Decoding Pump.fun: Average Age 25, Nearly $2 Billion Treasury, Skeptical of Decentralization

Compiled by: Wu Blockchain

Pump.fun co-founder Noah Tweedale said in an interview that the Pump Foundation's treasury assets are close to $2 billion. On future product direction, he discussed the possible path of launching its own stablecoin. Rather than entering the highly competitive perps market, he prefers to continue expanding the token trading market where Pump.fun already has an advantage, and to seek the next stage of growth through social network effects, continuous product experimentation, and potential acquisitions. He is strongly skeptical of the value of "decentralization," believing that controlling end users and providing the best experience is key. He said the real question worth thinking about is not how to raise the market cap from $2 billion to $3 billion, but how to reach $100 billion or even $500 billion.

What exactly is Pump.fun now?

Host: The last time we chatted, I think it was right when Pump first launched. Back then, meme coins were being issued almost every day, and it felt like the beginning of a new era. Today, the app has officially launched, and the product's "dopamine feel" is very strong. So what changes have occurred in the product or the industry over these two years? How has your own judgment of the industry changed? At the beginning, it was essentially a meme coin launchpad, right?

Noah Tweedale: If you look back to when Pump first launched, around January 2024, it's been more than two years now. Looking at the market landscape today, not just the meme coin sector but the entire crypto industry, almost everything has changed completely. It's a 180-degree, even 360-degree shift—almost everything is different.

Two years ago, if you wanted to participate, you first had to go to a fairly primitive website. Our website at the time, Pump.fun, was barely usable. Then you had to get a Phantom wallet, download it, install it, and deal with a whole set of things afterward. It was also very difficult to move funds into the system back then, and only after that could you actually start trading these tokens.

So the barrier to entry was very high, right? But today, you just take out your phone, top up in a few seconds, and immediately start trading meme coins—almost instantly. So it's not just technological progress, nor just the app adding more and more features. More importantly, the entire trading experience has been completely transformed—even how people initially participate in these token trades has become completely different.

Host: So how do you view this business now? For example, internally, how do you define what you're doing?

Noah Tweedale: I would say, essentially, it's a trading platform, right? That's how we define it internally.

Secondly, what we want to build is a social trading experience, preferably mobile-first. Of course, we also have different front-end products, such as Terminal for professional traders and the web version for web users. But overall, we want to create a mobile-first social trading experience where anyone can trade any asset. That's basically how we define the product now.

Host: It sounds like this is already very much like an exchange, or a perpetual DEX, rather than the Pump.fun people currently understand.

Noah Tweedale: Of course. Here's how I see it. Take Coinbase, for example—what is it essentially? It's just letting users trade a bunch of tokens, right? Except the number of tokens it can trade is limited, because usually only tokens that reach a certain size have a chance to be listed on Coinbase.

What the Pump.fun app essentially wants to do is let users trade every token. That includes the large tokens, of course, but more importantly, it includes a large number of small tokens—tokens that are created every day and constantly bought and traded.

Host: So if a user opens Pump.fun today, what kind of user journey do you hope they have?

Noah Tweedale: I hope you start trading on the app, generate trading volume, and eventually become a long-term, satisfied user. I hope you enjoy the product, make money, and truly like it. That's basically it.

What has changed in the meme coin market over the past two years?

Host: What changes do you think have occurred in the industry from your launch until now? Back then, almost every time Elon Musk said something or Trump said something, someone in the market would issue a meme coin around it. What changes do you think have occurred in this industry from January 2024 to now?

Noah Tweedale: That's a good question. I think the market has indeed become more mature. 2024 can basically be seen as the start of this bull run—the market took off, trading volume kept growing, and thousands of new coins appeared every day. Then came the whole Trump craze, and even Trump himself issued his own meme coin. I think in a sense, that was almost the peak of that bull market sentiment.

After that, the market cooled down. As with the cycles the crypto industry has always had, product revenue and usage also declined. This environment actually favors crypto-native professional traders, and the market gradually shifted from a game for ordinary retail investors to a game for more professional traders.

So over the past few years, market activity has increasingly skewed toward those "shark" players who trade around the clock, rather than ordinary retail investors. But in recent months, this trend has started to shift back toward being more retail-friendly. So I think, like many things in crypto, the ultimate user experience depends heavily on market cycles.

But fundamentally, the product we launched on day one hasn't changed that much compared to today. What we've always been doing is: how to make the user experience better? How to add more features? How to make it simpler and more convenient for users?

But the core of the product has never changed—anyone can issue a token with one click, and the whole process is very fast. It used to take maybe two minutes, and now it takes less than 10 seconds, right?

You might ask, "This sounds like nothing has changed—why is the so-called innovation so limited?" But look at Instagram. What was Instagram at the beginning? It was an app that let you post photos to a feed, share them with friends, and others could like them. This app has been around for over a decade, but its core has essentially not changed much since day one, right?

