Pumpfun founder Alon Cohen has made his first public statement in 65 days. Cohen announced that major changes to the platform’s incentive structure and creator compensation system are on the way in 2026.
Following the announcement, PUMP, the native token of the pump.fun ecosystem, quickly gained over 10% in value.
Cohen reminded that the purpose of the Dynamic Fees V1 mechanism, which was launched a few months ago, is to incentivize project tokens with strong teams. He stated that thanks to this model, many content creators who had no prior contact with cryptocurrencies have started issuing tokens and streaming on the platform, adding that this “streaming” focused era has created one of the strongest on-chain activity environments of 2025 and more than doubled transaction volumes.
However, according to Cohen, this structure was not sustainable in the long run and exposed some critical problems on the platform. While acknowledging that content creator fees offered a strong incentive mechanism for project tokens with professional teams, Cohen argued that it did not significantly change the behavior of the average memecoin creator. On the contrary, he said that this model steered users towards low-risk token creation activities while relatively downplaying the high-risk trading activities that are the backbone of the platform.
Cohen stated that Pumpfun’s core mission is to create a healthy market environment where traders provide liquidity, generate volume, and take risks, and pointed out that the current creator fee structure can disrupt this balance. He also noted that while creator fees are theoretically a powerful tool for increasing the “investment value” of projects, they have significant shortcomings in terms of user experience (UX); users often encounter trust-based, inefficient, and complex processes.
The founder, while avoiding details, said that “big changes are on the way.” Cohen stated that the new era will adopt a market-based approach, where traders will decide which trends warrant content creator fees and how those fees will be used.
*This is not investment advice.