Pump.fun 2026 Outlook: Where is the Breakthrough Path for the Meme King?

Original: Simon, Delphi Digital

Variation: Yuliya, PANews

In the upcoming “2026 Application Outlook” report from research firm Delphi Digital, Pump.fun is regarded as one of the most noteworthy consumer applications to watch in the coming year. The report notes that since Delphi Digital first published analysis prior to Pump’s funding, many predictions have come true, but the platform’s development in certain areas has fallen short of expectations, disappointing users and investors, with core challenges still present. To realize a grander vision, the Pump team must balance the inherent short-termism of the crypto world with the platform’s long-term ambitions. The report further emphasizes that once a project launches a token, its operational environment will change accordingly, as the token itself becomes an inherently reflexive product, continuously shaping user expectations—Pump is no exception.

The Dilemma of the Creator Economy and the Fleeting “Bagwork”

Since its funding, the Pump team has continued investing in the crypto-native live streaming sector, but this has not unfolded as Delphi Digital expected, at least not yet.

Pump has failed to attract influential creators from outside the crypto ecosystem, and the short-lived CCM (Creator Capital Market) model that briefly emerged on Pump has quickly faded. The most notable moment came with the rise of “Bagwork,” which highlighted the potential of creator-driven tokens but also exposed structural issues still hindering the model’s development.

This breakthrough was led by a group of teenagers and received some support from Pump. They orchestrated a series of viral stunts: stealing fitness influencer Bradley Martyn’s hat, rushing onto the field during a Dodgers game, storming the Knicks’ court, and even getting tattoos of Pump.fun and Bagwork.

The emergence of “Bagwork” coincided almost perfectly with Pump.fun’s peak in mid-September, when the fully diluted valuation (FDV) of the $PUMP token reached about $8.5 billion, and the Bagwork token $BAGWORK’s market cap briefly exceeded $50 million. Since then, no creator coin has come close to or replicated that level of organic growth or peak valuation. The stunt of storming the Knicks’ court happened long after the initial hype cycle had passed, and Bagwork’s current market cap is around $2 million.

Bagwork is one of the few cases in Pump’s live streaming experiments that truly operated as intended. The Bagwork team earned over 2,300 SOL in creator revenue from trading fees on $BAGWORK (roughly $300,000 at current prices). Note that all of this was generated without the team needing to sell any holdings. These viral stunts directly translated into attention, trading volume, and fees, creating the most realistic creator token flywheel effect seen in Pump so far.

However, apart from Bagwork, Pump has struggled to realize its ambitions in the live streaming sector. The value of creator tokens continues to decline, returning to the structural issue that the token itself is part of the product.

Structural Issues and the Road Ahead

Currently, the economic incentives for holding or supporting a streamer token remain unclear. Bagwork’s early success quickly faded, and subsequent mainstream streamer tokens have failed to gain similar traction, ultimately trending toward zero.

Creators can earn short-term income through CCM’s fee structure, but the reputation cost of associating with a continually devaluing token makes this model unattractive to more established influencers who can help attract a broader audience. From a trader’s perspective, these tokens still exist in a zero-sum environment rather than as genuine community assets.

This is the most critical issue Pump needs to address as it moves into 2026.

The team has yet to conduct meaningful experiments on deeper creator incentives, and the airdrop allocations remain unused. Aside from informal support during Bagwork’s rise, Pump has not attempted coordinated initiatives such as targeted airdrops, creator rewards, or other incentive mechanisms. These could be used to guide early activity, create more PvE (player versus environment) style incentives, and give creators room to experiment without immediately destroying their communities.

The good news is that this provides Pump with significant options. The unused “Community and Ecosystem Initiative” fund pool is an important lever the team can deploy when the model is ready. If Pump can design a sustainable incentive structure for creator tokens, it could unlock a new economic category for creators seeking to monetize and grow their audiences using crypto mechanisms. The potential upside is real, but until then, live streaming will continue as a series of short-lived hype cycles rather than a durable, repeatable business vertical.

Token Economics and Market Performance

The main catalyst for Pump’s $PUMP price rebounding from about $0.025 to $0.085 was the team’s decision to allocate 100% of net revenue to buybacks.

After the market clearly indicated that partial buyback strategies would not be rewarded, Pump shifted from initially planning to use about a quarter of revenue for buybacks to adopting a model very similar to Hyperliquid. In a low-liquidity, harsh altcoin environment, this shift helped ignite one of the strongest annual large-cap token rebounds.

