Bonkbot’s 200K Trader Reward Shakes Meme Coin Economics as Pump.fun Holds Creator Fees

Bonkbot just flipped the script on meme coin incentives—dangling a 200,000 reward carrot directly in front of traders while Pump.fun keeps milking creators for fees.

The trader-first pivot

Forget waiting for developers to share the wealth. Bonkbot's new reward system cuts out the middleman, putting serious cash directly into the hands of the people actually moving markets. It's a classic case of following the liquidity—where the trading volume goes, the incentives follow.

The platform fee standoff

Meanwhile, Pump.fun keeps its creator fees locked in place. Call it stubbornness or smart business—either way, it creates a fascinating tension in the meme coin ecosystem. One platform bets on creators, the other on traders. Someone's going to win big, and someone's going to be left holding empty bags.

Real money, real fast

That 200,000 reward isn't hypothetical—it's immediate, tangible, and designed to trigger exactly what it says: more trading. More volume. More of everything that makes meme coins both ridiculous and ridiculously profitable for those who time it right.

The cynical take

Because nothing says 'healthy financial ecosystem' like platforms fighting over who gets to skim fees from digital assets whose value proposition often boils down to dog puns and Twitter hype. Still, where there's friction, there's opportunity—and right now, Bonkbot just created a whole lot of friction.

Watch the volume spike. Watch the copycats emerge. And maybe, just maybe, watch how quickly financial incentives can reshape an entire corner of crypto—one trader reward at a time.

Rather than focusing on creators or deployers, the program ranks participants by realized profit and pays the top 50 traders each week directly on Axiom.

BonkFun Reworks Incentives to Reward Profitable Trading

The structure involves traders operating on supported USD1 pairs during the active reward window and finishing the week with positive realized PnL.

The size of the prize pool, combined with the explicit focus on trading skill rather than token creation, signals a clear shift in priorities.

BonkFun described the launch as its first concrete step toward “putting trenchers first,” a phrase that has increasingly defined its recent messaging.

BonkFun COO Solport Tom framed the MOVE as part of a broader reset. He said the team had spent months reworking its systems to address what it saw as structural problems, particularly around creator fees.

Ok, it’s time to officially step back into the trenches. We’ve been working fucking hard these past few months on how to be competitive and how to achieve results again.

Last week, we changed our system to fix Core issues with creator fees. This week, we’ve officially teamed up… https://t.co/bpnQ7kAG5S

Tom noted that the partnership with Axiom and the weekly rewards are meant to make BonkFun competitive again after a period where incentives drifted away from active traders.

User reactions show that framing, with some welcoming the return of a leaderboard that makes performance visible and others joking about returning to near-round-the-clock trading.

Just last week, BonkFun announced “BONK Classic” launches with zero creator fees and a reduced 0.30% swap fee, most of which is routed back into liquidity.

@bonkfun is rolling out 2 options on meme coin launch incentives: BONK Classic with zero creator fees and BONKERS with USD-1 only creator rewards, as competition with @Pumpfun intensifies#Solana #BONK #memecoinhttps://t.co/3dB688Usxa

BonkFun kept an alternative option through its “BONKERS” launches, where creator fees can be higher but swap fees are reduced, giving communities a choice between trader-first and creator-first economics.

Divergence in Strategy: BonkFun Courts Traders as Pump.fun Doubles Down on Creators

This trader-centric turn stands in contrast to Pump.fun, which continues to emphasize creator economics even as it introduces new features.

Earlier in January, Pump.fun overhauled its creator fee system, allowing fees to be split across multiple wallets and adjusting how they scale with market capitalization.

@Pump.fun introduces creator fee sharing to fix incentive issues for teams and curb risky, low-effort coin launches.https://t.co/Jrd1XOUZWu

While the team acknowledged that past incentives skewed too heavily toward low-risk coin creation, it has stopped short of removing creator fees altogether.

The divergence is visible in the data, as over the past 24 hours, Pump.fun saw more than 24,500 tokens created, compared with about 3,290 on BonkFun.

Pump.fun also led in volume, active addresses, and fee generation by a wide margin.

Yet BonkFun’s changes suggest it is less focused on raw issuance numbers and more on re-attracting experienced traders through lower friction and direct rewards.

Taken together, the developments point to a subtle but deliberate shift in the meme coin launchpad landscape.

BonkFun is betting that rewarding traders and reducing creator extraction will rebuild engagement from the trading side.

Pump.fun is maintaining its creator-driven model while layering in funding, social features, and structural tweaks.

The competition has not turned overt, but the incentives on each platform are moving in different directions, reshaping the playfield without openly declaring a fight.