SecondLane lists $15M equity stake in memecoin protocol Pump.fun at $1.5B valuation

SecondLane has moved to acquire an equity stake in Pump.fun, a Solana-based meme coin ecosystem, at a fully diluted valuation of $1.5 billion. SecondLane listed the 1% equity stake for $15 million on a Telegram channel announcing its new offerings. 

Although Pump.fun has never launched a native token, it has continuously taken equity investments from investors, including Alliance DAO, Big Brain Holdings, and 6th Man Ventures. This latest move indicates Pump.fun’s rapid growth and potential to influence the crypto market.

The team behind Pump.fun has always teased about releasing a token soon. In October, they hinted at plans for a newly upgraded trading terminal “pump advance”. However, the Pump team never specified a timeline for developing the future token launch.

Pump.fun is among the highest in fee revenue earnings

Data from DefiLlama placed Pump.fun among the top ten highest-earning blockchain protocols. It ranked among giants, including Circle and Uniswap. From October to date, Pump.fun has generated around $86 million in fee revenue.

Pump.fun performance can be traced from a memecoin trading craze on its native Solana layer-1 blockchain. Cumulatively, Pump.fun has raised more than $225 million in fees, according to DefiLlama.

Due to venture capital funding and political speculation, memecoins have been getting attention lately. Data from CoinGecko indicates that memecoin currently has more than $122 billion market capitalization.

Pump.fun is attractive to users as it promises deals that resonate well with users. Currently, through their X account, they promise to allow users to launch a coin that can be traded for under $2 with a single click. It further states that its “For You algorithm uses your past actions on pump dot fun to curate a feed that changes in real-time.”

Memecoins are getting attention from both optimists and pessimists alike

Although popular, memecoins have received mixed feelings from crypto enthusiasts. Some known crypto influencers say that meme coins undermine crypto legitimacy in use cases as they remove speculation premiums from altcoins. 

However, others, including Jimmy Song, believe that memecoins don’t have much value to investors as they only represent the height of speculative gambling.