Looking at the buyback-to-market cap ratio, no mainstream token currently trades at a cheaper multiple than $PUMP. Based on current data, Pump’s annualized revenue is approximately $422 million, with a market cap of $1.84 billion, giving a market cap/revenue (MC/Rev) ratio of 4.36x and an annualized buyback yield of about 12.8%. These levels are significantly lower than all other large-cap tokens, including Hyperliquid’s approximately 8.01x MC/Rev and about 3.34% yield.

Nevertheless, the market remains skeptical about Pump’s long-term business trajectory. Concerns may include: whether the team can continue to deliver meaningful products, the impact of future token unlocks (about 40% of supply still locked), and how the airdrop and creator incentive distributions will ultimately be implemented. Additionally, the overall contraction of memecoin activity and terminal activity, along with ongoing doubts about Pump’s revenue sustainability, exacerbate these concerns.

Despite these worries, Pump continues to dominate the memecoin launch platform space, and even in a very challenging market environment, it still earns (and repurchases) roughly $1 million daily. Its daily launch platform revenue has fallen from nearly $14 million per day at the start of the year to close to $2 million today—an 85% decline—yet competitors have not substantially shaken Pump’s position, aside from brief challenges. This aligns with Delphi Digital’s initial report, during the Bonk and Raydium challengers phase: even amid cyclical trading volume compression, Pump maintains a structural market share advantage.

Strategic Trends and Future Directions

The acquisition of Padre indicates Pump’s intention to go beyond Solana, reach multi-chain users, and has already supported BNB ecosystem assets through Padre’s frontend. This aligns with Delphi Digital’s earlier prediction that Pump would eventually acquire a terminal or related asset to strengthen its traffic entry point and integrate more user journeys. However, aside from these moves, the team remains low-profile. An investor call has been scheduled but has not yet taken place as of writing, so more concrete information may be forthcoming.

Pump’s leadership also expressed interest in the broader ICM (Internet Capital Market) category, but Delphi Digital does not see this as a core area, nor does it align with Pump’s current identity or product strengths. The initial attempt was by Believe, which failed to gain real traction, and MetaDAO has since become the dominant player in the “high-quality founders + community” funding space. ICM also differs culturally and structurally from Pump, which is built on speculation, speed, and creator meme culture rather than long-form governance or prophet governance systems.

To succeed in ICM, Pump would need to deeply explore governance-heavy structures and attract non-crypto teams seeking on-chain operations—areas where most of Pump’s current users or creators are not active. While there is theoretically room for growth if the team commits seriously, I believe this is a secondary or optional direction rather than a natural extension of Pump’s existing flywheel into 2026.

Looking ahead to 2026, the main questions revolve around whether Pump can ultimately create a consistent incentive model for creator tokens, whether it can meaningfully expand into multi-chain markets via Padre, how it will manage token unlocks and declining revenue visibility, and which product vertical it will choose as its most active entry point. Currently, its strategy appears dispersed across multiple layers—from live streaming to ICM to mobile. At some point, the team may need to identify a primary focus, and for most of 2025, that seemed to be live streaming. Now, that clarity has become less certain.

Potential Breakthrough: iGaming and Mobile

A bigger question is whether Pump can still attract larger non-crypto creators. This may require reshaping the creator token flywheel, introducing stronger, longer-term incentives to sustain viral growth outside the crypto-native community. The core elements are already in place. In 2025, Bagwork’s operation gave Delphi Digital a glimpse of what success might look like when this model crosses the threshold, with Pump appearing close to that point.

Pump also has significant room to expand its product suite. A strategic direction for the team to consider seriously is entering iGaming or casino-related verticals; a model similar to Kick/Stake, which aligns naturally with Pump’s speculative user base. This could create deep synergies with its memecoin and live streaming ambitions, and the profit potential of this category has already been demonstrated. Shuffle’s net gaming revenue and weekly lottery distributions show how big this opportunity can be when executed well.

Pump’s mobile app is another underutilized advantage. Deeper promotion on mobile could broaden traffic sources, make the product more accessible to mainstream users, and provide more monetization opportunities for creators. Combining this with iGaming could significantly expand Pump’s potential user base while reinforcing existing effective platform features.

Despite uncertainties, Pump remains one of the most resilient consumer applications in this cycle, maintaining dominance even amid broader macro shifts. Achieving substantive progress in any one direction could catalyze a meaningful market sentiment reset and prepare Pump for broader breakthroughs beyond the crypto-native sphere.