Pump.fun revamps creator payments with fee sharing and new controls
Alon Cohen, co-founder of Pump.fun, a Solana-based memecoin startup, is revamping its creator payment system after concluding that the current model may distort incentives.
“Creator fees need change,” Cohen wrote in a Friday post on X. The variable fees V1 system introduced several months ago, while successful in driving activity, failed to create sustainable market behavior.
According to Cohen, the strategy encouraged the creation of low-risk tokens for high-risk trading, which he described as “dangerous” because traders are the main source of liquidity and volume on the platform.
Cohen said the initial release shows early promise. Within weeks, new creators began launching tokens and livestreams, fueling the strongest onchain conditions since 2025. The pump.fun correlation curve has more than doubled in that time. However, the increase was short-lived and exposed structural weaknesses.
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Creator fees encouraged the creation of a liquid token.
While creator fees have helped fund serious project tokens with active teams, Cohen says they've done nothing to change the behavior of the average memecoin deployer. In many cases, fees have become a clear incentive to mint tokens rather than building liquid markets.
The platform has yet to provide a good user experience, often requiring users to perform CTO [Community Takeover] Coins, trusting other people to keep their promises etc,” he wrote.
In a series of posts on X, Pump.fun has revealed the first phase of the transformation. The platform is also introducing creator fee sharing, allowing creators and CTO managers to allocate a certain percentage of payments to up to 10 wallets after opening. Groups can transfer ownership of coins and override update authority.
Cohen said no one from the Pamp.fun team accepts payments under any circumstances, describing the behavior as “for passengers.” Payments remain due at all times by recipients and will not be waived if unclaimed.
Related: Pump.fun Earnings 2025 Low As Memecoin Hype Fades
Pump.fun dominates the Solana memecoin launchpad.
Pump.fun is the first startup for Solana memecoins to create a peerless token that combines a standardized path to liquidity.
The platform briefly lost ground in July as competitor LetsBonk caught up in volume and revenue, but momentum quickly reversed. Pump.fun has strengthened its position with the PUMP token recovery and the updated creator payment program under Project Ascend. By late summer, traces again showed Pump.fun dominating 75%–80% of Solana's memecoin launches.
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