A live broadcast that completely caused pump.fun to fall below the issue price.

Author: Cookie

Reprint: White55, Mars Finance

At 4 AM today, pump.fun co-founder @a1lon9 participated in a voice interview live stream on the Twitch channel of crypto KOL @notthreadguy.

Before the live broadcast, someone in the English circle joked that this was the "FOMC" of the cryptocurrency world. From the results, this live broadcast indeed had a profound impact on the cryptocurrency prices, with $PUMP dropping nearly 15% during the broadcast, and a daily decline of close to 20%, once falling below a market value of 3 billion dollars.

For pump.fun, Alon's interview was undoubtedly a public relations disaster.

What did alon say during the live broadcast?

About the $PUMP airdrop

threadguy: Will there be another $PUMP airdrop? If so, when?

alon: As we promised when we announced at the TGE, there will be an airdrop for $PUMP. We will keep our promise and ensure that the airdrop rewards go to the community that has helped us grow over the past year and a half. We hope the airdrop can be executed well, driving trading volume across the entire ecosystem and supporting its long-term development, which is very important to us. We are currently focused on bringing attention and hype back to pump.fun. Nevertheless, the airdrop will not happen in the immediate future.

There are many rumors about the $PUMP airdrop, such as the airdrop standards being like this and the airdrop events being like that, but I think there are currently no more than 5 people on Earth who truly know how the $PUMP airdrop is planned. Therefore, all the rumors that everyone can see are unreliable. We take airdrops very seriously and hope to ensure that the airdrop is worthy of the community.

threadguy: How much of the $PUMP supply will be used for the airdrop?

alon: I can't reveal it right now, but it will be worth it for the community.

threadguy: How to solve the selling pressure after the airdrop?

alon: I can't disclose any specific mechanisms right now, but we will take it seriously.

About $PUMP buyback

threadguy: Will you continue to buy back $PUMP from the open market?

alon: I cannot fully disclose the specific plans, but our actions on the chain will address this issue.

threadguy: Can you reveal how much $PUMP you have repurchased in total since the TGE?

alon: At first, we repurchased about $20 million worth of $PUMP, and in the past 4 days, it was around $550,000. (threadguy repeatedly said "You have a lot of money!" upon hearing about the $550,000 in the past 4 days.)

Competition from Bonk

threadguy: Why do you think Bonk was able to surpass the trading volume and market share of pump.fun in such a short period of time?

alon: Of course, there are many short-term speculations and short-term competitive strategies involved, but we always focus on the long term. What I mean is that there have not been substantial changes in the products everyone has been using over the past few months, and the market has not seen significant growth either. If we want this field to continue to grow by 10 times or even 100 times, some substantial changes are needed.

While the long term is important, the short term is equally important for long-term development. We will inject a large amount of liquidity into our ecosystem and interact with the communities we are working hard to build within our ecosystem, ensuring that these communities have the best opportunities for success.

threadguy: How to regain an absolute leading position in "Launchpad Wars" with pump.fun?

alon: In the short term, we need to support the active communities within the current ecosystem; it is these active communities that have brought us to where we are today. However, if we extend the timeline, in addition to ensuring the success of the tokens launched on our own platform, we also need significant improvements in our products. I believe everyone still remembers the booming market at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Although cryptocurrencies are cyclical, our current downturn, aside from cyclical factors, also requires transformation.

We need a better ecosystem and mechanism that can more effectively coordinate the forces of the community, creators, and traders; we need a better way to integrate outsiders into this field; we need to ensure that memes always have new and interesting narratives instead of the same group of people repeatedly hyping things that everyone is already tired of. For the first point, we have already invested a lot of time and energy to promote it. For the second point, the pump.fun mobile app was created for this purpose. For the third point, we need to continuously invest resources to attract better creators.

But let me emphasize once again: focusing on the short term and allowing resources from all aspects to flow back into pump.fun is indispensable for long-term development.

threadguy: Is buying 1 pump.fun eco meme coin every day a strategy that will be effective and feasible in the long run?

alon: This is just a small step in our plan.

About the meme market

threadguy: Do you think the meme market will return to its previous peak?

alon: Of course, if I didn't believe the market could grow tenfold or even a hundredfold, I wouldn't be here. The market still has a lot of upward potential; it’s just a matter of time and specific actions. However, I think we need a more sustainable way to attract users. Sudden spikes can indeed be very appealing, but the crashes that often follow excessive enthusiasm may drive new users away, and they might not come back due to the bad impression left behind.

