Meme Coin Factories: Uncovering Large-Scale Manipulations on pump.fun
Large-scale pump.fun study of 15 million meme coins identifies five manipulation classes including wash trading and a Market-Manipulation-as-a-Service ecosystem.
Researchers analyzed all 15 million coins launched on pump.fun over the last two years plus large random samples of transaction data, identifying five manipulation classes: wash trading, creator address obfuscation, coordinated sells, copycat coins, and social media manipulation. Strategic actors bypass the platform interface and implement strategies in a highly automated, low-latency way by interacting directly with the blockchain. The study also uncovers Market-Manipulation-as-a-Service (MMaaS) third-party tools that let non-technical users run these manipulations, and proposes mitigations for traders, pump.fun, and regulators.