Original title: Meme Coin Factories: Uncovering Large-Scale Manipulations on pump.fun
Nicolas Szwajcok, Taro Tsuchiya, Enze Liu, Kyle Soska +2 · September 2026
Creating new cryptocurrencies once required complex technical work. Today, launchpads let anyone create a token with a few clicks for very little money. This has led to an explosion of meme coins, which are made for fun rather than new technology. However, dishonest actors exploit this ease. They fake market activity to trigger unsustainable price surges, tricking normal traders and cashing out for profit. To study this abuse, researchers collected data on all 15 million coins launched over the last two years on the platform pumpa rapid, artificial price increase followed by a crash..fun. They found that schemers use five main manipulation tactics, such as fake trading and coordinated dumping. Instead of using the normal site, these actors run fast, automated bots directly on the blockchain. The team also uncovered off-the-shelf software tools that let people with zero technical skills run these scams easily. Finally, the authors suggest protections for users, platforms, and regulators.
Imagine a farmers market where anyone can set up a stall and sell fruit. Some sellers secretly buy their own fruit to make it look popular, then sell it to passersby at a high price before the fake demand disappears. In this paper, meme coin launchpads work like that market: anyone creates a coin, manipulators use fake trades and other tricks to inflate its price, and unsuspecting buyers lose money when the price crashes.
New traders unknowingly buy coins that are artificially pumped, losing money to automated manipulators. These schemes are now accessible to anyone via third-party tools, making the crypto market riskier for everyone.
The study focuses solely on pump.fun, so findings may not generalize to other coin launchpads. The mitigations proposed are recommendations and have not been implemented or evaluated.
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Meme Coin Factories: Uncovering Large-Scale Manipulations on pump.fun — Nicolas Szwajcok, Taro Tsuchiya, Enze Liu et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.