Pump.fun benefited from the enthusiasm for meme tokens in early 2026 after ending the week with record trading volumes. As the DEX established a leading position in Solana, this activity was based on pump swap trading.
Pump.fun achieved record weekly DEX trading volume in the first full week of 2026. In the past period, PumpSwap’s trading volume exceeded $6.6 billion, outpacing other Solana DEXs. Last week comes after a long period of expansion in DEX volumes.
The Pump.fun team is also working to revive the meme market and make speculative trading more attractive.
There are two wolves inside each of us.
I want a house in the suburbs, a stable job, and an 8% APY index fund.
Another wants to drive a super speculative meme asset to a dishonest valuation in hopes of impressing his internet friends with a lagged profit or loss.
The second wolf will win.
— Pump.fun (@Pumpfun) January 8, 2026
The recent resurgence and new emergence of some old memes shows that as long as the market shows signs of liquidity, the “gutter” is not giving up. Simply put, BonkFun has also expanded its activity, but for now, Pump.fun remains the leader in farm revenue generated from both new launches and DEX trading.
Pump.fun hits trading peak, but fees remain low
In the new year, fees generated from transactions and activities were $13 million per day, down slightly from September’s peak of $39 million in fees. Fee structure varies based on new minting activity, swaps, creator fees, and additional app usage fees.
Pump.fun has peaked in trading volume over the past week, but fees are still lower than the local peak in September. |Source: DeFi Llama
The meme model has also moved to a more short-term lifecycle and now includes content and creator tokens. The sudden increase in volume could also reflect whales or automated activity. Streaming and creator effects are also driving increased engagement. dad app.
New token creation has rebounded to more than 28,000 per day and has been trending upward over the past week. Pump.fun crossed a new milestone in early 2026, reaching over 15 million token launches during its lifetime. However, only 208 tokens have migrated to exchanges in the past day, and most of them are trading at very low valuations.
Despite Pump.fun’s success and recent recovery, the native PUMP token traded flat at $0.0021.
The Solana meme will reawaken in the first week of 2025.
The legacy Solana meme tokens reawakened in the first week of 2026, posting gains of ~63% in the case of White Whale.
Large traders returned to the selected meme and once again spread FARTCOIN and USELESS. Another source of growth was the Trump and Melania meme tokens that rallied around news of Donald Trump’s military operations in Venezuela.
Memes are turning into short-term plays, but whales are also choosing projects like PIPPIN as repeat pumps. Memes on other networks are also making a comeback, such as PEPE and FLOKI on Ethereum.
Unlike NFTs, meme tokens are not dismissed as a dead project. The token is being closely monitored for new liquidity inflows and whale-sized accumulations.
To date, TRUMP is the only company with a valuation above $1 billion. But the market is still reevaluating how to trade memes, regardless of belief or short-term buying and selling.