Many of the best, most beautiful products rarely change their core form from birth. Of course, we've now added a whole new social layer to the product, and we plan to expand into more areas in the future. But the core product logic—anyone can issue a token and participate in the market around it—I think that itself is a very interesting mechanism.

Host: So what do you want to do with these social features now? What exactly is the "social experience" on Pump.fun? What will it become in the future?

Noah Tweedale: These features are actually already live, like the app you just mentioned. Think about what most people in crypto do every day. Aren't they glued to Crypto Twitter all day, right?

When you scroll through Crypto Twitter, you see all kinds of tweets, and what's usually in those tweets? Most of the time, it's a few simple sentences, then a token. That token could be ETH, Bitcoin, a meme coin, a utility token, or anything else. It's essentially like some kind of "smallest unit of social consensus": you post something explaining why you think this coin is good or bad, and below it is the token or its price chart.

Our idea is to build a fully social experience. Basically, take what's happening on Crypto Twitter and bring it into a mobile app. But the difference is, you can't just say you're bullish on a coin—you have to actually "vote with your money."

If you believe in a coin, you can buy a certain amount. Then that trade is displayed directly on the Pump.fun app, and everyone can see how much you made or lost. That way, your expressed views and your actual trading behavior are truly combined. That's basically the social trading experience we want to build.

Average team age 25—what are Pump.fun's 80 team members doing?

Host: Great. I'd also love to dive into the company itself and what you're building. Your core team is very young. How old are the founders roughly? If you could briefly introduce them.

Noah Tweedale: When I founded Baton Corporation, the development company behind Pump.fun, I had just turned 19. Now I'm 22. Baton Corporation has three co-founders: me, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerler.

I'm 22 now, Alon is 23, and Dylan is 24. So yes, it's definitely a very young team. It's been quite a wild ride so far.

Host: So this very young team has raised billions of dollars. We'll talk about funding and money in detail later. But how big is the team around you now? Obviously it's no longer just a few of you making decisions—I'm guessing you now have development teams, project teams, etc.

Noah Tweedale: Of course. Our team size now, I think, is close to 80 people. That includes developers, content moderation teams, and other non-technical roles. So the team has expanded very quickly.

Host: What do you think the average age of the company is? If you include all 80 people, what's the average?

Noah Tweedale: 25, I'd say around 25 or 26.

Using high-frequency experiments to find the next growth point?

Host: So you're basically a group of young people with an average age of around 25. What are you actually doing now? You have 80 people—what exactly are they developing? Where are the resources mainly going?

The reason I ask is that I'm guessing you have quite a lot of cash on hand. A rough calculation—we'll talk about funding specifically later—I estimate you might be holding around $1.5 billion to $2 billion in cash. That's a huge amount of money, so what are you developing? Where is this money mainly being spent?

Noah Tweedale: Of course. Baton currently divides development work into three different directions. The first is obviously the mobile app, which we've already talked about a lot. Most of the development focus is here right now. We believe this is the part most likely to achieve massive scale.

For example, there might be only a few hundred users now, but it could easily grow to 100 million or 200 million users in the future. We think this is where the real growth space for the industry is, and it's the direction where Pump.fun can expand its user base to the maximum extent.

The second direction is the web version. When you open the Pump.fun website now, you see the web app that everyone first knew, and that's the second product line we continue to work on. You can also see the Feed there now—the mobile feed I mentioned earlier. This Feed is interoperable between the mobile app and the web version, and user data is connected to the same social graph.

The third direction is what we renamed Terminal after acquiring Padre. It's a trading interface for professional traders, mainly serving users who spend a lot of time trading every day or invest large amounts of money buying and selling tokens and need to enter and exit positions very quickly. For these people, it provides a more professional and efficient trading experience. So the entire business is basically divided into these three directions.

Host: So Padre was acquired. Currently, your team is mainly developing the app and the social experience, and these are products we can already see and that are already live. But you must be doing other things too, right? You can't just be focused on the app and the social experience that's already live. You must have some longer-term, bolder projects?

Noah Tweedale: Of course. A recent attempt that was more of a "moonshot" is GO (go.fun), the Bounties platform you've seen. Its core idea is basically "pay anyone to do anything."

We often come up with these types of ideas, quickly experiment with them, and see if we can find product-market fit (PMF) and potentially achieve 100x growth that truly changes the company.

Look at Google, for example. They did something very important and smart: they hired small teams, put them in a room, and told employees, "Go experiment, try different things." Many people may not know that products like Google Docs and Gmail were born from similar experiments and later became core products for the company.

So for us, the key is to be very determined and proactive in trying different ideas, because you never know which one will succeed. Of course, we've also done a lot of innovation at the launchpad level. I think many people may not have noticed this, although my related posts on Twitter have gotten about 1 million views. For example, the recently launched BOOST Mode.

