Pump.fun moves to tap USDC liquidity from May 21

Pump.fun will onboard USDC trading pairs, starting with the bonding curves. The stablecoin aims to bring more liquidity and ensure more predictable pricing. 

Pump.fun’s move will shift SOL’s economy by phasing out the token in its meme trades. The platform will enable direct USDC pairing with new tokens, breaking from its previous reliance on SOL. 

Pump.fun announced it will add three token launch instructions, relevant for its V2 launchpad. Before May 21, Pump.fun warned about fake USDC pairs or over-hyped memes claiming a USDC launch.

Previously, Pump.fun also earned its fees in SOL and often had to deposit and trade the earnings through centralized exchanges. The periodic sales of SOL also put pressure on the asset, and were points of fee extraction criticisms directed at Pump.fun. Recently, Pump.fun liquidated another $14.76M in SOL through Kraken. 

Will Pump.fun lead to lowered demand for SOL?

Since its launch, Pump.fun has become one of the main venues for locking SOL. Since January 2024, Pump.fun has locked up an estimated 5.07M SOL, valued at $430M. 

SOL remains stagnant at $84.45 and has proven to be a relatively reliable asset for liquidity pools. However, USDC pools are often chosen after tokens graduate. In addition to a more intuitive price in USDC, liquidity pools may become a source of yield and attract stablecoin holders to provide liquidity. 

Some of the SOL locked in legacy pairs and older mints will remain in use, announced the Pump.fun team. Initially, the platform will use Solana-based USDC, which has a supply of $8 to $10B. In the past week, Circle minted another $2B in USDC, adding to the overall ecosystem liquidity.

USDC raises may cause a shift in Pump.fun token launches. So far, most Pump.fun tokens in their bonding curves end up with limited liquidity, or crash due to rug pulls. 

Is Pump.fun still relevant? 

Pump.fun still achieves $4M to $6M in weekly fees, using the proceeds to buy back PUMP tokens. The token has not broken out despite the buybacks, sitting around $0.0016. 

The platform still produces up to 30K new meme tokens daily, with 60K to 75K active addresses. Pump.fun remains one of the leading revenue producers on Solana. As Cryptopolitan reported, revenues allowed the platform to perform its recent record burn. 

Pump.fun is also a gauge of general crypto sentiment. In the past months, interest shifted from memes to perpetual futures trading and real-world assets. Despite this, the Pump.fun trenches still produce new assets and active trading pairs. 

As of May 2026, Solana memes are down to $3.7B in total value, led by PENGU and other older meme tokens. 

Solana aims to position itself as a chain for finance and more serious projects. Recently, the President of the Solana Foundation Lily Liu commented that meme coins do not define Solana and were just a spontaneous stress test for scaling.