Next year, will Pump.fun still be able to tell a new story?

Original Article Title: Pump's Year Ahead: Reflections on Resilience, Creator Economics, and the Search for Direction

Original Article Author: @simononchain, Crypto KOL

Original Article Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

The following content is excerpted from Delphi's upcoming "2026 App Outlook Report," focusing on Pump(.)fun— one of the consumer apps we are most interested in next year.

Since we published our initial Pump report (pre-funding), many things have changed. Many of the dynamics we predicted have been validated, but there are also areas where expectations have not been met, leaving users and investors disappointed. However, Pump's core challenges remain.

To achieve Pump's grand vision, the team needs to find a balance between the short-term profit-driven nature of the crypto industry and its long-term platform vision. It is worth noting that once a project launches a token, the operational environment shifts; the token itself becomes an independent product with inherent reflexivity and continues to influence user expectations, and Pump is no exception.

Since completing the funding, the Pump team has been increasingly investing in native crypto streaming, but the development in this area has not been as smooth as we expected, at least not yet at the desired level.

Pump has not successfully attracted core creators from outside the crypto ecosystem, and the rise of CCM Metaverse on the Pump platform has been short-lived. The most notable moment came from the "Bagwork" event, which not only demonstrated the potential of creator-driven tokens but also revealed structural issues hindering the development of this model.

This phenomenon was led by a group of teenagers who, with partial support from Pump, carried out a series of controversial events: stealing Bradley Martyn's hat, storming the Dodgers game venue, rushing onto the Knicks court, and even getting Pumpfun and Bagwork tattoos.

The rise of @onlybagwork was nearly perfectly synchronized with Pump.fun's peak hype in mid-September. At that time, $PUMP's fully diluted valuation (FDV) reached around $8.5 billion, and Bagwork's market cap also briefly surpassed $50 million.

However, since then, no creator token has been able to come close to such organic potential or reach a similar peak valuation.

The events at the Knicks arena happened more recently, long after the initial hype, and now Bagwork's market cap is only slightly above $2 million.

Bagwork is one of the few cases in the Pump streaming experiment that truly ran as expected. The Bagwork team earned over 2300 SOL in creator revenue through $BAGWORK's transaction fees (equivalent to around $300,000 at current prices).

It's worth noting that all of this was achieved without the team selling their holdings. The viral event directly converted into attention, trading volume, and fee revenue, creating the closest example Pump has had to a true creator token flywheel effect to date.

However, aside from Bagwork, Pump continues to struggle to realize its streaming vision. Creator tokens have consistently failed to hold their value. This can be traced back to a fundamental issue: the token is part of the product itself.

Currently, the economic rationale for owning or supporting a streamer token remains unclear. Bagwork's early success quickly faded, and since then, every major streamer token has failed to garner similar attention, ultimately dwindling to near zero.

Creators can earn short-term gains through CCM's fee structure, but the reputational risks associated with rug-pull tokens make this model unattractive to bigger names and more established creators who could have helped the platform reach a wider audience. From a trader's perspective, these tokens still exist in a zero-sum game environment rather than a true community.

This is the most critical issue Pump needs to address as it steps into 2026.

Currently, the team has yet to make meaningful attempts at a deeper creator incentive mechanism, and airdrop distribution remains untouched. Apart from informal support provided during the Bagwork craze, Pump has not taken any coordinated measures such as targeted airdrops, creator rewards, or other incentive mechanisms that could have been used to kickstart early activity, create more PvE (player versus environment) incentives, and provide a testing ground for creators without immediately disrupting their community ecosystem.

The good news is that this grants Pump significant flexibility.

The untapped "Community & Ecosystem Initiatives" fund remains a key lever the team can leverage as the model matures. If Pump can design a sustainable creator token incentive structure, it will open up a whole new economic category for creators looking to leverage cryptographic mechanisms for monetization and audience expansion.

Despite the significant potential upside, streaming will continue to perform as a series of transient hype cycles rather than a persistent and replicable vertical field.

On the token front, a key catalyst driving $PUMP from around 0.025 to 0.085 was the team's decision to allocate 100% of net revenue to buybacks.

Pump initially planned to allocate around a quarter of revenue to buybacks but shifted to a buyback model heavily inspired by Hyperliquid. This shift was made after the market clearly signaled that a partial buyback model would not be well-received. This change ignited one of the strongest large-cap token rebounds this year in a liquidity-scarce and challenging altcoin market.

From a buyback-to-market cap ratio perspective, currently, no major token has a lower trading multiple.

