TL;DR
- PumpFun will launch the CTO feature, allowing communities to claim trading fees from memecoins abandoned by their original creators.
- The current model, which gives 50% of fees to token developers, drew criticism from projects now run solely by their communities.
- With over $700 million in fees since March, PumpFun aims to hold off rival Solana launchpads with this revenue-sharing adjustment.
PumpFun, the Solana-based memecoin launch platform, is preparing a change to its revenue distribution model. Founder Alon Cohen announced that a new feature will soon go live, giving communities control over the fees generated by memecoins whose creators have walked away. The tool, known as CTO (Community Takeover), is designed to redirect the share of revenue that previously went to inactive developers to the groups keeping those tokens alive.
Since May 12, PumpFun has operated a system that gives 50% of trading fees to the creators of each token listed on its decentralized exchange, PumpSwap. However, the move sparked criticism from users and communities managing memecoins without any involvement from their original developers. It’s common for creators to dump their holdings early and abandon the project, leaving communities to handle promotion and maintenance on their own.
CTO feature for creator revenue sharing coming soon.
— alon (@a1lon9) May 16, 2025
PumpFun Moves to Stay Competitive
The CTO feature aims to address that imbalance. It will allow fees from the daily trading activity of an abandoned token to be redirected to the community keeping it running. In practice, this means that if a group of users keeps a project alive after its creator leaves, they’ll be able to claim the daily fees that would otherwise remain locked for an absent developer. The feature seeks to create fairer revenue distribution in a market where sudden exits are common and some memecoins manage to survive through collective effort.
PumpFun is rolling out this change to stay competitive within the Solana network. Launchpads like Believe and Let’s Bonk have started gaining traction, pushing the platform to adjust its economic model. Despite rising competition, PumpFun remains one of the most profitable DeFi apps in the current crypto market. Since March 2024, it has generated over $700 million in fees, according to data from DeFiLlama.
