Pump.fun co-founder outlines app charging near-0% Solana trading fees
Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen used a September 29 presentation to set out how the memecoin platform intends to win trading volume: by cutting costs until they stop mattering. According to Cryptobriefing, Cohen said the company’s mobile and social trading app targets approximately 0% fees on Solana trades, a figure that rounds to nothing, with crosschain trades priced at roughly 0.1%.
The ambition is distribution rather than exclusivity. Cohen said the app should help tokens minted on Pump.fun win more visibility, but he ruled out closing it to rivals, saying users ought to be able to pursue any opportunity onchain no matter which chain or launchpad produced the token. Prior reports have put Pump.fun’s fees as low as 0.05% in some settings, which suggests the near-zero target extends an existing trend rather than marking a sudden break.
Key facts
- Solana trades on the forthcoming app are targeted at approximately 0% in fees; crosschain trades at roughly 0.1%.
- Token creation stays free, excluding Solana’s standard network fees, and the bonding curve model that prices tokens upward as buyers accumulate remains in use.
- A creator fee-sharing system announced on January 9, 2026 lets token creators split fees across as many as 10 wallets.
- The callout rewards program had paid out $11 million in under six weeks as of late September 2026.
- Pump.fun launched on January 19, 2024, and its PUMP token ICO in July 2025 raised about $1.3 billion.
Traders, creators and the platform’s margin problem
The economics Cohen described pull in three directions at once. Traders get near-zero execution costs. Creators get a fee split that can be routed to up to 10 wallets, a structure introduced in the January 9, 2026 announcement and intended to make launching a project financially worthwhile for the people doing it rather than only for the platform. Pump.fun itself accepts thin margins and depends on transaction volume to make them add up.
That is a departure from how the platform made its name. After launching on January 19, 2024, Pump.fun became closely identified with the Solana memecoin boom by making token creation and trading almost frictionless. The result was a flood of launches, the great majority of which failed, alongside a small number that delivered large returns to early buyers. The PUMP token ICO in July 2025 raised approximately $1.3 billion, a sum that ranked the company among the most commercially successful crypto startups of that cycle.
Cohen’s refusal to gate other ecosystems is a deliberate contrast with competitors that run walled gardens favouring their own launches. An app that lets users trade anything on any chain may hold attention better than one that insists they stay inside a single platform’s mint list.
Why it matters
Fees are one of the few levers a launchpad can pull to keep traders from routing orders elsewhere, and pushing them toward zero shifts the contest to liquidity, speed and token supply. For creators, the fee split matters more than headline trading costs, because it determines whether launching through Pump.fun beats doing it independently. For rival launchpads, an open-access app is a harder competitor than a closed one: it can absorb their tokens’ trading volume instead of fighting it.
What to watch
The next signals are the app’s rollout and whether the approximately 0% Solana fee and 0.1% crosschain rate hold once real volume arrives, since near-zero pricing only works if the combined creator and callout payouts stay sustainable against transactions. Growth in the callout rewards figure, last reported at $11 million, will show whether that incentive spending is accelerating or levelling off.
Disclaimer: This article is for information only and is not investment, financial or trading advice. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile. Always do your own research.
Source: Crypto Briefing