Based on current data, Pump has an annualized revenue of $4.22 billion, a market cap of $18.4 billion, implying a market cap/revenue ratio (MC/Rev) of 4.36x and an annual buyback yield of approximately 12.8%. This level is significantly lower than other large-cap tokens, including Hyperliquid's approximately 8.01x MC/Rev and 3.34% yield.

Nevertheless, the market remains skeptical of Pump's long-term business prospects.

Market concerns may include: the team's ability to continually roll out meaningful products; the future impact of upcoming token supply unlocks, with around 40% of the supply still locked; and the uncertainty surrounding the final distribution of airdrops and creator incentive allocations. Additionally, doubts persist about the overall sustainability of the Meme coin activity in the crypto market, the reduction in end-user activity, and the sustainability of Pump's revenue base.

Despite these concerns, Pump continues to dominate in the Meme coin issuance platform space, earning (and buying back) approximately $1 million daily even in the current extremely challenging market environment.

The daily Launchpad revenue of Pump, which neared a peak of around $14 million at the beginning of the year, has significantly dropped by nearly 85% to approximately $2 million. However, competitors only briefly posed a threat to Pump's position and failed to bring a substantial challenge. This aligns with our initial prediction in the early reports regarding the brief challenge stages from Bonk and Raydium: even amidst a contraction in periodic trading volume, Pump has maintained its structural advantage, holding the dominant share of industry activity.

The acquisition of Padre has supported such a view: Pump is intentionally expanding beyond Solana into a multi-chain ecosystem and has added support for BNB ecosystem assets through the Padre frontend. This also aligns with our earlier prediction that Pump would eventually acquire an endpoint or endpoint-related asset to strengthen user acquisition channels and integrate more user journeys.

In addition to these actions, the team has recently maintained a low-key strategy. There are plans for an investor call, but as of the time of writing, it has not yet taken place, so there may be more detailed information to be disclosed later.

The leadership team has also expressed interest in a broader Initial Community Offering (ICO) category, although we believe this is not a core area of Pump's current brand positioning or product advantage. Pump initially experimented with the Believe model but failed to gain practical market attention. MetaDAO has now become a leader in the "high-quality founder + community" funding space.

Furthermore, the culture and structure of ICOs seem somewhat incongruent with Pump's brand positioning. Pump's brand core revolves around speculation, speed, and Meme culture for creators, rather than long-term governance or systems based on Futarchy. If Pump wants to succeed in the ICO space, they would need to lean more towards governance-focused structures and attract non-crypto teams looking to operate on-chain. However, this does not fully align with the current needs and positioning of Pump's users and creators. While theoretically, if the team were to take practical action, ICOs could bring some potential benefits, we believe this is more of a secondary or optional direction rather than a natural extension of Pump's existing flywheel effect in 2026.

Looking ahead to 2026, Pump faces key challenges in whether they can ultimately establish a creator token model that is incentive compatible, if they can achieve substantial expansion into multi-chain markets through Padre, how to manage the risk of token unlocks and declining revenue visibility, and which product vertical to focus on as their main thrust. Currently, Pump's strategy appears to be scattered across multiple directions, including streaming, ICOs, and mobile.

At some point in the future, the team may need to specifically focus on a core breakthrough. For much of 2025, this breakthrough seemed to be streaming, but that is no longer clear.

A bigger question is whether Pump can still attract larger non-crypto-native creators. This may require a redesign of the creator token flywheel mechanism, providing a stronger, longer-term incentive to support viral propagation beyond the crypto-native user base. Pump has the fundamental conditions to achieve this goal. The 2025 Bagwork craze briefly demonstrated the potential success of this pattern, with Pump seemingly on the verge of bridging the gap.

Furthermore, Pump still has ample room to expand its product suite. One strategic direction the team should seriously consider is entering into iGaming or casino-related verticals. Adopting a model similar to Kick or Stake aligns naturally with Pump's speculation-driven user base. This direction will deeply synergize with its meme coin and streaming strategic objectives, and the profit potential in this sector has already been validated.

Shuffle's net gambling revenue and weekly lottery distribution demonstrate the enormous potential of this sector when successfully executed.

Pump's mobile application is another advantage that has not been fully leveraged. Further expanding into the mobile space can broaden user acquisition channels, make the product more accessible to mainstream users, and provide more monetization scenarios for creators. If combined with iGaming, this can not only significantly expand Pump's potential audience but also strengthen the platform's existing successful elements.

Despite the uncertainty, Pump remains one of the most resilient consumer applications in this cycle, maintaining its leadership position even as the market landscape shifts. Substantial progress in any key direction could trigger a significant shift in market sentiment and help Pump achieve a breakthrough, attracting a broader non-crypto-native user base.

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