Next year, can Pump.fun tell a new story

Original title: Pump's Year Ahead: Reflections on Reaction, Creator Economics, and the Search for Direction

Original by: @simononchain, encrypted KOL

Original language: Deep tide TechFlow

The following are taken from Delphi's forthcoming Application Foresight Report 2026, focusing on Pump(.) fun - This is one of our most interesting consumer applications next year。

Much has changed since our initial Pump report (before its financing). Many of the developments that we have predicted have been validated, but there are also areas where expectations have not been met, which is disappointing to users and investors. However, the core challenges facing Pump remain。

To achieve the ambitious vision of Pump, the team needs to find a balance between the short-term profit-for-profit nature of the encryption industry and its long-term vision of the platform. It is worth noting that once the project introduces a token, its operating environment changes; the token itself becomes a stand-alone product, inherently reversible and continuously influences user expectations, and Pump is no exception。

Since the completion of the financing, the Pump team has been investing more in encrypted raw media, but developments in this area have not been as successful as we had hoped, at least not at this point in time。

Pump has not yet succeeded in attracting core creators outside the encrypted ecosystem, and the CCM meta, which emerged on the Pump platform, is just a flash. The most striking moment came from the Bagwork campaign, which demonstrated not only the potential of creators to drive coins, but also the structural problems that hindered the development of the model。

The outbreak of this phenomenon was led by a group of young people who, with the support of Pump, partially completed a series of events that provoked agitation: the seizure of Bradley Martyn ' s hat, the break-in of the Dodgers, the storming of the Knicks field, and even the tattooing of Pumpfun and Bagwork。

The rise of @onlybagwork is almost in sync with Pump.fun's hotspot in mid-September. At that time, the full-assessed valuation of US$PUMP (FDV) reached approximately US$ 8.5 billion, while Bagwork's market value had also exceeded US$ 50 million。

Since then, however, no creator's token has been able to approach this organic energy or reach a similar valuation peak。

The events at the Knicks stadium took place more recently, after an initial boom, and today Bagwork has a market value of just over $2 million。

Bagwork is one of the few cases in the Pump stream media experiment that really works as expected. The Bagwork team earned more than 2300 SOL creators (approximately US$ 300,000 at current prices) through transaction fees of $BAGWORK。

It is worth noting that none of this requires the team to sell their share. The virus-like events, which directly translate into attention, trade volumes and fees revenue, have created the case of Pump, so far the closest to the effect of the coin of the real creator。

However, apart from Bagwork, Pump is still struggling to realize its vision of streaming media. The creator's token has not kept its value. This phenomenon can be traced to a fundamental problem: tokens are themselves part of the product。

At present, the economic rationale for possessing or supporting a certain anchor currency remains unclear. The early success of Bagwork quickly faded, and since then each of the main anchor coins has not received similar attention and has eventually tended to be zero。

THE SHORT-TERM BENEFITS ARE AVAILABLE TO CREATORS THROUGH THE CCM COST STRUCTURE, BUT THE REPUTATIONAL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH CRASHING COINS MAKE THE MODEL LESS ATTRACTIVE TO LARGER, MORE MATURE CREATORS WHO COULD HAVE HELPED THE PLATFORM ATTRACT A WIDER AUDIENCE. FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF TRADERS, THESE COINS REMAIN A ZERO-SUM PLAYING ENVIRONMENT, NOT A REAL COMMUNITY。

It's the most important problem that Pump needs to solve in 2026。

At present, the team has not made a meaningful attempt at deeper incentives for creators, nor has air-drop distribution been addressed. Apart from the informal support provided during the Bagwork boom, Pump did not take any coordinated measures, such as directed airdrops, creator incentives or other incentives, that could have been used to initiate early activities, create more PvE-type incentives and provide a testing space for creators without immediately destroying their community ecology。

The good news is, this gives Pump tremendous flexibility。

The unused Community & Ecosystem Foundations are still an important leverage that teams can leverage when models mature. If Pump can design a sustainable coin-incentive structure for creators, it will open up an entirely new economic category for creators who wish to realize and expand their audience using encryption mechanisms。

Although this potential gain is considerable, until then the flow of media will continue to manifest itself as a series of short-lived hot cycles rather than a persistent and replicable vertical area。

WITH REGARD TO TOKENS, THE MAIN CATALYST THAT PUSHED THE US$PUMP FROM ABOUT 0.025 TO 0.085 WAS THE TEAM ' S DECISION TO SPEND 100 PER CENT OF NET REVENUE ON BUY-BACKS。

Pump moved from the original plan to spend about a quarter of its revenue on buy-backs to an almost entirely Hyperliquid-style buy-back model. This shift took place after the market made it clear that a partial buy-back model would not be accepted. This change ignited one of the strongest currency rebounds this year in the market for scarce and challenging capital。

