pump.fun is a Solana launchpad built around a bonding curve. Instead of a creator supplying liquidity up front, the token starts trading immediately against a formula, and the price rises as people buy and falls as they sell.
How a bonding curve works
A bonding curve is a pricing function rather than a market. There is no order book and no counterparty — you buy from the curve itself, and the price you pay is determined entirely by how much of the supply has already been bought. Early buyers pay less by construction, and every purchase raises the price for the next one.
This removes the hardest part of launching a token, which is bootstrapping liquidity. It also means the launch requires no capital from the creator at all.
Graduation
When enough has been bought that the curve reaches a set market cap threshold, the token graduates: the accumulated SOL is used to open a real automated market maker pool, and the token trades on the open market from then on. The liquidity from the curve is committed to that pool rather than returned to anyone.
Most tokens never graduate. The curve makes launching nearly free, so the volume of launches is enormous and the proportion that reach the threshold is small.
King of the hill
Tokens that cross a market cap threshold get promoted to the top of the site for as long as they hold the position. It is a visibility mechanism, not a quality one — it says a token has momentum right now, which is different from saying it will keep it.
What it means if you're launching
The bonding curve model trades control for speed. You do not choose the opening price, you do not set the liquidity depth, and you cannot decide the token's supply — the platform fixes all of it. In exchange the launch takes seconds and costs almost nothing.
Creating the token yourself and opening your own pool is the opposite trade: more decisions, more cost, more control over all of them.