Pump.fun, a prominent memecoin trading platform, has admitted its fee model failed to create sustainable incentives.
Pump.fun co-founder Alon told users on Jan. 9 that the platform’s creator-fee design failed to produce durable trading incentives. Pump.fun now plans a market-led overhaul that lets traders decide which tokens qualify for fee rewards.
Creator fees need change.
When Dynamic Fees V1 was introduced a few months ago, the goal was to help create more success cases in our ecosystem by giving top project founders and teams a strong incentive to launch their token on pump fun and drive it to success.
Only a week… https://t.co/yiu9DjsCqR pic.twitter.com/TZHTPAKnfw
— alon (@a1lon9) January 9, 2026
Why Pump.fun Revamps Incentives
Alon tied the pivot to Pump.fun’s Dynamic Fees V1 experiment. He said it pulled in first-time creators fast, then warped incentives toward low-risk issuance rather than risk-taking flow.
The mechanism’s early phase still matters for tape readers. Pump.fun explicitly linked it to a surge in “streaming” launches and a step-change in activity. However, it also blamed it on a weaker market structure, as issuance outpaced sustained secondary liquidity.
Pump.fun has already shipped a set of plumbing changes intended to reduce off-platform trust assumptions about fee splits. Creators can share fees across up to 10 wallets, transfer coin ownership, and revoke update authority.
The counter-trade showed up instantly on X. Developer Unihax0r called the update “nothing.” He argued that the platform had just renamed “taxes” to “creator fees,” and pushed for a heavier redistribution of value back to users.
All this message to announce: nothing
The trenches need their Hyperliquid moment. We need a launchpad as a public good, where 99% of the value is redistributed to users
We bullied to hell all developers on previous chain for having 5/5 taxes on memes coins and we got absolutely… https://t.co/ytHd5nJMOq
— Unihαx0r~ 信心 (@0xUnihax0r) January 10, 2026
How Crypto Market Reacts to Pump.fun’s Pivot
Just last week, Pump.fun saw a daily trading volume of $2.03 billion, marking a new all-time high. The platform also collected $3.87 million in fees, with a revenue of $1.53 million over the past day.
PUMP traded at $0.002403 (+9.4% in 24h) on CoinMarketCap amid the recent news, with $251.2 million in reported 24-hour volume and $851.4 million in market cap.
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