Previously, every token would lock up a portion of SOL during the bonding curve phase, and after the token migrated, those funds would actually be locked there long-term and couldn't be effectively used. Now with BOOST Mode, whenever a token completes migration, the SOL that was left in the bonding curve and not doing anything is taken out and used to continuously buy the token from the market for 5 minutes after migration.

By my rough estimate—and I might not remember this number exactly—it now injects about $5 million to $10 million in liquidity into different tokens every week. After this mechanism launched, the number of token migrations and product usage both increased significantly, and it also boosted revenue for this part of the business and for Pump.fun.

Host: So how did GO do? I remember there were all kinds of bounties on the platform—people tattooing things on their foreheads, doing all sorts of crazy things. How is it developing now? How did that product ultimately perform?

Noah Tweedale: Of course. Honestly, GO was built by 3 people in about two weeks. Basically, quickly throw something together and see if anyone uses it. That's how many Baton products are made, right? You run an experiment, and that's how we validate PMF.

See if anyone uses it. If no one uses it, cut it; if people use it, then of course keep iterating. In GO's case, it did get enormous attention. For example, it got about 20 million views on Twitter. I think one of the videos might even be one of the most widely spread videos in Crypto Twitter history, except maybe for FTX-related videos.

But actual usage quickly declined, and it ultimately didn't achieve what we expected. So like many other products, we cut it and reallocated development resources to other directions and other experiments. That's the approach you have to take: keep experimenting, some fail, some succeed, then move on to the next round. Basically, every year, every month, even every day, you run dozens of different experiments. That's just how it is.

Host: I'd really like to hear your take on this, and I also have my own judgment. I pulled up the PUMP price chart. You should be more familiar with this chart than anyone. Something clearly happened here. For example, looking from mid-June, PUMP bottomed out at around 0.1 cents, and it has since doubled.

So I'm curious what happened. I think I know the answer, but I'd like to hear it from you: what happened during this period that made the chart look like this? Because as you can see, the overall market didn't show such an obvious reversal. So I think something must have happened internally or externally at Pump.fun at that time. What exactly happened at that point?

Noah Tweedale: Of course. Regarding the price itself, I'll be cautious and not make specific predictions. I can't say I'm certain where the price will go. But as for the time point you mentioned, I remember that was around the token unlock. I might be misremembering, not entirely sure, but I'm guessing you're referring to that unlock.

For the audience listening to this episode, at that time a portion of tokens held by the team and investors completed unlocking, meaning those people could actually sell from then on. The specific data can be verified on-chain, and Pump.fun's official Twitter and other channels have published relevant information, so if I'm inaccurate here, it can be checked.

But as far as I know, the vast majority did not sell. I think over 90% of investors did not sell their tokens, and many still hold them today. I believe the situation is similar for team members.

After PUMP's massive unlock, why did almost no one sell?

Host: You went through such a massive unlock, but almost no one sold. So my question is, what did you do? What vision did you convey to these people to make them willing to stay? Because most of these people are very young. I'm guessing many of them have never been exposed to this scale of cash in their lives. Suddenly, for the first time, they truly faced a token unlock and could liquidate these assets, but almost no one sold.

I even compiled a list of addresses myself and could directly see that almost no one sold. I actually have a spreadsheet of wallet addresses, and we've been tracking these wallets—basically no one is selling. So I'm wondering, how did you do it? Was it because you painted a compelling enough vision for them, or was there some arrangement, like they were required not to sell? I'm curious—how exactly did you get everyone not to sell?

Noah Tweedale: Are you talking about investors or team members here?

Host: Mainly team members, right? That unlock was mainly team tokens, correct?

Noah Tweedale: Investors too, right? I remember about 13% of the token supply belongs to investors, and the team also has a corresponding share, and both had portions entering the unlock phase at that time. But if we're mainly talking about the team internally, I think the Baton that outsiders see, or Baton / Pump Foundation, is very different from the company we actually see internally.

In my view, we have one of the best teams in the entire crypto industry internally. Everyone is highly motivated and truly believes in the company's vision. They see what this industry is actually becoming, not what the so-called "older generation" thinks it should be.

I think many people who don't work in the meme space think this is like the next NFT wave that will eventually go to zero. They don't really see what's happening here. The most important point is that young people in crypto now, and more broadly many young people, are either trading meme coins or playing prediction markets. That's the reality.

This is a young person's market. People aged 18 to 24 make up a very important, possibly the main, user base. So many people at Baton who receive PUMP tokens as compensation or incentives realize, "Wait, this thing is actually important."

Or not necessarily "important," but they realize that the future upside of this thing far exceeds the market's current valuation. And people think, "I want to participate in building a company that can have generational impact, not a company that stays here for one cycle and then goes to zero in the next." So ultimately, on one hand, we've built a team that truly believes in the product; on the other hand, this team is smart enough to understand what such a company could become in the future.

