Meme launchpads let anyone create a token in minutes. But launching a token and building a market that lasts are two different things.
ZeruAI analysed 3,374 token launches to understand what happens after launch. The data reveals patterns in early ownership, developer selling, and how quickly trading activity fades.
According to Solana Compass, around 1.4% of Pump.fun tokens graduate from the bonding curve to a decentralized exchange.
ZeruAI’s sample showed a similar result:
3,374 launches analysed
34 tokens graduated organically
1.01% graduation rate
Even graduation doesn’t guarantee lasting demand. Of the graduated
Pump.fun tokens tracked in the cited research, only 8.9% remained above their graduation price 24 hours later.
Early buyers can gain a significant advantage over people who arrive later.
In ZeruAI’s sample, 16.2% of launches had a bundle in the token-creation block. Bundles allow multiple wallets to buy in the same block, making it harder to determine whether those buyers are independent.
A separate investigation by Bubblemaps, reported by Cointelegraph, found that 23 wallets linked to the deployer of AVA acquired around 40% of its supply at launch.
A bundle alone doesn’t prove manipulation. But when ownership is concentrated from the start, later buyers may face a very different set of conditions.
In ZeruAI’s sample, 68.7% of developers began selling within five minutes of launch.
This can create a difficult situation for new buyers. While they’re still assessing a token, early holders may already be selling their positions. The impact depends on how much is sold and how much liquidity is available.
Developer selling doesn’t automatically indicate wrongdoing, but its timing and scale can help explain what happens to a token after launch.
A launch can attract plenty of attention without sustaining it.
Across 399 Clanker launches studied by ZeruAI:
7.5% recorded at least one transfer on day one.
Just 0.8% recorded a transfer on day 30.
Other attention-driven products have experienced sharp declines too. According to DeFiLlama data reported by Cointelegraph, Friend.tech’s daily fees fell by over 87% in five days, from August 21 to August 26, 2023.
These products operate differently, but the pattern is worth noting: strong initial activity doesn’t guarantee continued participation.
Trading volume and holder counts are often used to judge a token’s popularity. Both can be misleading without looking at the activity behind them.
Bitquery analysed the Solana DEX pools it indexed between August 24 and September 22, 2026. It classified $117.7 billion of $201.4 billion in volume, or 58.4%, as non-genuine under its tests.
About 95% of the flagged volume came from buys and sells of the same token in the same pool within a single transaction.
These findings apply to the pools Bitquery indexed, not all Solana DEX activity. Still, they show why headline volume alone is insufficient to establish genuine demand.
It’s useful to look at who is trading, how wallets are funded, how concentrated ownership is, and whether volume is supported by real liquidity.
Pump(dot)fun’s official fee documentation lists a 1.25% total fee on bonding-curve trades, including a 0.95% protocol fee. Fees on PumpSwap after graduation vary by market-cap tier.
A launchpad can collect fees while tokens are actively traded, even if individual tokens later lose their market and trading activity.
This highlights a distinction between the platform’s revenue from trading and the long-term performance of the tokens it launches.
The numbers point to three recurring problems: very few tokens graduate, early ownership can be concentrated, and developers often begin selling within minutes.
Launch counts and trading volume only tell part of the story. To understand how a token market really behaves, we need to look at who holds the supply, who is trading, and whether activity continues after launch.