Pump.fun Meme Coin Launchers Systematically Funded Sniper Wallets to Buy Their Own Coins, Impacting 15,000 Token Launches

According to a new report from Pine Analytics, token deployers on Pump.fun systematically funded sniper wallets to buy their own meme coins. This impacted over 15,000 token launches.

A new report from Pine Analytics has revealed that token deployers on Pump.fun are systematically funding sniper wallets to buy their own meme coins, impacting over 15,000 token launches on the platform.

These sniper wallets, which operate primarily during US trading hours, execute standardized, profitable strategies and have an extremely high success rate. Unrelated bot activity serves to obscure the behavior of these wallets, which can readily adapt to new countermeasures.

As one of the most popular meme coin launchpads on Solana, Pump.fun has remained a hot topic of discussion despite persistent controversies and other criticism.

However, Pine Analytics’ new report has uncovered a new controversy, discovering systematic market manipulation on the platform. These snipes include as much as 1.75% of all launch activity on Pump.fun.

“Our analysis reveals that this tactic is not rare or fringe — over the past month alone, more than 15,000 SOL in realized profit was extracted through this method, across 15,000+ launches involving 4,600+ sniper wallets and 10,400+ deployers. These wallets demonstrate unusually high success rates (87% of snipes were profitable), clean exits, and structured operational patterns,” it claimed.

Solana meme coin deployers on Pump.fun follow a consistent pattern. They fund one or more sniper wallets and grant them advance notice of upcoming token launches.

Those wallets purchase tokens in the very first block and then liquidate almost immediately—85% within five minutes and 90% in just one or two swap events.

Pump.fun meme coin developers exploit this tactic to create the appearance of immediate demand for their tokens. Retail investors, unaware of the prior sell‑off, often purchase these tokens after the snipe, giving developers an unfair advantage. This constitutes market manipulation and erodes trust in the platform.

Pine Analytics had to carefully calibrate its methods to identify genuine snipers. Apparently, 50% of meme coin launches on Pump.fun involve sniping, but most of this is probably bots using the “spray and pray” method.

However, by filtering out snipers with no direct links to developer wallets, the firm missed projects that covered their tracks through proxies and burners.

In other words, the meme coin community does not have adequate defenses against systematic abuse on Pump.fun. There are a few possible ways that the platform could flag repeat offenders and sketchy projects, but adaptive countermeasures could defeat them. This problem demands persistent and proactive action.

Unfortunately, it may be difficult to enact such policies. Meme coin sniping is so systematic on Pump.fun that it would only stop if the platform really wanted it to.

Analysts think that building an on-chain culture that rewards transparency over extraction is the best long-term solution. A shift like that would be truly seismic, and the meme coin sector might not survive it.