Pump.fun Graduation Rate: Only 0.63% of Tokens Survive

Pump.fun is a meat grinder:

Risk disclaimer: Meme coin and copy trading on Solana involve extreme financial risk. The research cited is descriptive of past data, not predictive of future outcomes. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. Only trade with funds you can afford to lose entirely.

655,770 tokens launched. Only 4,338 "graduated." (0.63%)

The craziest part? The best predictor of survival isn't hype, followers, or shillers — it's an on-chain signal you can spot during the launch.

Why Is Pump.fun's Graduation Rate Only 0.63% and What Separates Survivors?#

The pump.fun graduation rate is 0.63%. That number, from a peer-reviewed paper published in February 2026, deserves to sit at the top of every meme coin trader's mental model before they make any trade.

In a single month — September 2025 — 655,770 tokens were created on pump.fun by 243,123 distinct wallet addresses. Of those, only 4,338 graduated to open trading on PumpSwap. The other 651,432 tokens died on the bonding curve, taking their investors' money with them.

The study, Predicting the Success of New Crypto-Tokens: The Pump.fun Case (Marino, Naviglio, Tarantelli & Lillo — University of Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, University of Bologna, arXiv:2602.14860, February 2026), then asks the question nobody has formally answered before: what separates the 4,338 survivors from the 651,432 that didn't make it — and can you tell the difference while a token is still launching?

The answer is yes. And the signals are fully on-chain.

This article was last updated March 2, 2026 to reflect the publication of this research.

What Does Graduation Actually Mean on Pump.fun?#

Before explaining the predictors, it helps to understand what graduation is — because it's a harder bar than most traders realise.

Every token launched on pump.fun starts on a virtual bonding curve. This is not a real liquidity pool. It's a smart contract mechanism that determines price as a function of how much SOL has been committed. The price rises mechanically with every purchase. No SOL can be added or removed by liquidity providers — only the bonding curve mechanics govern pricing.

Graduation happens when the bonding curve accumulates approximately 85 SOL in real committed capital — corresponding to a market cap of roughly $69,000 at the time of the study. Once that threshold is crossed, the protocol automatically migrates the token to PumpSwap, a real constant-product AMM where open-market trading begins.

Graduation is therefore not a matter of opinion or listing criteria. It's a deterministic, on-chain, protocol-defined outcome. A token either raises 85 SOL on its bonding curve or it doesn't. There's no middle ground. This is what makes it such a clean measure of early market success — and why the researchers chose pump.fun as the study environment.

The implication for traders: the 99.37% of tokens that never graduate are, by definition, tokens where the market failed to sustain coordinated demand past a $69,000 threshold. That's not a high bar. Nearly every token that fails to clear it was never backed by genuine buying interest in the first place.

What Are the Four On-Chain Signals That Predict Pump.fun Graduation?#

The paper's central contribution is identifying four variables, measurable in real time during a token's launch, that significantly improve the ability to predict whether it will graduate. Crucially, all four are fully visible on-chain — no insider knowledge required.

Signal 1: How fast SOL accumulates (the strongest predictor)#

This is the single most predictive signal the researchers found, dominating all other variables across every stage of the bonding curve.

The insight is counterintuitive. You might assume that more trades = more demand = higher graduation probability. The research finds the opposite. Tokens where the same SOL level is reached through fewer, larger trades have systematically higher graduation probabilities than tokens where the same SOL level is reached through many small trades.

Fast accumulation through few trades signals concentrated, genuine conviction — real buyers committing meaningful capital. Slow accumulation through many trades signals scattered noise activity, bot churn, or shallow retail speculation that doesn't sustain momentum.

In practice: if a token reaches 20 SOL in 200 trades, it's a very different signal than a token reaching 20 SOL in 20 trades. Same bonding curve state. Completely different graduation odds.

Signal 2: Bot activity percentage (high bot % = lower graduation odds)#

The researchers classified each transaction as bot-generated or human-generated by checking whether it came through the official pump.fun interface or directly via smart contract (bypassing the frontend). Trades routed directly through the contract — skipping the website entirely — are flagged as bot-like.

Their finding: tokens with high bot-like activity show systematically lower graduation probabilities beyond the initial stages. High bot turnover does not translate into sustained capital commitment. Bots cycle in and out, generating activity without building the genuine accumulation that graduation requires.

This matters specifically for copy traders. A wallet with a strong recent win rate on pump.fun tokens may be achieving those wins partly because it's transacting on tokens with heavy bot activity — which look active and profitable during the bot churn phase but never graduate. Copying that wallet into those tokens gets you the bot-driven noise phase, not the sustained graduation phase.

