PumpSwap, the trading arm of the Pump ecosystem, is suddenly putting up eye-popping numbers as Solana’s memecoin market heats up again.
The spike comes amid the broader “memecoin comeback” trade that has been building since the turn of the year, particularly on Solana. Traders have rotated into high-beta corners of the market as bitcoin holds above key levels and liquidity improves after the holidays, lifting a basket of meme names across chains.
Data tracked by DeFiLlama shows that the Pump DEX ecosystem produced $1.28 billion in volume over the past 24 hours, pushing the 7-day volume to $6.15 billion and the 30-day volume to $19.69 billion. Cumulative volume is now nearly $176.8 billion, a reminder of how quickly retail flows return when memes catch a bid.
A snapshot from January 5 shows how dominant PumpSwap has become in its own ecosystem: About $1.21 billion of daily volume came from PumpSwap, compared to $63.7 million from pump.fun’s legacy route.
PumpSwap is Pump’s built-in decentralized exchange on Solana where newly launched tokens can be traded once they “upgrade” from Pump.fun. Pump.fun is a Solana memecoin launchpad that lets anyone create a token in minutes, usually with a simple bond-curve-style sale that helps jump-start early liquidity.
Japan-focused and anime-based tokens seemed to be the flavor of new token issuances in Asian afternoon hours on Tuesday, though those themes can quickly change based on recent narratives or the demographics of users who use the platform the most at any given time.
But there is a catch. Despite the record trading, fee generation is not exploding in the same way. As of January 5, fees were about $2.98 million, with about $1.21 million marked as protocol revenue and about $881,700 to holders.
Much trading in memecoin is quick in-and-out, often in low-fee pools.
On top of that, competition between Solana venues tends to compress fees as platforms vie to be the default route for swaps.
PumpSwap’s rise is another signal that the “fun” corner of the market is back – and when memes run, they drag the rest of the Solana activity with them.
Whether the volume lasts (and turns into meaningful earnings) will depend on how long traders keep playing and whether this turns into more than a week of meme season noise.
