Pump.fun’s SOL sell-offs weigh on Solana as memecoin trade fades

Pump.fun transferred another 81,712 SOL, worth roughly $6.15 million, to crypto exchange Kraken on July 18, 2026, according to on-chain analyst EmberCN. On its own, the move is just another wallet transfer. But in the context of slowing memecoin activity and weakening Solana network revenue, it offers another glimpse into how one of crypto’s biggest success stories is changing.

Amidst the memecoin trend, Pump.fun emerged as one of the most popular apps on Solana, turning over millions in fees as users created and traded tokens. As trading opportunity slows down, however, the application continues to convert part of its revenue into cash through transfers to Kraken.

As estimated by EmberCN, Pump.fun has reportedly sold approximately 4.81 million SOL tokens in the period between January 2024 and July 18, 2026. This translates to sales of around $812 million, with each token being sold at an average cost of $168.70. Together with this milestone, Pump.fun is now reputed to be among the top players in the field of long-term SOL selling in the current walking stick.

What was sold, and how much has left

The latest transaction is part of an emerging pattern, not an isolated incident. According to its X account, Pump.fun launched in January 2024, charging a trading fee of 1% for the swap of tokens. This business strategy has proved to be highly successful in the heyday of the memecoin boom.

According to CoinMarketCap, Pump.fun has generated more than $1 billion in cumulative revenue since its launch, including approximately $664 million in 2025 alone. The platform also produced about $124.7 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2026, underscoring the success of its 1% fee-based business model despite a broader cooling of the memecoin market.

Why do the numbers look different?

When examined closely, the figure put out by EmberCN is much lower than that provided by DefiLlama. This difference is due to the fact that they measure different aspects.

• EmberCN’s figure ($812 million as of July 18, 2026) is simply the estimated number of SOL coins (around 4.81 million) that Pump.fun is believed to have sent to Kraken and supposedly sold.
• DefiLlama’s figures (as of July 18, 2026) indicate a cumulative fee of around $1.86 billion, while cumulative revenue from the protocol stands at over $1.2 billion, representing all fees earned from Pump.fun‘s products.

In other terms, both sets of figures show different information. EmberCN sees the figures of actual sales of SOL, while DefiLlama evaluates the total fee income and revenue of the protocol.

The drag on Solana

Pump.fun‘s slowdown is also becoming visible at the network level.

According to an article published on June 16, 2026, by The Block, the platform suffered 80% decline in activity over the past three months. Average revenue per day in June dropped to around $800,000 compared to approximately $4.8 million six months before. Furthermore, only 0.26% of the newly issued tokens managed to reach the market capitalization sufficient to reach other exchanges.

The downturn is about more than merely a reduced interest in memecoins. Traders have been switching to perpetual futures protocols such as Hyperliquid, leading to a reduced amount of on-chain activity that had once made Solana one of the most active networks in crypto. Whenever there is one application that leads to a significant portion of blockchain activity, a slowdown in its usage will also affect the economics of the blockchain.

A business past its peak

As per The Block, the price of PUMP has reduced by nearly 40% over past six months and DefiLlama has suggested that as of July 18, 2026, the token is priced at nearly $0.0016, considerably lesser than its peak value of $0.0088. The total market cap of the token is around $655 million.

The difference is quite striking when we consider how quickly the interest of investors in the project increased. According to CoinMarketCap, Pump.fun managed to raise $600 million in an ICO that was finished in just 12 minutes.

The overall concept of Pump.fun has come under fire as well. According to STORM Partners, Pump.fun is the center of the memecoin boom of 2024-2025, with estimates suggesting the platform is responsible for releasing approximately 11 million tokens by mid-2025. However, in the end, just under 1% of released tokens actually make it to exchanges, such as Raydium. During spikes of activity, this constant stream of new tokens translates to significant profits. However, now that the trading activity has eased up, the same model has become reliant on decreasing activity levels.

What to watch next

The question that follows is whether or not Pump.fun is going to continue selling SOL at this rate even as protocol revenue slows down and whether Solana’s network activity starts picking up steady pace.

According to the wallet tracking by EmberCN, as far as July 18, 2026, Pump.fun still sends SOL to Kraken from time to time. Such transfers will surely continue being an essential indicator, but they are just part of the total situation. It is DefiLlama’s revenue stats and Solana’s network fee metrics that will tell us better whether user activity stops slowing down and whether the memecoin boom that helped the blockchain achieve astonishing growth is still continuing to fade away.

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