Why did Pump.fun almost stop external communication before?

Host: So did anything change internally? Let me be blunt—I've talked to many of your investors. Some of them are early investors. My feeling is that over the past few months, your investors' sentiment has clearly changed.

There was a period when I felt they might have been somewhat dissatisfied—I don't want to use the word "frustrated," but at least not as excited as they are now. Now when I talk to them, the attitude is clearly different. I've also talked to many of your other investors, and I think we both know who some of them are. Suddenly, they all seem to believe that something has indeed changed internally.

So I'm curious—what exactly happened internally? Did you reflect on how you did things before, or realize you might have made some mistakes? What exactly changed?

Noah Tweedale: Yes, there have indeed been changes. Let me give some background first. Internally, our core focus has always been the Pump.fun product. We've always been thinking about how to make it the best product possible, how to get more users, higher usage, and more attention.

Our thinking has always been that if we make the product good, then the short-term token price isn't that important. Because in the long run, what really drives the token price up is platform revenue growth and the buybacks that come with it. That's what can make more people truly believe in this business and be willing to buy into this logic.

As for marketing around the token or doing short-term operations, I think those things are very unnatural. They might create some exit liquidity in the short term or pump the price, but that's not how you build a company that can operate stably for 20 years, right? That's not a wise long-term decision.

However, I do agree with what you said. We've heard a lot of feedback and taken it seriously. Many people did complain that our communication wasn't good enough, and we've seen that and are actively improving. That's why I'm now appearing on podcasts like this and also starting to post weekly updates on Twitter that everyone can see. But there's another point I think is important. If you measure from that low point on your chart, the revenue of the Pump platform and the Pump Foundation has also grown by about 50% to 60%, right?

So you have to ask yourself: was it revenue growth that drove the change? Or was it improved communication? Or both? That's something to think about. Of course, for us, the token price going up is also important—I want to emphasize that, very important. But the real question isn't: how do you take a company valued at $2 billion to $3 billion?

The real question is: how do you go from $2 billion to $100 billion, and then to $500 billion? How do you become a true global giant? That's what we've been thinking about. So we don't set our sights on how to add an extra $200 million in market cap.

Host: Why were you so bad at communication before? You raised a lot of money, but then your own Twitter basically went silent. Occasionally we'd see Alon post a tweet. Was that intentional? Or was it a mistake you later realized? What exactly happened back then?

Noah Tweedale: I would say it was indeed a mistake. But I also want to say I'm not here to defend myself, because the market has clearly given negative feedback on this through the price.

But from another angle, I think this kind of continuous communication certainly has value, but it's not absolutely necessary. For example, how often does CZ specifically do a weekly update on what's happening in the BNB ecosystem? Does Brian Armstrong do that? Maybe, but probably not at the frequency we're doing now.

So I think this current approach is certainly good, but it also has some corresponding drawbacks that we need to weigh. Also, I think there's another issue. When the token price keeps falling, it's easy to form a self-fulfilling prophecy. People start saying, "The platform revenue isn't real." Then the price continues to fall, and people believe even more that "revenue isn't real." It creates a persistent downward momentum, and that trend is very hard to reverse. Once it forms, you're heavily affected.

But the fact is, during that time, the only thing the team was doing was focusing on the product, continuously executing, hiring better people, developing more features, and acquiring good teams. So ultimately, it's a trade-off between short-term and long-term. Our mindset has always been long-term oriented.

Host: Honestly, I think it's actually a combination of both. If the token price is falling and the market is full of FUD, but at the same time the team keeps communicating, saying, "Hey everyone, we're heads down building, we'll release this next week, and then that after," then those two things can balance each other out.

Because at least the market knows you're still working. I'm a PUMP holder myself, and at the time I really felt like the team had gone "offline." I even gradually got used to the idea that the team just wouldn't speak up. So now seeing you appear more in public and communicate more proactively, I think it's great. Because at least we can more clearly know what you're doing, and that does bring more confidence to the market and holders.

Noah Tweedale: Stability and security. Yes, we understand that, and I agree with you. As I said, we're working hard to improve this now.

How does the Pump Foundation manage a treasury of nearly $2 billion?

Host: You mentioned earlier that the goal is to take the market cap from $2 billion to $100 billion. But before we talk about market cap, let's talk about money. How much money do you actually have now? I know you also have significant expenses. Is my understanding correct that about 50% of revenue is currently spent on expenses?

Noah Tweedale: Let me explain here, because for those listening, this is a very important distinction. The entity holding these funds is the Pump Foundation, and there is also a UK development company, Baton Corporation, which charges the foundation for development and related fees. So when we discuss "who owns this money," these funds are actually in the Pump Foundation.

Let me give some background on expenses. Currently, Baton Corporation charges the foundation about $100 million per year. This money is mainly used for development costs, technical infrastructure costs, and other operating expenses. As for the funds held by the foundation itself, the relevant data is basically public. That includes funds raised from the ICO and the platform's ongoing revenue.

