Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun is spinning up a new investment arm aimed at backing promising startups, in its first significant pivot away from its memecoin roots.
Pump.fun said on Monday it was launching Pump Fund alongside a $3 million hackathon, which would fund 12 projects with $250,000 each at a $10 million valuation.
It added that the investment arm would be “aligning itself with projects long-term,” which do not need to be crypto-related, and that it would provide mentorship from Pump.fun founders.
The project comes as trading volumes on the Pump.fun have fallen from highs in early 2025, which was spurred by a frenzy of memecoin trading at the time.
Pump.fun said its new investment arm would fund projects of “all maturities, verticals, and traction” with a focus on teams that are “shipping quickly [and] openly communicating their plans.”
“Aside from product/social traction, we’ll assess the long-term viability of the project,” it added.
The hackathon, which lasts for 30 days, sees participants create a token, share updates on their project and the market will act as the judge on whether the project is successful.
“Instead of having to please judges/VCs for money, tokenizing allows the market to become the judge,” Pump.fun said. “Your users are the ones that fund you by betting on you early.”
Demand for “good founders” is still incredibly high
Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen said on X that the number of trends in crypto over the past three years “shows that the demand for good founders by traders and long-term allocators continues to be incredibly high, no matter the market conditions.”
He added that projects have begun launching tokens as “users loved buying into fresh ideas they thought had a chance of becoming successful,” and there were millions of people who “could become potential users and investors.”
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“Instant liquidity meant that you can get funded too,” Cohen said, which he said led to artificial intelligence projects springing up in crypto that showed “builders and traders alike how big this opportunity — tokenizing early stage projects — could become.”
Pump.fun trading volumes sink from high
Trading volumes on Pump.fun have dropped since its peak across late 2024 and early 2025.
Pump.fun’s monthly trading volume hit an all-time high of $11.75 billion in January 2025, reaching the milestone just a year after its launch, according to Token Terminal.
Its monthly trading volume has steadily declined since, with the platform’s trading volumes in the month of December reaching $2.43 billion as speculative assets like memecoins became less desirable for traders amid a tumultuous year for the wider market.
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