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Pump.fun Is Earning Millions From Memecoins, but 81% of Talos’s Sample Fell at Least 90% From Their Peaks

Pump.fun's reported revenue and Talos's 81% memecoin drawdown statistic measure different things. Here is what each figure covers, where it is limited, and how to read it.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read

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Pump.fun’s reported protocol revenue and Talos’s finding that 81% of its sampled memecoins fell at least 90% from their all-time highs (ATH) are both real, but they measure different things. The revenue figures track fees generated by trading activity on the platform over short, dated windows. The 81% figure describes a specific sample of 151 tokens that Talos could price on centralized exchanges. Neither figure tells you what a given coin you might buy will do next, and the platform earning fees does not mean the coin you hold is recovering.

What the 81% figure actually measures

The statistic comes from “The Death and Life of the Average Memecoin,” a Talos report published October 6, 2026. Talos reports that 81% of its 151-token return-comparison sample fell at least 90% from ATH. Only five of those 151 tokens (3.3%) later regained their high. A separate survival analysis in the same report used 150 tokens.

Two limits matter before you repeat the number:

  • It is not a census of Pump.fun launches. Talos required each token to have at least one centralized-exchange price. Tokens that never reached a major exchange are excluded, and most launchpad tokens never do.
  • Talos says this selection likely overstates how long a typical launchpad coin survives. Coins that got exchange listings are, on average, the ones that attracted more trading and more attention, so the sample leans toward relatively successful assets.

The fair reading is narrower than the headline: among memecoins that Talos could price on exchanges, most fell at least 90% from their peak. That is a claim about a filtered group, not about every token minted on the platform.

Why the report uses two drawdown thresholds

Readers will see two numbers in the same report, and they should not be merged. The 81% statistic uses a drawdown of 90% or more from ATH. Talos’s survival model defines “collapse” as a 95% drawdown. A 95% threshold is stricter, so it captures fewer tokens as collapsed and produces longer lifespans. Talos notes that the threshold it chose affects the estimated lifespan.

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ATH is also only identifiable in hindsight. A coin’s peak is known only after the price has fallen, so any comparison against ATH is structurally unfavorable to the token. That is one reason the report presents its figures as a model rather than a forecast.

How fast memecoins peak and fade

The survival analysis measures three intervals: first exchange trade to ATH, then ATH to a 95% decline, using a Kaplan–Meier estimator. Talos reports these medians and quartiles:

  • Time from first trade to ATH: median 17.2 days. A quarter of tokens reached their peak within 1.6 days.
  • Time from ATH to a 95% decline: median 370 days.

Talos’s author, Victor Ramirez, Senior Data Scientist, summarized the pattern this way: “Memecoins peak fast and die slowly.” Treat these medians as a description of the sampled tokens, not a timetable for a coin launched today.

Where Pump.fun’s revenue comes from

Pump.fun earns fees on trades. Creating a coin carries no platform fee. Graduating a token to PumpSwap costs 0.015 SOL. Trades can incur protocol, creator, and liquidity-pool (LP) fees, and the rate depends on whether the token trades on the bonding curve or on PumpSwap, the trading pair, and, in canonical pools, a market-cap tier. Some coins can use holder rewards in place of creator fees under conditions the fee page describes; those conditions are not reproduced here, so check the page if your coin uses them.

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For SOL- or USDC-paired tokens on the bonding curve, Pump.fun’s published schedule (last updated October 8, 2026) is:

Fee Rate Who it goes to
Protocol fee 0.95% Pump.fun
Creator fee 0.30% The token’s creator
Total 1.25% Sum of the two above

This is one venue and one schedule. PumpSwap fees vary, and the page’s rate for them is not reproduced here. Do not apply the 1.25% figure to every trade.

How to read the reported revenue figures

CryptoSlate, citing DefiLlama, reported about $18.6 million in protocol revenue for the seven days through October 7, 2026, and about $60.7 million over 30 days in an October 8, 2026 article. Both are dated snapshots of a live dashboard, so:

  • Do not present either number as a permanent weekly or monthly run rate.
  • Do not multiply the seven-day figure to estimate a yearly total.
  • Protocol revenue is not total fees paid by users, not money distributed to token holders, and not profit after costs.
  • These are not audited figures; they are third-party aggregations of platform data.

Where the money goes: PUMP buybacks and burns

Pump.fun says half of every dollar the platform earns is used to buy PUMP on the open market and burn it. The same page warns that custom pairs currently cause its fee dashboard to report revenue and buyback amounts incorrectly. Until that caveat is resolved, treat the dashboard’s live totals as provisional rather than reconciled accounting.

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Why platform revenue does not tell you a coin’s outcome

Pump.fun can earn fees whenever people trade, including when they rotate among tokens that are falling. The platform’s income depends on activity volume, while your position depends on one token’s price path. Those can diverge sharply.

The drawdown arithmetic makes the gap concrete. If a token falls 90%, it is worth 10% of its peak, so it must rise 900% (a tenfold gain) just to return to that high. If it falls 95%, it must rise 2,000% (twentyfold) to recover. Fee income collected on the platform does not change that math for any individual holder.

A checklist for reading headlines like this

  • Identify the sample. Is it all launches, or tokens with exchange prices, a fixed date range, or a specific chain?
  • Check the threshold. Is the drop 90%, 95%, or “crashed,” and is it measured from ATH?
  • Check the revenue window. Is it a single week, a 30-day snapshot, or a lifetime total, and which source reported it?
  • Separate fees paid, protocol revenue, creator fees, LP fees, holder rewards, and buybacks, since each goes to a different party.
  • Ask whether the claim is about the platform or about a specific coin. Platform activity alone does not establish a coin’s recovery.

Revenue, buybacks, and drawdown statistics are useful for understanding how this market works. They are not a basis for expecting a particular memecoin to recover.

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