Host: So at the protocol or foundation level, how much money does the foundation have on hand now?

Noah Tweedale: The treasury assets are close to $2 billion.

Host: And Baton Corporation charges the foundation about $100 million per year for development costs?

Noah Tweedale: Yes, but that number changes. Because like any company, marketing expenses might go up, or other factors could affect Baton Corporation's overall annual spending. So the specific number isn't fixed. But as things stand now, you can understand it as roughly $100 million per year.

Host: So how is this $2 billion managed? Who manages it? Where is the money now? Is it cash, or held in SOL? What form exactly?

Noah Tweedale: I can't go into too much detail on this question, for obvious reasons. But I can say it's not in SOL. The funds are mainly held in stablecoins and other relatively stable assets.

These funds are managed by people associated with the foundation, and the core goal is obviously to ensure Pump.fun can operate sustainably long-term. As for the specific asset allocation and company-level arrangements, I don't want to elaborate further.

Host: From the overall structure, including the daily revenue, how exactly does it work? That is, after the protocol generates daily revenue, the foundation receives that revenue, and then uses 50% of it to buy back and burn PUMP tokens.

Noah Tweedale: Yes, that's right. You can see it on this chart here. It shows the daily buybacks and burns, and how much revenue is allocated to buybacks. But there's another metric I find more interesting—the number of active wallets.

This chart is actually very worth looking at. You can drag the time to the far right. This shows the number of active wallets on Solana, and the line below is the number of active wallets remaining on Solana after excluding wallets that have interacted with Pump.fun.

You'll see a ratio here—Pump.fun's share reaches 92%. In other words, about 90% of Solana's active wallets are directly or indirectly connected to Pump.fun. That's actually quite staggering.

If you drag the chart all the way back to December 2024 or January 2025, when that huge peak appears—yes, right there—you'll see there were about 4.5 million to 4.6 million active wallets on Solana at the time.

But if you exclude Pump.fun-related wallets, the remaining number of active wallets is very small. That is, at that time, almost all on-chain activity on Solana, to a large extent, came from Pump.fun.

Will Pump.fun launch its own stablecoin?

Host: You're clearly a very important part of the Solana ecosystem now. As you just said, about 90% of active wallets are interacting with Pump.fun, right? But at the same time, there have been rumors in the market, and recently these rumors have resurfaced: is it possible that Pump.fun will launch its own blockchain in the future?

Noah Tweedale: I mean, the Pump.fun mobile app has now become the main trading entry point. If you open the app, you'll find it's actually already cross-chain. I want to emphasize this: you can trade assets on BNB Chain, on Ethereum, and on Base. Basically, as long as there's a certain amount of trading volume on a chain, you can trade through Pump.fun. So from that perspective, we're already cross-chain.

Also, we really like Solana. We think that, for now, if you want to do on-chain trading, Solana offers the best experience. Of course, that could change in the future. That's about all I can say on this question.

We certainly always have a clear plan to keep expanding the business and make the company as big as possible. But there's something I think is actually more interesting here. Right now, whenever a token completes migration, its trading pair is paired with SOL, right? We've studied this—just this mechanism alone has added billions of dollars to Solana's market cap, because these tokens all need to be paired with SOL.

But the more interesting question is: why not pair them with a stablecoin? And further, why can't that stablecoin be Pump's own stablecoin? Because in reality, not many people actually want their assets denominated in SOL—it doesn't make sense from a user experience perspective, right? The world's primary denomination asset is still the US dollar, not SOL.

So the question is, how do you provide the best experience for users? The answer is actually to denominate in US dollars. I think that would be a very natural next step.

Host: So you're saying the most logical next step is for Pump.fun to launch its own stablecoin?

Noah Tweedale: That's right, yes. Of course, this would also further increase the usage of USD stablecoins on Pump.fun. You can already see that the usage of liquidity pools denominated in USD stablecoins on the Pump.fun app is increasing, and users are already getting used to trading directly in USD terms.

So when all this infrastructure is built, why wouldn't the Pump Foundation consider launching its own stablecoin?

Host: But if Pump.fun really issues a stablecoin, how would it roughly work? How do you plan to get users to start using it? What would the specific mechanism be? For example, would this stablecoin exist on different blockchains simultaneously? Kind of like another Tether that can be issued and circulated across multiple chains.

Noah Tweedale: Yes, basically similar to the Tether model. Our early idea is to first launch a wrapped version backed by Tether or USDC, so it can quickly scale usage and liquidity while gradually building user trust.

After all, stablecoins are a business highly dependent on trust. So we can scale this way first, and once the market cap and liquidity reach a sufficiently large level, we can consider gradually shifting the underlying reserves to assets like bonds.

