Memecoin platform Pump.fun brings livestream feature back to 5% of users

Alon Cohen, co-founder of the Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, is set to bring back live streaming on the platform — five months after suspending the feature after several incidents involving harmful content. 

Posting on X on April 4, Cohen said the feature has returned with “industry standard moderation systems in place and transparent guidelines.” He said it had been rolled out to just 5% of users. 

Pump.fun’s website describes the purpose of its new live-streaming moderation policy as being “to cultivate a social environment on pump fun that preserves creativity and freedom of expression and encourages meaningful engagement amongst users, free of illegal, harmful, and negative interactions.”

Breaches of the moderation policy could see creators having their livestreams and Pump.fun accounts terminated. 

The policy prohibits certain types of content, including violence, animal abuse, pornography and youth endangerment. However, it also creates ambiguity by claiming that “pump fun does not intend to universally define what content is ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate.’” 

“There is an implicit assumption that some content — perhaps much content — generally defined as NSFW will in fact appear on pump fun,” Pump.fun’s moderation policy states. 

The platform added it reserves the right to “unilaterally determine the appropriateness of content where necessary and to moderate it accordingly.”

Live-streaming return comes as memecoin market crumbles

Pump.fun removed its live-streaming feature last November after it became awash with extreme content as memecoin creators turned to increasingly shocking tactics to promote their tokens. 

Some users were allegedly threatening violence or self-harm if a token didn’t reach a price goal.

The platform said its unprecedented growth had put a strain on its moderators, and that it would pause the live-streaming functionality indefinitely to ensure the safety of its users “until the moderation infrastructure is ready to deal with the heightened levels of activity.”

At the time, Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of algorithmic trading firm Trading Strategy, said that if Pump.fun continued to allow live-streaming without appropriate moderation, it would quickly be shut down once a mainstream audience became aware of what was going on.

“I advocate for freedom of speech, but these streams are causing practical issues where people are breaking the law in live broadcasts. This will trigger a shutdown when the mainstream media catches a wind on this,” Ohtamaa said.

Pump.fun’s decision to reintroduce its live-streaming feature comes as interest in memecoins has been down significantly following a series of high-profile rug pulls such as Libra (LIBRA) and Melania Meme (MELANIA). That’s coupled with the poor price performance of tokens like Trump (TRUMP) — which, according to CoinGecko, is now down over 90% from its January highs.

Related: Libra founder: Memecoin critics only ‘bitch’ when left out of insider deals

Data from Dune Analytics showed in March that the graduation rate for tokens launched on Pump.fun — that is, the percentage of tokens that achieve a large enough market cap to become tradable on a regular decentralized exchange — had fallen to under 1%, down from highs of around 1.67%. 

Combined with a sharp drop in the number of tokens being launched on the platform, this has seen the total number of tokens graduating from highs of around 5,400 per week in January to under 1,500 in March.

The number of tokens launched on the Solana network has also fallen dramatically overall. Only 31,651 launched on April 5, according to Solscan, less than one-third of the 95,578 created at the peak of the memecoin frenzy on Jan. 26.

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