Pump.Fun’s Dirty Secret: 98% of Tokens Were Rug Pulls or Scams, Report Reveals

Another day, another crypto bloodbath—only this time, it’s quantified. A new report exposes Pump.Fun as a playground for fraudsters, with 98% of tokens either rugged or outright scams. Who could’ve seen that coming?

DeFi’s Wild West: The platform, once hyped as a meme coin launchpad, now looks more like a graveyard for bagholders. ’But the blockchain doesn’t lie,’ chirp the anons—neither do the on-chain trails of vaporized liquidity.

Wall Street’s laughing. Main Street’s rekt. And the cycle continues—because nothing fuels crypto quite like the sweet, sweet aroma of other people’s desperation.

The largest rug pull Solidus Labs identified over the time period was worth $1.9 million and was related to MToken.

Whilst the crypto industry has progressed and moved on following the spectacular implosion of FTX, hacks and scams are still rife with bad actors embezzling millions of dollars worth of assets by capitalizing on retail greed.

The memecoin sector is the greatest example of that, with 10s of thousands of bogus tokens being created every day. The hype around memecoin reached a crescendo in January when U.S. President Donal TRUMP touted his own TRUMP memecoin on social media. Shortly after the U.S. First Lady Melania Trump promoted MELANIA, both tokens are now down by 87% and 97% respectively, with a cabal of insiders reportedly profiting more than $100 million by buying the token before it was publicly available.

Meanwhile, on decentralized exchange Raydium, Solidus Labs found that 93% of liquidity pools (361,000 pools) exhibited soft rug pull characteristics, with the median rug pulls worth $2.8K.

In February, a Merkle Science report revealed that $500 million had been lost to rug pulls and scams in 2024.

Solana has emerged as a popular blockchain among criminals and scammers. Its near-zero fees and instant execution make it easy to deploy tokens and extract value.

Regulators are keeping a watchful eye over the sector. In March, the SEC set up a Cyber and Emerging Technologies unit designed to “root out those seeking to misuse innovation to harm investors and diminish confidence in new technologies.”

The regulator filed a class action lawsuit against Meteora in April, naming individuals associated with the M3M3 meme coin, alleging that they were responsible for a $69 million rug pull.