Host: I still want to come back to the "own chain" question, because it's been on my mind. You just said you're basically fully multi-chain now. Users can trade on BNB Chain, on Solana, and on EVM chains, right? What about Hyperliquid?

Noah Tweedale: Not yet. But I believe there will be some related news soon.

Host: I did see some activity on Twitter. I'm not sure what exactly, and I haven't talked to the relevant team, but there have been rumors on Twitter that you might be doing something with Hyperliquid. If you do launch your own blockchain in the future, what would be the biggest benefit?

Noah Tweedale: I think the core is still providing the best experience for users. Right now, using blockchains involves issues like gas fees. If you have your own chain, you can fully optimize around user experience.

For example, you can make gas fees very low, or even zero fees. Beyond that, there are many other aspects you can optimize for end users, making the overall experience 10 times better than now. And you can design the entire chain to be more mobile-centric. There are actually a lot of interesting things you can do.

Host: The reason I ask is that I want to understand what else can be improved compared to Solana. I think that might be what I really want to ask. Because I think we're likely to see more and more app chains in the future: when an app becomes large enough, it eventually launches its own chain. One reason, as you said, is that it can control gas fees itself.

But from your perspective, you're a direct-to-consumer platform centered on front-end products. So if you do this in the future, what specific benefits do you think building your own chain can bring to such a product?

Noah Tweedale: I think there are actually many different benefits. Of course, one of them is related to valuation. If you look back at history, like the dot-com bubble from 1999 to 2000, what happened? Before the bubble burst, a lot of infrastructure companies got very high valuations, and everyone thought, "This is the infrastructure of the next civilization" or something like that.

But what happened later? Many companies crashed, or even went to zero. So who are the biggest tech companies today? Google, Meta, and of course Amazon. What do these companies have in common? They control the entire technology stack.

The reality is, as long as you control the end users and users are actually using your product, it doesn't really matter what infrastructure the underlying layer runs on, as long as the final experience is good enough, right? Actually, I'm very pessimistic about "decentralization." I think a lot of the talk around decentralization is nonsense. I really don't believe in it.

For me, the only thing that matters is user experience. If you can provide the best user experience, then no one really cares how decentralized the underlying blockchain is, or any of that stuff.

That's also why a lot of on-chain activity migrated to Solana. Compared to Ethereum, Solana is arguably more centralized, but Ethereum's user experience is poor—that's a fact, right? And that's one of the important reasons Solana has grown to its current scale. So what really matters is always the end user. In the long run, that's the foundation for building an extremely valuable company.

Why are perps a "boring business"?

Host: Got it. So now you have a professional trading Terminal, a launchpad, and a DEX you built yourself. But I feel there's still one missing piece in the product landscape—perpetual contracts. Does Pump.fun have plans to do perps?

Noah Tweedale: We always consider various possibilities. But honestly, I think perps are a pretty boring business. I don't think there's anything special about perpetual contracts themselves.

If you look at the perps market, it's probably one of the most competitive tracks in the entire crypto industry, right? Almost all major players are competing in this market, and the capital they control is not in the billions but in the tens of billions.

So the question is, why enter such an already highly competitive track? Why run in and compete with these people instead of making the market you already have bigger?

I think I posted a related tweet recently. If you only look at on-chain revenue—and I mean on-chain, excluding off-chain. Off-chain centralized exchanges are of course extremely large and one of the biggest businesses in crypto—but if you only look on-chain, the revenue generated by meme coins is actually much higher than perps overall.

I think people need to understand that the meme coin business is actually very sustainable. So why not strive to form a monopoly in a market where you already have an advantage, and then keep making the market itself bigger, rather than going into another market and competing head-on with people already there?

Token distribution creates a unique social network effect

Host: Okay, let's talk about market cap. You mentioned earlier that you want to take the market cap from $2 billion to $100 billion. In my view, the only way to go from $2 billion to $100 billion is to build a real network. In other words, it must have true network effects: each additional user increases the value of the entire network by a larger margin, right?

But if I break down a meme coin launchpad to its most basic form—I know this might be oversimplifying—I don't see any network effect in the launchpad itself.

Noah Tweedale: I completely disagree. That statement is wrong. Why did you originally buy Bitcoin?

Host: Because it has network effects.

Noah Tweedale: No, not that. I mean, if we go back to the most primitive, most basic level, why did you or anyone else originally buy Bitcoin?

Host: Okay, if we go back to the most basic level, it's because it's a scarce asset with limited supply.

Noah Tweedale: Who told you that?

Host: Other people. People in the community, some people I trust.

Noah Tweedale: People online, or friends in real life, right? Isn't every coin you've ever bought essentially because your friend told you to buy it?

Host: Yes.

Noah Tweedale: In fact, what Bitcoin actually represents or how decentralized it is—none of that is the most critical thing. The reason you bought it is essentially because someone told you to buy it. That's the network effect that any token has.