In terms of the ratio of repurchases to market value, there are currently no major currency exchange multipliers。

On the basis of current data, Pump ' s annualized income is $422 million and its market value is $1.84 billion, which means that the market value/income ratio (MC/Rev) is 4.36 times the annualized return rate is about 12.8 per cent. This level is significantly lower than other large market value tokens, including around 8.01 times MC/Rev and about 3.34 per cent return for Hyperliquid。

Even so, the market remains sceptical about Pump ' s long-term business prospects。

Market concerns may include the ability of teams to produce meaningful products on a sustainable basis; the impact on markets of future unlocking of about 40 per cent of the coin supply, where it has not yet been unlocked; and uncertainty about the final distribution of airdrops and creators ' incentives. In addition, the contraction of Meme currency activity in the entire encrypted market, the decline in terminal activity and the sustainability of the Pump income base are questionable。

Despite these concerns, Pump continues to dominate the Meme currency distribution platform, earning (and buying back) about $1 million a day even in the current extremely difficult market environment。

Pump's daily Launchpad income dropped significantly by nearly 85 per cent from its peak of nearly $14 million at the beginning of the year and is currently only about $2 million. However, rivals pose a threat to Pump ' s position only in a short period of time and fail to bring about substantive challenges. This is consistent with our initial report ' s predictions of the short Bonk and Raydium challenge phases: even with the contraction of cyclical trade volumes, Pump retains its structural advantage and dominates industry activities。

The acquisition of Padre supported the view that Pump intended to expand beyond Solana ' s multi-chain ecology and to achieve support for BNB ecological assets through the front end of Padre. This is also in line with our earlier prediction that Pump would eventually acquire a terminal or terminal-related asset to enhance user access and integrate more user travel。

In addition to these moves, the team has recently maintained a low-key strategy. An investor teleconference was currently planned, but had not been held at the time of writing, and therefore more details might subsequently be disclosed。

The leadership has also expressed interest in a broader category of ICM (initial community fund-raising), although we do not see this as a central area for Pump ' s current brand positioning or product advantage. Pump initially tried the Belive model, but did not get real market attention. And MetaDAO has become the leader of the "Quality Founder + Community" finance。

Moreover, the culture and structure of ICM does not seem to fit well with Pump ' s brand positioning. Pump ' s brand core revolves around the meme culture of speculation, speed and creators rather than long-term governance or a system based on Futarchy. If Pump is to succeed in the ICM area, they need to favour a more governance-oriented structure and attract non-encrypted field teams who wish to operate on the chain. However, this is not entirely consistent with the needs and positioning of Pump's current users and creators. Although, theoretically, ICM may have some potential benefits if the team can actually act, we think it is more like a secondary or optional direction than a natural extension of the current wheel effect of Pump in 2026。

Looking forward to 2026, Pump ' s main problems focused on the following aspects: the eventual establishment of an incentive-compatible producer token model, the substantive expansion of the multi-chain market through Padre, how to manage the risk of a currency unlocking and loss of income visibility, and the choice of the vertical field of the product as the main trigger. At present, the Pump strategy appears to be spread across multiple directions, including stream media, ICM and mobile。

At some point in the future, teams may need to focus explicitly on a core breakthrough. For most of 2025, this breakthrough appeared to be in the media, but it is no longer clear。

The bigger question is whether Pump can also attract larger non-encrypted creators. This may require redesigning the Flying Wheel mechanism for creators ' coins to provide stronger, longer-term incentives to support viral transmission beyond the encrypted user community. Pump has the basic conditions for achieving this goal. The Bagwork boom in 2025 briefly demonstrated the potential for this model to succeed, when Pump seemed to be close to bridging the divide。

In addition, Pump still has extensive space to expand its product packages. One strategic direction that the team should carefully assess is to enter iGaming or the vertical areas associated with casinos. Using models similar to Kick or Stark, it is natural for Pump 's speculative-driven user groups. This direction will be in deep synergy with its strategic objectives of Meme currency and flow media, and the profitability potential in this area has been validated。

The net lottery income of Shuffle and the distribution of weekly lottery tickets demonstrate the great potential of successful implementation in this area。

Pump's mobile application is another unexploited advantage. A deeper expansion of the mobile end would expand access to users, make products more accessible to mainstream users and provide greater realization for creators. Combined with iGaming, this will not only significantly expand the potential audience of Pump, but also strengthen the existing success elements of the Platform。

Despite the uncertainties, Pump remains one of the most resilient consumer categories in the current cycle, and remains dominant even in the face of changes in overall market patterns. Substantial progress in any key direction could trigger a major shift in market sentiment and help Pump achieve a breakthrough in attracting a broader group of non-encrypted primary users。

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