Original author: Nico

Original translation: TechFlow

I have been in the trenches for quite some time and on Crypto Twitter (CT) a lot of people are declaring they are “dead”.

While trading Meme coins is not generating nearly the same volume as it was a few months ago, $TRUMP certainly marks a local high in Meme coin mindshare, trading volume, and liquidity appeal.

However, back then $SOL had reached $290, BTC was over $100k, and the bull run was in full swing. Since then, BTC has fallen back to the $74-88k range, and SOL has hit a local low of $95. However, SOL has now risen to over $140 (46% in just 15 days), and BTC has also risen back to over $90k, so we need to reassess the current situation.

Despite the low SOL price, and the general bearishness and boredom in the market, the data paints a different picture, let’s look at the data so far in April:

@pumpdotfun has generated about $650 million to date, and has seen daily trading volumes of $1 million to $2.7 million in April, with averages in the higher range of about $1.5 million to $2 million.

As SOL prices moved higher and TRUMP coin-related trading volume declined, trading volume began to pick up significantly in April. With the launch of PumpSwap and the nearly instant migration, the dynamics around the migration event smoothed the trading experience. This can be seen in the increase in total weekly trading volume.

So far, 9.7 million tokens have been created, with 20,000 to 40,000 tokens coming online every day in April, and 100 to 350 tokens "graduating" every day (a graduation rate of 0.4% to 0.8%).

The decreasing trend in graduation rates over time correlates with a decrease in users and trading volume, suggesting that there is a higher proportion of player-to-player (PVP) trading in trenches as small groups bundle supply to sell to each other when new listings are launched, and choose to exit early when they cannot attract additional liquidity to bond tokens.

Active Users

At its peak between December 2024 and February 2025, PumpFunMeme Coin had between 200,000 and 400,000 users transacting daily. Since then, the number of users has trended downward, remaining below 200,000 for the past two months.

Currently, there are about 150,000 daily active wallets, which are relatively evenly distributed between existing/reused and new wallets. It is important to consider that most traders trade on multiple wallets and change their active wallet at least occasionally.

Trading robot statistics

As we all know, most Meme Coin trading activity happens on the top five terminals, such as @AxiomExchange ,

@bullx_io , @tradewithPhoton , @gmgnai and @TrojanOnSolana .

These numbers are roughly consistent with what we’ve observed, totaling around 100,000+ users and over $100M in daily transaction volume.

Platform asset management scale and handling fees

There is likely over $200 million worth of SOL circulating in the Meme Coin market on these and other platforms. In the next post, I will assess the total value of all liquidity pools and tokens.

PumpSwap

PumpSwap has a daily trading volume of $300-480 million, accounting for 9-19% of Solana decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume. Since all new PumpFun tokens are issued and traded on PumpSwap, this means that tokens issued before PumpSwap still have a large amount of trading going through Raydium/Meteora.

PumpSwap is a very smart move by the PumpFun team by charging a 0.25% fee, of which 0.020% goes to liquidity providers (LPs) and 0.05% belongs to the protocol.

In the first month since its launch, PumpSwap has generated approximately $25 million in total fees ($100,000 to $240,000 per day), of which LPs earned approximately $20 million and the remaining $5 million belonged to the protocol.

As PumpSwap steadily grows its market share, I expect this number to increase as we see more people choosing to trade new tokens over old ones.

Prioritizing trading for new coins fits with my thesis about how the meme coin space will continue to evolve. There is no doubt that the meme coin trenches have become tougher recently, as the remaining active participants are hardened veterans who have persevered through the difficult times of lower SOL prices and reduced trading volume and users.

The meme coin space is dependent on attracting new liquidity in the form of new users, which initially comes from concessions from more serious crypto investors/industry players seeking faster gains than their losing altcoins.

As the entire sector grows, retail players are also beginning to wade into this deep-water trench.

Memecoins remain the preferred vehicle for speculation, with Solana acting as the housekeeper of this casino. These coins are more attractive to new traders due to their ease of understanding and low barriers to entry, coupled with their highly asymmetric upside potential. There is something new happening every day, and everything can be tokenized: people, content, events, memes, etc., so the content is almost endless.

People are tired of DeFi coins that require fine-grained management and often require a deep understanding of protocol design and dynamics. Outside of meme coins, the few projects I’m willing to bet on are Hyperliquid and its ecosystem, and Fartcoin, which is getting attention because “hot air rises.”

Do you think the trenches are gone? The work is not done, it has just begun.