To some extent, the entire crypto industry exists because everyone is saying, "Look at my Hyperliquid position," "Look at my Cardano position," "Come buy my coin," and then you buy mine, and I'll buy yours.

And the so-called meme coin launchpad isn't just a meme coin launchpad, right? It's essentially a token issuance platform that lets everyone get an experience similar to "issuing their own Bitcoin," then tell their friends to buy, and friends participate.

But the difference is, if I go tell my friends to buy Bitcoin now, their purchase basically won't affect Bitcoin's price. But if I tell them to buy a token I issued on Pump.fun, or a token anyone else issued on Pump.fun, then in reality, their purchase is very likely to actually move the market price.

What does that mean? That itself is a very direct network effect, because the more people participate and invest, the more money you make.

This is very different from perps, because a perpetual contract platform doesn't directly benefit existing users just because each new user is added. Prediction markets are the same. For example, in prediction markets, you have no incentive to tell others what position you opened on Polymarket. Because if you tell others your judgment and they believe you and follow your bet, then the return you ultimately get will actually decrease, right? From an expected return perspective, making your trades public is even negative EV.

Perps are the same. Why would you tell others your perpetual contract position? It doesn't bring you extra returns. So these products don't really have this kind of network effect.

But tokens are different. You have a very direct incentive to tell everyone as loudly as possible, "I bought this coin." Because if others also buy in, you benefit from it. So if you say this product has no network effect, I strongly disagree.

Host: Right, actually I think we might be saying the same thing. I think what truly has network effects is the social network formed around meme coins and token issuance platforms. That's also the most obvious thing I feel on the app. For me, the app itself is a very pure social experience.

People keep telling others, "I bought this," "I just aped into this," "I called this coin when it was at a $3,000 market cap," "This guy has been running too hard lately," "This thing is too hot, I need to get in and check it out." Basically, that's what's happening in the app. I think that itself is a network effect.

Noah Tweedale: But even without a dedicated social layer, this network effect exists on its own. Just look at Twitter, right? What is a network effect? For example, if you post a tweet saying you bought a certain coin, that itself is a network effect. It doesn't necessarily have to rely on in-product social features. Of course, you can layer a social layer on top of that to create more value for all participants.

But the most basic logic is very simple: I bought a coin, so the most natural behavior is to tell my friends to buy it too. That's true for any token—"I'm bullish on this coin, buy it now."

Even those investors we just talked about—they might have been telling you why they're bullish on PUMP, right? What is that? That's actually a network effect. Because they want others to buy, and when more people buy, the assets they hold become more valuable. That's a fact, and it's very basic human nature. I think what Pump.fun's launchpad captures is essentially this.

Host: So I think what really excites me is the network effect you've formed through social elements. You've actually created the ultimate "dopamine machine," and it's built around money, which makes the whole mechanism even stronger. Because the dopamine mechanism requires motivation and reward, and here the reward is even directly financial returns.

So I think this is very interesting. What truly forms the network effect is this social network, and the launchpad is just the infrastructure that makes this mechanism work. What really excites me is that I feel you're gradually getting this social network right. It's still early, of course, but you're starting to find the right direction.

I think you might be the first to truly combine crypto, social networks, and dopamine feedback mechanisms and actually get it right. There's almost no other app on the market that can do this right now. The only one that might still have a chance is Twitter, if it moves further in your direction and lets users issue and trade tokens directly within Twitter.

Noah Tweedale: Right now people discuss various small tokens in it, and they can also discuss mainstream tokens like Bitcoin and ETH. So what's next? Why can't you discuss your prediction market positions in it? Why can't you share your futures positions? Why can't you share your RWA positions?

Eventually, all these things will be integrated together. And this social layer will ultimately cover the entire trading market. At that point, you'll have little reason to trade anywhere else. Because the reason you buy a coin or open a position is often because someone told you, "This thing is worth being bullish on." And what the Pump.fun app wants to become is the place where all these views, trades, and positions ultimately converge.

Host: For me, what can really take you from $2 billion to $100 billion is this "social position" and the entire social experience. Because it's way more interesting than scrolling Meta, and way more interesting than scrolling Instagram—really a lot more fun.

Like I said, I spent an entire afternoon playing with this thing and got completely addicted. I couldn't help but want to go back and see who's making money now. And when I see others actually making money, it makes me want to press that button too, because I want to participate.

Noah Tweedale: Right, you want to follow them, copy trade, and do all kinds of similar things.

Host: Besides these, what else do you think can help you go from $2 billion to $100 billion? Because I actually believe that if there's one app on the market that has a chance to do this, it might be you. What else do you have that you think can help you reach that scale?

Noah Tweedale: I think the core is still continuous execution and experimentation, right? You have to keep doing things that truly matter. What's the next thing that can bring in users? What's the next app that can attract a whole new group of users?

Because the reality is, the crypto industry has been fighting over the same 500,000 people. The real question is: how do you bring in the next 500,000 people? Then the next 1 million, then the next 5 million. We've always been focused on these questions, and we try to think on as large a scale as possible.

