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Pump.fun locks creator fees after “vamping” drains trust on Solana, industry reaction snowballs

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Pump.fun limits fee wallet edits as revenue and volume fall 

Pump.fun now lets creators change fee wallets only once after launch, moving to curb “vamping” on Solana as platform revenue falls and industry figures call for coordinated reform.

Summary

  • Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen announced a protocol update on March 24 that limits token creators to one post-launch change of their fee recipient wallet.
  • The move came in direct response to widespread “vamping” — a practice where creators redirected fees to their own wallets after tokens gained traction, undercutting buyers.
  • The update drew over 396,000 views on X and sparked a public industry call to action from prominent Solana figures to collectively eliminate the behavior.

Pump.fun, the dominant Solana (SOL)-based memecoin launchpad, announced a significant protocol change on March 24 that caps creator fee modifications to a single post-launch edit — a direct response to rampant fee manipulation that has eroded user trust across the platform. The update was announced by co-founder Alon Cohen, known on X as @a1lon9, in a thread that has since accumulated over 396,200 views, 2,600 likes, and 479 retweets.

Pump.fun reacts to curb ‘vamping’

The problem, as Cohen explained it, had been structural. Every token deployed on pump.fun carries an assigned Coin Admin who controls the creator fee setup — who receives the fees, how they are distributed, and in what proportions. Until now, those Coin Admins faced no limits on how many times they could alter those settings. “Coin Admins had free reign to change fee recipients and distribution as much as they desire, which ultimately led to manipulation,” Cohen wrote. The pattern was predictable: a creator would deploy a token with fees directed toward a third-party wallet to build community trust, allow the token to gain traction and generate meaningful fee revenue, then quietly redirect those fees back to themselves. “People realize, get frustrated, the coin loses traction and narrative is ruined,” Cohen added.

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The fix is relatively simple in mechanism but significant in impact. Under the new rules, every token launches with standard creator fees by default, and the creator is granted exactly one opportunity to redirect those fees to a different wallet. After that single reassignment, the configuration becomes permanent and cannot be altered. “The result: if the creator redirects fees to another wallet, those settings are locked. If they don’t redirect fees, their one chance to do so can be used later,” Cohen said. All existing coins with active fee distributions have had their settings locked retroactively under the update.

The announcement triggered a wave of responses from across the Solana ecosystem, with one post in particular hitting 215,300 views within hours. Tom, a well-known Solana trader who goes by @SolportTom on X, directly called out major trading platforms to join the effort. “We can all agree that vamps suck ass. Need to work together to solve it,” he wrote, tagging @a1lon9, @AxiomExchange, @TradingTerminal, and others. His argument cut against short-term financial incentive: “Yes there’ll be less money in fees but a better space = this will last longer.”

The response illustrated a broader sentiment that has been building on pump.fun for months. The platform, which allows virtually anyone to create and trade memecoins on Solana in seconds, has faced recurring criticism over how its fee structure rewards deployers at the expense of traders. In January, pump.fun overhauled its creator-fee model after acknowledging that its Dynamic Fees V1 system had inadvertently incentivized coin creation over actual trading activity — the lifeblood of the platform.

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The update arrives at a difficult moment for the platform commercially. Despite pump.fun expanding beyond memecoins in March with support for assets including WBTC, USDC, and Ethereum via Wormhole — and surpassing 1.5 million app downloads — its fee revenue and monthly trading volume remain well below 2025 levels. At its January 2025 peak, the platform generated $15.38 million in a single day in protocol fees; that figure has fallen sharply since. Cohen himself acknowledged the limits of the current fix. “It’s important to note that this is one small step towards overcoming a much larger problem,” he wrote, thanking “hundreds of traders who have given myself or pump.fun affiliates meaningful feedback over recent months.”

Solana (SOL) is currently trading at $92.17, up 3.29% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto.news data.

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Crypto World

Texas Court Dismisses Crypto Dev Lawsuit Seeking Clarity

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Texas Court Dismisses Crypto Dev Lawsuit Seeking Clarity

A Texas court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by crypto developer Michael Lewellen, seeking a declaratory judgment that his software, Pharos, which facilitates donations to charitable crowdfunding campaigns, won’t be prosecuted for violating money-transmission laws. 

Chief US District Judge Reed O’Connor dismissed the case on Wednesday, finding that Lewellen had failed to demonstrate a credible threat of imminent prosecution. 

“Disappointed to see the court dismiss my suit today,” said Lewellen on X on Wednesday. 

In its dismissal, the court also cited a Department of Justice memo stating that it will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services or offline wallets for the acts of their end users or for unwitting violations of regulations.

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“A non-binding DoJ memo is no substitute for real legal certainty,” added Lewellen.

Crypto software developers are increasingly seeking legal protections to shield themselves from criminal liability over the software they create.

Other crypto software developers prosecuted 

Lewellen, a fellow at crypto advocacy group Coin Center, which backed the suit, argued in his legal complaint last January that developers of software similar to his product, such as those behind Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet, have faced prosecution under these laws.

Source: Michael Lewellen

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm was convicted last year on charges of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The co-founders of privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet were found guilty on the same charge — both cases cited by Lewellen as evidence of a real legal threat to developers like himself.

However, Judge O’Connor argued that the “core conduct of those cases is money laundering.” 

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“By contrast, the core conduct here would be running a business. And Lewellen disclaims any knowing transmission of criminal funds, which is central to the prosecutions he invokes,” Judge O’Connor wrote.

Case dismissed for now but it might not be over  

Lewellen said his lawyers are exploring all options for a path forward. 

Judge O’Connor dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning Lewellen could pursue the same action again with certain corrections or modifications.

Related: SEC sends proposed crypto interpretation to White House for review

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Peter Van Valkenburgh, the executive director at Coin Center, said the memo cited by Judge O’Connor “has not provided meaningful protection to developers, given the outcomes in the Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet cases.”

Both Valkenburgh and Lewellen have now called for Congress to pass the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act of 2026.

Introduced by Senator Cynthia Lummis in January, the legislation aims to clarify that developers and providers of non-custodial software who do not control user funds are not subject to money transmitter laws.

Source: Peter Van Valkenburgh

“So while I hope the court is right that non-custodial software developers are not at real risk, the Blanche memo is not enough to secure their rights. It is a vague enforcement signal, not a durable limit on government power,” Valkenburgh added.

“Worse, the court has now used that vague signal as a reason not to provide actual judicial clarity on the scope of developer liability. Instead of a clear rule, developers get a revocable memo and a court telling them not to worry.” 

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