Pump.fun Live Feature Launched: A New Paradigm for the Creator Economy or a Repeat of Old Schemes?

Written by: San

Original Title: New CCM Paradigm? The Old Harvesting Routine Behind Pump.fun’s Livestream Facade

Recently, the launch of Pump.fun’s livestream feature has once again pushed the popularity of this once-thought-to-be-over largest meme launch platform to new heights.

Alongside this, the price of the $Pump token has also soared. The announcement of a buyback combined with the rollout of innovative features has caused the price of $PUMP to surge rapidly from around $0.003 at the end of August to the current $0.0085, a 283% increase in just half a month, with its market cap surpassing $3 billions.

On the other hand, since the livestream feature went live, Pump.fun creators have been earning over $2 millions in daily revenue shares, with a record-breaking $15.5 millions in creator income in a single week.

Many users in the market view the launch of Pump.fun’s livestream feature as a new paradigm for CCM (creators capital market), calling this update a breakthrough in technological innovation within the crypto space.

On the surface, it appears to be a win-win situation: the new feature brings about numerous retail investor wealth creation stories, with both token prices and platform revenues rising. Fans support their favorite streamers by investing rather than gifting, but behind all this seems to lie a more complex and unsettling reality.

Celebrity Token Cases

BUN COIN

BunnyFuFuu is a former professional League of Legends esports player who, even before engaging with Pump.Fun, already had over 210,000 followers on X and 1.5 million on Youtube thanks to his esports career.

On September 14, BunnyFuFuu launched his own token, BUN COIN, during a livestream, and continued to promote his token on X over the following two days. This relentless “building” helped BUN COIN stand out among the many livestream tokens.

BUN COIN’s initial market cap was only $300,000, raising $1.5 millions during the presale. Within 48 hours of listing, it reached a peak market cap of $10 millions, a rise of over 3000%. However, today the price of BUN COIN has plummeted to a current market cap of $1.6 millions, with a daily drop of over 50%.

Token CA: HQDTzNa4nQVetoG6aCbSLX9kcH7tSv2j2sTV67Etpump

KIND

The original intention of the KIND token is to “spread kindness.” The creator promotes it through charity-themed livestreams, claiming that for every $1 purchased, $0.1 will be donated to small streamers in need.

This positive narrative attracted widespread attention. Since its launch on September 7, KIND reached a peak market cap of $55 millions in the early hours today, with a 24-hour increase of over 20 times and nearly $32 millions in trading volume within 24 hours. However, its current market cap has also seen a significant correction to $18 millions.

Token CA: V5cCiSixPLAiEDX2zZquT5VuLm4prr5t35PWmjNpump

BAGWORK

Compared to BUN COIN’s celebrity endorsement and KIND’s positive narrative, BAGWORK’s story is more about “stunts.” Bagwork originates from a boxing term meaning professional training on a punching bag. Inspired by this, BAGWORK calls on everyone to fight for their crypto assets.

At the same time, BAGWORK is currently the most influential and widely spread livestream token on Pump.fun’s livestream section. Undoubtedly, the BAGWORK team knows how to put on a show.

On the first day of livestreaming, BAGWORK team members rushed into a stadium to livestream and were arrested during the broadcast; the next day, they stole a fitness influencer’s hat in his gym, were caught on the spot, and slapped; in the following days, another BAGWORK team member attempted to jump off the Santa Monica Pier but was stopped by police. The BAGWORK team promises to perform a new stunt every day for the next two weeks to promote the token and attract more attention.

This series of seemingly crazy actions did indeed push up the price of the BAGWORK token. On September 13, its market cap was only $3 millions, but after 48 hours of “crazy livestreaming,” the market cap once approached $100 millions, now falling back to $15 millions.

Token CA: 7Pnqg1S6MYrL6AP1ZXcToTHfdBbTB77ze6Y33qBBpump

What Has the Livestream Feature Brought to Pump.fun?

In the traditional internet livestreaming industry, streamers profit by playing games or showcasing talents to attract fans who tip them with gifts. For fans, gifting is purely a consumption behavior, not an investment expecting financial returns.

However, in Pump.fun’s livestreams, fans’ tips become token purchases. After the streamer puts on a sufficiently exciting “show” to attract more buyers, fans can cash out for profit and then look for the next streamer worth investing in. In this process, fans’ roles seem to shift to traditional MCN agencies, investing funds and resources in each streamer and profiting from the commercial value realized after the streamer goes viral.

More crucially, in this model, the best strategy for streamers to profit is often to sell tokens for cash after the price is pumped, making the relationship between fans and streamers very “twisted.” On one hand, fans want the streamer to put on a better show to attract more buyers; on the other, they want to dump their tokens before their “support” turns into a loss.

In fact, the three well-known token cases mentioned above are already among the best-performing livestream tokens. Most others quickly go to zero after the streamer’s popularity wanes or the stream ends. Does this script sound familiar? That’s right—the market inside Pump.fun before the livestream feature was launched was the same. According to a Solidus Labs analysis of 7 million Pump.fun tokens, nearly 99% of tokens ultimately go to zero. This ratio has not improved since the livestream feature went live, and successful celebrity cases remain statistical outliers.

So what has the livestream feature really brought to Pump.fun? For now, it seems to be just a change in the medium of dissemination.

Divergent Market Views

The market controversy surrounding Pump.fun’s livestream feature also reflects some issues.

Supporters focus mainly on technological innovation and creator empowerment. They believe this model eliminates the exploitation of traditional platform middlemen, allowing up-and-coming creators with potential to enjoy income opportunities almost equal to those of top Twitch creators from the very beginning.

Moreover, in today’s attention economy, the marketing power of livestream video far exceeds that of text media. Pump.fun itself is a product of the attention economy, and the livestream feature is merely an iteration of previous versions.

Critics, on the other hand, focus more on structural flaws and content risks. Judging by most token price trends, these livestream tokens almost only rise during the streamer’s broadcast and plummet after the stream ends. Many community users question their ability to create long-term value.

In terms of content regulation, although Pump.fun has already restricted some prohibited content, there is still a lot of bloody, violent, and pornographic livestream content on the platform, which pushes up token prices by satisfying users’ curiosity.

Rational Thinking Amidst the Bubble Boom

From an investment perspective, the launch of Pump.fun’s livestream feature has indeed created many profit opportunities. As long as the streamer you follow is “active” enough and you discover such a “hidden gem” earlier than others, it’s easy to make a profit.

But from another angle, when we strip away the glamorous facade of Web3 innovation and the creator economy, Pump.fun’s livestream model exposes a more fundamental problem: how to protect the interests of ordinary participants while incentivizing creators.

Current data shows that the livestream model is unsustainable: 99% of tokens go to zero, and over 99% of participants have already lost money and exited, while creators and the platform secure stable profits.

It’s hard to call such a model a healthy ecosystem. It’s more like a beautifully packaged wealth redistribution game, merely using the narrative of technological innovation to mask the essence of a traditional zero-sum game.

The real issue is not the innovative form of livestream token launches itself, but the fundamental flaws in the incentive mechanism. When creators’ earnings are completely decoupled from the community’s long-term interests, and the platform’s profits are built on the widespread losses of participants, this model is destined to be nothing more than a fleeting speculative frenzy.

We cannot know whether Pump.fun’s livestreams can sustain their current popularity and continue to produce “hit tokens,” but what we can confirm is that investing in these hit livestreams carries considerable risk. We hope all investors can DYOR and pay attention to risk control.