Signal 3: Presence of historically successful traders (useful, but watch the timing)#

The researchers found that early participation by traders with a verifiable history of profitable token picks does improve graduation probability — but the effect is non-monotonic. These "smart money" wallets tend to enter early, accelerate initial discovery, and then exit. Their presence provides a positive signal in the early bonding curve phase, but their departure often precedes a slowdown in momentum.

The practical implication for copy traders: if you're tracking a historically successful wallet and copying its entries on pump.fun tokens, you're likely entering after the signal has already fired — and potentially in the window when that wallet is preparing to exit. The paper's data suggests smart money in this context functions as a leading indicator, not a persistent one.

Signal 4: Creator identity and track record#

The paper found that prolific creators — wallets that have previously launched multiple tokens — show identifiable behavioral patterns. Some creator track records are predictive of higher graduation rates; others consistently launch tokens that die.

This is fully verifiable on Solscan. Every token's creator address is public. If a creator has launched 50 tokens and 1 graduated, that's a meaningful data point. If a creator has launched 10 tokens and 4 graduated, that's a completely different risk profile.

Why Does a Pump-and-Dump Problem Occur at Graduation?#

The paper documents one more pattern that directly affects anyone trading near the graduation threshold: systematic pre-graduation selling by token creators.

The transition from virtual to real AMM creates a specific incentive for creators. During the virtual bonding curve phase, the creator's position increases in value as the token approaches graduation. At the moment of migration, the protocol creates a real liquidity pool — and creators who accumulated positions during the virtual phase can exit into that new liquidity.

The researchers found this pre-graduation liquidation to be systematic and widespread, not an occasional edge case. It means that the graduation event itself — which looks like a positive milestone on any chart — is frequently accompanied by creator exits that suppress post-graduation price. Traders who buy in at or just after graduation, expecting the momentum to continue, are often buying into the distribution phase of a creator who has been positioning since launch.

This is not detectable from price data alone. It requires examining creator wallet behaviour during the bonding curve phase against their activity at graduation — which is only visible through on-chain analysis.

What Does This Mean for Wallet Selection in Copy Trading?#

The research reframes a core assumption in copy trading: that following a wallet with a good recent track record is sufficient.

It isn't. The research shows that token outcomes on pump.fun are heavily shaped by structural signals during the launch phase — signals that most copy traders, and most copy trading platforms, never examine. A wallet may have excellent returns precisely because it consistently identifies tokens with the right structural profile early. Or it may have excellent recent returns from a run of luck in a favourable market condition that is now reversing.

The difference is only visible by analysing not just what a wallet traded, but what the tokens it traded looked like at the moment of entry — how fast the bonding curve was accumulating, what the bot activity ratio was, whether the creator had a track record, and whether smart money was present.

This is the gap between raw PnL and verified edge.

What most platforms show	What actually predicts future performance
Recent win rate	Win rate over statistically significant sample
Recent PnL	PnL on tokens with verified structural signals
Number of trades	Signal quality per trade
Leaderboard rank	Bot activity exposure in traded tokens
Screenshot of returns	On-chain verifiable transaction history

How Does Stratium Approach Pump.fun Graduation Risk?#

Stratium's strategy curation is built around exactly this distinction. The platform doesn't populate a leaderboard with every wallet that had a good month and let you pick. It curates a small number of verified strategy wallets whose complete on-chain history is auditable on Solscan — including the tokens they traded, the entry timing relative to bonding curve state, and the full record of losses as well as gains.

The curation process asks the questions the research validates: does this wallet's performance hold across a statistically significant number of trades, including periods of market stress? Do the tokens it traded show the structural signals associated with genuine graduation potential — fast accumulation, low bot ratios — or do the returns come from exploiting volatile bot-driven churn that won't repeat? Does the creator track record of the tokens traded indicate a pattern of genuine projects, or a pattern of short-lived launches?

Concretely: Stratium screens each strategy wallet's token history for bot activity ratio (tokens where more than 40% of early trades were contract-direct rather than frontend-routed are flagged), accumulation speed (trades on tokens that took more than 500 transactions to reach 10 SOL are flagged as high-noise-churn entries), and creator track record (creator wallets with a sub-5% historical graduation rate across their launches are flagged). Strategies with more than 20% of their trades in flagged tokens don't qualify — regardless of their headline returns.

A wallet that made 300% last month on pump.fun tokens with heavy bot activity and creator dumps might not be a strategy worth copying. A wallet that made 40% over 200 trades across tokens with clean structural profiles, verified on Solscan, with visible losses and a t-statistic that clears statistical significance — that's the signal the research is pointing to.

