Pump.fun Launches Custom Pairs to Revive Solana Ecosystem

Original Title: "Reviving the Solana Ecosystem, Pump.fun Enters Stock-Meme Pairing"
Original Author: Wenser, Odaily News

Recently, as the on-chain "stock-meme pairing" trend on Robinhood Chain heats up, the Base and BSC ecosystems have also accelerated their catch-up efforts. In contrast, the Solana ecosystem had been relatively quiet until Pump.fun announced today the launch of its Custom Pair feature, supporting stock-meme paired assets.

For many CEXs, DEXs, and launchpads, this wave of "stock-meme pairing" led by Robinhood Chain has become an important incremental play in the crypto market, and a necessary path to compete for user market share, trading volume, and fee revenue.

Pump.fun Enters Stock-Meme Pairing, Making It a Standard for Crypto Platforms

Early this morning, Pump.fun officially announced the launch of its custom trading pair feature, allowing users to issue Pump.fun tokens on Solana paired with tokenized stocks, major crypto assets, and precious metals.

· In terms of asset types, through a partnership with Sunrise, the first batch adds 20 tokenized stock pairing assets, including US-listed stocks such as BA, BABA, COST, DELL, IBM, LMT, RDDT, and SHOP. Combined with xStocks and Sunrise, a total of 93 pairing assets are currently supported, with more to be added later.

· In terms of ecosystem rewards, the Bonding Curve and PumpSwap protocol fees for the custom trading pair feature remain consistent with standard Pump.fun token issuance. 50% of the revenue generated by this feature will be used for programmatic buyback and burn of PUMP tokens. Latest data shows that crypto projects have spent $638 million on token buybacks this year, up from $545 million in the same period last year; Hyperliquid and Pump.fun together account for nearly 90%.

· In terms of token issuance benefits, custom pairs can choose between creator fees or cashback: the former allows token creators to set a fixed rate between 0.05% and 1%, which can be distributed to up to 10 addresses (can be updated once after CTO); the latter has a 0.3% rate during the Bonding Curve stage (i.e., the inner market stage), and 0.05% after bonding is completed, with fees claimable by traders. Fees are paid in the quote asset of the trading pair; for example, for a token paired with NVDA, fee rewards will be paid in NVDA stock tokens.

Additionally, Pump.fun officials emphasized that the feature supports paired token CTO (community takeover), no additional transfer tax, and asset pairing cannot be changed once established; all tokenized asset issuance is supported by third-party platforms, and Pump.fun does not provide actual stock asset trading.

In short, Pump.fun has opened a window for issuing meme coins paired with stock tokens by leveraging its own token issuance model and the asset support of its two partners, Sunrise and xStocks.

Compared to platforms like Pons and Long on Robinhood Chain, four.meme and Flap on BSC, and on-chain token launch platforms in the Base ecosystem, Pump.fun's advantages lie in: the market scale and user base accumulated from its first-mover advantage, the flexibility of asset type integration in the Solana ecosystem, and the binding mechanism of PUMP token buybacks.

Looking ahead to Q3 2026, for trading platforms such as CEXs, DEXs, and launchpads, RWA assets have transitioned or evolved from single assets to stock-meme paired assets. This has led to the emergence of richer asset types, more flexible token issuance models, and more varied ways to combine meme coins with stock tokens.

For future crypto platforms, native cryptocurrencies, meme coins, stock tokens, and stock-meme paired assets will together form an "asset map."

Pump.fun Revives Solana Ecosystem, Facing Competition from Robinhood Chain, BSC, and Base

Yesterday, DefiLlama data showed that Robinhood Chain's network revenue for the previous day was $1.42 million, down from the historical peak of $5.44 million on September 4; during the same period, Hyperliquid's chain revenue was $1.8 million, and Pump.fun's was $1.6 million, both exceeding Robinhood Chain.

Undoubtedly, in terms of revenue-generating ability, Pump.fun is one of the cash flow machines that is immune to bull and bear markets. The development of the stock-meme asset pairing feature may be driven by two considerations:

First, to revitalize the Solana ecosystem. This year, the Solana ecosystem's performance in RWA asset issuance and the meme coin ecosystem has been far less impressive than Robinhood Chain, which officially launched in July, and there is also a certain gap compared to the Base ecosystem backed by Coinbase and the BSC ecosystem backed by Binance. The reason why the heat of meme coins in the Solana ecosystem has declined compared to before is that the ecosystem no longer has enough liquidity to serve as the "last stop for meme coins." Recently, meme coins in the Solana ecosystem with a market cap of $100 million include ZCAT, which became popular due to ZEC, and USELESS, which Bonkguy has been promoting. The current meme coin sector in the Solana ecosystem can be described as being in a transitional period. As a "liquidity vampire" of the Solana ecosystem and a dumper of SOL tokens, Pump.fun would naturally venture into stock-meme pairing if the ecosystem continues to languish, as it would be detrimental to the platform's trading volume and activity.

It is worth mentioning that on September 7, Raydium, a leading DEX platform in the Solana ecosystem, also announced that its LaunchLab now supports any token trading pair on Raydium. Revitalizing the Solana ecosystem is an unshirkable duty for all.

Second, it is an inevitable move to compete directly with Robinhood Chain, BSC, and Base ecosystems. Currently, although the overall crypto market has rebounded in the short term, liquidity in the market remains relatively limited. An increase in trading volume and user growth in one ecosystem to some extent has a siphon effect on other ecosystems. In the long run, what the major ecosystems are competing for is the most active meme coin trading community and the revenue and trading fees they bring. Pump.fun's launch of the custom trading pair feature is both to consolidate its existing base and to seek new ways to attract mature users from other networks with new gameplay and asset issuance models.

Of course, whether it will be effective remains to be seen. And Pump.fun's move has not been met with one-sided praise and support.

Crypto trader Rune posted that Pump.fun has over $2 billion in cash and a valuation of about $4.4 billion, making it one of the most influential platforms in the meme coin market this market cycle. However, since the launch of the Bonding Curve model, its subsequent product expansion has mostly been following other teams after they have validated market demand. He cited examples: after Axiom rose, Pump acquired Padre and renamed it Terminal; after fomo appeared, Pump added social features and competed for KOLs; after products combining meme coins with stock-related assets appeared on BNB Chain, Robinhood, Stonks, and Base, Pump has now launched a similar MemeStocks feature.

On one hand, he believes this strategy is not ineffective; for example, after Padre was acquired, its market share rose from about 2% to 10%. On the other hand, he argues that as a leading platform with substantial funds and resources, Pump.fun should create more new products that have not been market-validated, rather than continuously replicating existing models, otherwise it may weaken the incentive for small teams to innovate.

It is evident that Rune's view is "I think your capabilities go far beyond this," while he unconsciously ignores the costs and risks associated with innovative products.

From a higher perspective, Pump.fun's imitation and follow-up strategy is also a helpless move for the Solana ecosystem: lacking a listing and trading platform that serves as the "last stop for liquidity," Solana needs to make up for the shortcomings that other ecosystems can hardly imagine.

However, some analysts have recently mentioned that on-chain funds may be rotating from Robinhood Chain to Solana. Whether the Solana ecosystem can continue to produce multiple top meme coins with market caps exceeding $100 million and recreate the 2024 meme coin craze remains something we look forward to.