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

Pump.fun now allows creators to change payment wallets only once after launch, moving to prevent “vamping” on Solana as the platform’s revenue declines and industry figures call for systematic changes.

Pump.fun, a leading memecoin launchpad based on Solana (SOL), announced a significant protocol change on March 24 that includes a change in creator penalties to a single post-launch settlement – ​​a direct response to the fee fraud that has eroded user trust across the board. The update was announced by co-founder Alon Cohen, known on X as @a1lon9, in a thread that has amassed more than 396,200 views, 2,600 likes, and 479 retweets.

Pump.fun reacts to prevent ‘vamping’

The problem, as Cohen explained, was structural. Every token included in pump.fun has an assigned token manager who controls the creator’s payment setup — who receives payments, how they are distributed, and at what rates. Until now, those Money Managers didn’t face limits on how many times they could change those settings. “Coin Admins had free reign to change the recipients and distribution of funds as they wanted, which ultimately led to fraud,” Cohen wrote. The pattern was predictable: a creator would use a token with payments directed to a third-party fund to build public trust, allow the token to gain momentum and bring in a profitable fee, and then quietly return those payments back to them. “People notice, they get frustrated, the coin loses momentum and the narrative gets ruined,” Cohen said.

The fix is ​​easy on the machine but has a big impact. Under the new rules, each token is initialized with regular creator payments by default, and the creator is given one chance to redirect those payments to a different fund. After one reassignment, the configuration is permanent and cannot be changed. “The result: if the creator redirects payments to another fund, those settings are locked. If they don’t redirect payments, their one chance to do so can be used later,” Cohen said. All existing coins with active cost distributions have their settings repeatedly disabled under the update.

The announcement prompted a wave of responses from across the Solana ecosystem, with one post reaching 215,300 views within hours. Tom, a well-known Solana trader who goes by @SolportTom on X, directly called the major trading platforms to join the effort. “We can all agree that vamps suck ass. We need to work together to solve it,” he wrote, tagging @a1lon9, @AxiomExchange, @TradingTerminal, and others. His argument cuts short-term fiscal stimulus: “Yes there will be less money in payments but a better environment = this will last longer.”

The response reflected the broad sentiment that has been growing at pump.fun for months. The platform, which allows almost anyone to create and trade memecoins on Solana in seconds, has faced repeated criticism over how its fee structure rewards senders at the expense of merchants. In January, pump.fun overhauled its creator fee model after admitting that its Dynamic Fees V1 system had indirectly encouraged coin creation in the real world of trading — the life of the platform.

The update comes at a difficult time 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 – revenue and monthly trading volume remain below 2025 levels. At its peak in January 2025, the platform generated $15.38 million in one day in protocol fees; that number has dropped significantly since then. Cohen himself acknowledged the limitations of the current arrangement. “It’s important to note that this is one small step to overcome a very large problem,” he wrote, thanking “the hundreds of retailers who have provided or are affiliated with pump.fun with meaningful feedback in recent months.”

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