Here's how that compares to the major alternatives:

Platform	Bonding curve signal screening	On-chain PnL verification	Statistical significance filter	Non-custodial
Stratium	✅ Bot ratio, accumulation speed, creator track record	✅ Every trade on Solscan	✅ Required for curation	✅ Your wallet, your keys
GMGN	❌ None	❌ Raw data, no verification	❌ Win rate only	❌ Custodial deposit
Trojan	❌ None	❌ Speed data only	❌ No filter	❌ Custodial deposit
Axiom	❌ None	❌ No PnL transparency	❌ No filter	❌ Custodial deposit

The 0.63% graduation rate isn't an argument against trading on pump.fun. It's an argument for understanding the structural signals that separate the 0.63% from the 99.37% — and for following wallets that have demonstrated they can read those signals, not just wallets that happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Every strategy wallet on Stratium has its complete trade history available on Solscan, including every token traded and every entry price. The primary strategy wallet is auditable here: View strategy wallet on Solscan. Check the losses before you check the wins.

Browse live strategy performance at stratiumsol.com and start copying in 30 seconds via @stratiumsol_bot.

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About the author

Florian has been trading Solana-based strategies since 2022 with a focus on algorithmic and quantitative approaches. He is the founder of Stratium, a non-custodial copy trading platform built around on-chain verification. His primary strategy wallet (view on Solscan) has a publicly auditable track record updated in real-time, including all losing trades. He writes to help retail traders understand the difference between verified on-chain performance and unverified alpha. Follow him on X: @stratiumsol.

Related Reading#

• How Bots Steal From Solana Copy Traders — Bundle bots, sniper bots, and the imitation penalty explained
• Solana Meme Coin Manipulation: 82.8% of Winners Were Faked — Research across 34,988 tokens
• Is Copy Trading Profitable? — On-chain data from Stratium's live strategies
• How to Copy Trade on Solana — Step-by-step guide for getting started
• Risk Management for Memecoin Trading — How to protect capital in a high-churn market
• Top Solana Wallets to Copy Trade — The 6 metrics that separate real edge from luck

Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the pump.fun graduation rate?#

The pump.fun graduation rate is approximately 0.63%, based on data from September 2025. Researchers at the University of Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, and University of Bologna found that 4,338 of 655,770 tokens launched during that month graduated to open trading on PumpSwap. Graduation requires accumulating approximately 85 SOL on the bonding curve, corresponding to roughly a $69,000 market cap at the time of the study.

What does it mean for a pump.fun token to "graduate"?#

Graduation on pump.fun is a protocol-defined event, not a subjective milestone. When a token's bonding curve accumulates 85 SOL in committed capital, the protocol automatically migrates it from the virtual AMM to PumpSwap — a real constant-product AMM where open market trading begins. Before graduation, the token trades on a virtual bonding curve with fixed mechanics. After graduation, it behaves like any other DEX token, subject to real supply and demand.

What on-chain signals predict whether a pump.fun token will graduate?#

Peer-reviewed research identifies four: the speed of SOL accumulation on the bonding curve (fastest accumulation through fewest trades is the strongest predictor), the ratio of bot-like activity to human trading (high bot ratio suppresses graduation probability), the presence of historically successful traders in early buying (modest positive signal, but these wallets tend to exit early), and the token creator's track record (verifiable on Solscan by checking how many of their previous tokens graduated).

Why do some pump.fun tokens dump right after graduation?#

The researchers documented systematic pre-graduation selling by token creators. Because creator positions build in value as the bonding curve approaches the graduation threshold, the migration to a real liquidity pool creates an opportunity for creators to exit into the new liquidity. This pattern is widespread in the data. Buyers who enter at or immediately after graduation are frequently buying into creator distribution rather than continued organic momentum.

How do I check a pump.fun token's bonding curve signals on Solscan?#

For trading speed: check the transaction history of the token's bonding curve contract and count the number of buy transactions required to reach each SOL milestone. For bot activity: look for buy transactions routed directly through smart contract interaction rather than through the pump.fun frontend — these appear as direct program invocations. For creator track record: look up the creator wallet address and check all tokens they previously created, counting how many graduated versus how many died on the curve.

What's the difference between a wallet with good recent returns and a wallet with verified edge?#

A wallet with good recent returns may have benefited from favourable market conditions, bot-driven churn, or a short run of luck on high-volatility tokens. Verified edge means the returns are statistically significant over a large enough sample to rule out luck (typically requiring a t-statistic above 1.6), hold across varying market conditions, and are generated on tokens with identifiable structural quality rather than noise activity. The distinction is only visible through full on-chain history analysis — not from recent leaderboard rankings.