Achieving sustainable growth requires many bold and drastic reforms.

threadguy: So what exactly will you do?

alon: First of all, what we are constructing now is not a single launchpad product, but a large pump.fun ecosystem, so we need an excellent team. The current team is already quite good, but we will continue to recruit talent, even with strategic acquisitions like Kolscan, which was announced previously. We will continue to observe the market and look for opportunities to expand, whether in the social field or other areas.

I have been mentioning the need for significant changes, and one of these significant changes will be PumpSwap 2.0. I can't reveal too many details, but the fee structure will be completely different, aimed at incentivizing teams that can produce more interesting meme coins to join and build in the long term. The CTO incentives we updated a week ago have already laid the groundwork to encourage creators to build within the existing meme coin communities.

Whether it's creators, streamers, artists, or startup founders, we strive to attract them into our ecosystem. It's not just about getting them to deploy a token and then hype it for a few days before saying goodbye; it's about being able to motivate them to build something sustainable. We also need to put in a lot of effort and iterations to achieve this effect.

Mobile apps are very important. Although our user numbers have fluctuated recently, the number of users and activity on the app has been reaching new highs almost every day, making it possible to better introduce newcomers to and familiarize them with this circle.

Live streaming is also a point we pay great attention to. How can the dissemination of information be determined by the market rather than algorithms controlled by social media companies? This is also our long-term vision.

Threadguy also asked some other questions, such as how pump.fun can avoid becoming the OpenSea of the meme coin track, whether they will sign non-crypto streamers, etc.

But these issues are no longer critical, as the final effect of this live broadcast has reignited players' anger towards pump.fun, resulting in a nearly 20% drop in $PUMP.

Why is this a public relations disaster?

It may not seem like a "public relations" move targeting the recent dissatisfaction regarding pump.fun from Alon's perspective, but rather a "promotion" aimed at a broader audience, which is why he chose to accept a live interview with threadguy on Twitch. However, the final effect is that even his choice to not accept an interview on his own live streaming platform has become one of the outlets for players' dissatisfaction.

$PUMP experienced a brief rise after the TGE before starting to decline, leaving players who were originally supporting pump.fun at a loss for words. Even more outrageous is that alon himself openly bought 5 pump.fun ecosystem meme coins, and 4 of them are already showing losses in his holdings.

When alon first bought the pump.fun ecological meme coin $neet, the token briefly reached a market value of 30 million dollars, showing a 365% large bullish candlestick in just one minute. Everyone thought this would be a good start, especially the players on the pump.fun side who always believed that there is still the most interesting meme coin culture on pump.fun, and that these narratives would eventually improve. However, in the end, alon did not continue to pump, and the buying pressure based solely on emotions was quickly exhausted. $neet has already returned to the market value level when alon made the purchase, and the follow-up purchases of several tokens by alon have shown a weakening effect.

This makes Alon's statement during the live broadcast that "we need to inject a large amount of liquidity into the ecosystem" seem very hard to believe and ironic. This even became free advertising for the competitor Bonk:

Bonk announced during the live broadcast, before it ended, that it would use 1% of the platform's revenue to support its own top meme coin.

The $PUMP airdrop will not happen in the near future, which has reignited players' anger. Even one of the biggest streamers on pump.fun, gainzy, expressed his frustration during a live broadcast:

Some people make money, while others lose money. Like Hyperliquid, giving loyal users six-figure or even seven-figure airdrops makes them happy and helps them recover, and they will continue to trade on Hyperliquid. Especially when Bitcoin hits a historical high, everyone needs more money, even if the airdrop is a bit smaller, it's better than dragging it out. With the situation as it is now, if the airdrop does not meet expectations, pump.fun will face even greater pressure and it will be harder to wrap things up.

Who in the "trench" cares about streamers and creators? It is the "trench" that has allowed pump.fun to make a lot of money; you need to make these people rich. This is not something very difficult to understand.

Moreover, Alon was full of answers throughout the interview that were like "I can't disclose this" and "I can't disclose that," which deepened the sense of distrust among players as their trust in pump.fun nearly vanished—was it really a matter of not being able to disclose, or did you simply not care after taking the 1 billion dollars?

Conclusion

If alon’s determination expressed during the live broadcast can still wait for time to verify, then there is one thing that really cannot wait any longer—pump.fun, which has $1 billion, truly needs a better PR team.