that the allocation remains at 15% and the discrepancy “stemmed entirely from the amounts raised via CEXes, amounts that were not captured onchain and therefore not initially and automatically reflected on the dashboard.” I was also told it was an API-related issue.
A breakdown of token holders
Connor noted that he’d seen the blame go both ways. In a post that was quickly edited, Bybit seemed to point blame at pump before changing the language.
“All I know is that Solana did fine, and the centralized exchanges didn’t. And I think that’s all that matters at the end of the day to people who are participating in these markets,” Connor said. Though, he added that he never would have thought centralized exchanges would be a problem for folks trying to submit orders.
Moving away from the ICO, Connor expects pump.fun to create its own Axiom competitor.
“I think that the most interesting story in crypto today is the battle between pump and Axiom and, frankly, as of late, Axiom’s winning. [Pump, Bonk and Raydium] are sitting there fighting for volume, and Axiom gets paid on that volume no matter what. And you see it in the numbers. Wherever Axiom aggregates all that demand, they’re the aggregator on top,” Connor said.
“When you have a huge abundance in supply, aggregators tend to collect all the value, or collect a lot of the value, and you can see Axiom really fitting into that role right now. So what pump has to do is they have to compete directly with Axiom. They have to be the place to trade.”
And to do that, they’ll have to focus on building from the ground up because Axiom is “too expensive” as a potential acquisition target for pump.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