I think many ordinary perp DEXs right now aren't really thinking, "How do I bring in another 10 million users?" They tend to think small, like, "How do I grab a little market share from this competitor, and a little from that competitor?"

But if you really want to change the world, is that dreaming big? I don't think so. So we need to keep doing things on this larger scale. Of course, another very important part is building trust. We need to let people understand that there's actually a real team behind this, not some mysterious, suspicious-looking team doing strange things behind the scenes.

We need to build this human-to-human connection, so people are willing to truly get to know us, understand what's happening here, and then be willing to tell their friends about it and explain it clearly. In reality, behind the scenes, there's a very strong business running here.

Also, of course, a very important direction is how to use the foundation's cash and how to advise the foundation to make good acquisition decisions. It really is a massive amount of capital. If you can acquire businesses that themselves generate more revenue, or companies that can create synergies with existing products, or even completely different businesses that still add value to the entire ecosystem, that's all very reasonable.

That's also an important way many large companies keep expanding. For example, Meta acquired Instagram, acquired WhatsApp, and many other things. Sometimes you have to find "the next thing," but you don't necessarily have to build it from scratch yourself.

And if you have such a huge cash reserve, the foundation can absolutely consider and ultimately decide to acquire some larger businesses after receiving proper advice. That's about it.

How many users does Pump.fun have in Asia?

Host: How big is your presence in Asia? I know it's hard to tell where users are from just by wallet addresses, but I'm guessing you've started to get some understanding of your user profile. How large is your user base in Asia roughly?

Noah Tweedale: About 20%. I think Pump.fun is still a product that skews more toward Western markets, but the proportion of Asian users is also quite significant.

Host: And it's growing, right? Because Asia itself is one of the most important markets for crypto.

Noah Tweedale: Of course. But I both agree and partially disagree with that. For example, the US sports betting market is itself one of the largest markets in the world. And this data is really hard to track. Pump.fun itself is obviously decentralized, and we don't do KYC on users, so it's hard to accurately determine where users are from. At the same time, many places in Asia have various restrictions on crypto, so actual usage is even harder to measure.

But my judgment is that Asian users account for about 20% to 25%, and this proportion is relatively stable in the overall user structure.

Host: For me, what excites me most is still the social network you're building. As I said earlier, I think what can really take you from $2 billion to $100 billion is network effects. And among the products I've seen so far, Pump.fun is the closest to that state. The desktop version is certainly good, but what really shows me this possibility is the mobile app.

Noah Tweedale: That's right, that's the key. Because everyone has a phone in their pocket, and they can take it out anytime and start trading immediately. Including the Apple Pay feature we just mentioned, I think that's what can really scale the user base to a very large size.

Host: Regarding the Apple Pay feature, for anyone who doesn't know, you can now directly deposit funds through the app. There's a "Deposit" button, and when you click it, you'll see you can use Apple Pay directly. Basically, double-click to confirm, and you can directly load money into the app and start using it.

Also, if anyone is wondering why I'm so excited about this product, or suspects this is sponsored content by Pump.fun, I can clearly say this is a completely unsponsored interview. We have no commercial relationship with Pump.fun. I just really like this team—they work very hard—and I've been following their development for a long time.

When I opened this app and truly felt that "dopamine feedback," I thought, "Okay, I need to contact Noah and talk to him." Another reason, of course, is that PUMP's price has been rising recently.

Thank you so much, my friend. I'm very happy to have you on today. I think we can do more conversations like this in the future, as part of your ongoing updates to investors. And maybe soon you can take off the mask and really come out to meet everyone. I mean, I know who you are, but maybe one day everyone can see the real you behind this project.

Noah Tweedale: Of course. Yes, I think maybe not immediately, but it shouldn't be too long. At some point in the future, the founders should reveal their identities publicly, and we're considering it. But obviously, once we do that, it will have a big impact on real life.

Why do the founders still choose to remain anonymous?

Host: I'm actually curious—why have you been so reluctant to fully reveal your identities? You're already "semi-public" now. Your investors all know who you are and have met you in person, but the general public hasn't really seen you. So why are you so insistent on staying anonymous?

Noah Tweedale: Honestly, I don't know. I'm only 22, right? I still want to be able to live a normal life whether I'm walking in New York, London, or anywhere else, without people constantly coming up to recognize me and talk to me. From that perspective, I'd rather live a quieter life and be able to relax. That's the first reason.

The second reason is of course security risk. Everyone knows this platform makes a lot of money now, and PUMP itself is a very actively traded token. If our identities were fully public, we'd naturally become easier targets.

We actually already have security measures in place. So ultimately, it's more of a choice for peace of mind. I think we'll probably wait until we're a bit bigger and the business has developed to a more mature stage before truly making the decision to go public with our identities.