Details on what portion of the revenue from this Solana-based memecoin platform will be channelled towards the upcoming PUMP token via the “buyback-powered utility structure” remain hazy. It’s also unclear whether this will encompass revenues derived from PumpSwap, the decentralized exchange that was inaugurated earlier this year. Multiple attempts to reach out to Pump.fun for a comment were met with silence.

As per data from The Block, Pump.fun saw its daily revenue crest at over $7 million on Jan. 23, before settling down to around $1 million daily. The platform has raked in an impressive total revenue of approximately $677 million since its inception in early 2024, positioning it as one of the most successful startups in the crypto sphere.

A source close to the founding team, who wished to stay anonymous, shared with The Block, “The plan is still fluid, but the aim is to have a buyback linked to a part of Pump revenue generated. The idea is for tokens to be unlocked at the TGE for those who partake in the sale, be it private or public.”

Pump.fun initially hinted at a token launch in October of the previous year, when one of the co-founders, who was then unidentified, stated during an X Spaces event that they were “intending to launch a token in the future” to “reward our pioneering users.” Earlier this week, Blockworks reported that the startup is gearing up for an ICO valued at $4 billion. The company has yet to confirm or refute this report, which has sparked widespread discussion in the crypto world.

The PUMP token, set to be offered to both public and private investors, is predicted to be fully unlocked at the token generation event, as per two sources acquainted with the plan. Future token issuances are a possibility, although the total supply is projected to be capped at 1 trillion tokens.

At present, the team is pitching to private investors at $0.004 per token, with plans for a public sale in the pipeline within a fortnight, said one source. A portion of the sale is said to be conducted on exchanges including Binance, and an airdrop is anticipated. Roughly 25% of the token supply will be allocated for the public sale, with an additional 10% earmarked for the airdrop, one source speculated.

“All the revenue we’ve accrued so far is being poured back into the platform,” the founder revealed in October. “We aspire to establish something as monumental as Binance — even surpassing it. Our goal is to democratize this.”

Pump.fun is often lauded for breathing life back into the Solana ecosystem, which was pummelled by the downfall of significant SOL supporter Sam Bankman-Fried. The potential ICO appears to have invigorated recent user activity on Pump, which had been experiencing a notable decline since the year’s commencement. According to data from The Block, the percentage of “graduated” tokens — those that witness enough market activity to transition onto an affiliated decentralized exchange — has shot up to over 4% from a recent low beneath 1%.

Disclaimer: The Block is an autonomous media outlet that provides news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver unbiased, impactful, and timely crypto industry information. Our current financial disclosures can be found here.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is intended for informational purposes only. It is not to be utilized as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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There hasn’t been a “really bubble-triggering use case driving the market cycles like in the past,” such as initial coin offerings (ICOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or DeFi lending, Guthrie shared with Cointelegraph during Consensus.

“We’ve seen the asset class continue to accumulate value, and companies built on this technology are growing revenue, expanding client bases, and innovating without relying on these less than helpful use cases,” Guthrie explained.

In 2017, the ICO boom began, raising an estimated $4.9 billion. This number skyrocketed to $33.4 billion in 2018, fell to a little over $370 million in 2019, and never recovered to its previous peaks. Similarly, NFTs enjoyed a brief period of massive popularity, peaking in 2022 with trading volumes of $57.2 billion and 121.7 million sales, but they have since declined.

However, Guthrie sees the market’s health, even in the absence of such triggers, as a very encouraging sign. He also notes the maturation of the crypto market, despite some ongoing memecoin hype.

Last year, the total crypto market capitalization reached a new high of $3.71 trillion on Dec. 9, with many cryptocurrencies also seeing significant price increases, according to CoinMarketCap.

Guthrie also observed a growing trend of companies, including video game retailer GameStop, and countries like Ukraine, adopting cryptocurrencies for their treasuries and reserves.

Despite the surge in memecoin activity following the launch of Donald Trump’s memecoin on Jan. 18, which saw Pump.fun usage reach a weekly trading volume high of $3.3 billion, Guthrie believes the market’s maturity and sustainability have significantly improved compared to past cycles.

Reported by Sam Bourgi for Cointelegraph.

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In a joint agreement submitted alongside Dragonchain to a federal court in Seattle on April 24, the SEC expressed that “the dismissal of this case seems appropriate.” The decision comes after the efforts of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, which aids in shaping the regulatory framework for crypto assets.

The official document states, “Both the Commission and the Defendants agree that this litigation should be dismissed without prejudice […] and excluding any costs or fees for either party.”

Dragonchain and its supporters, including the Dragonchain Foundation, The Dragon Company, and Dragonchain’s creator, Joseph Roets, were sued by the SEC in August 2024. The agency claimed they raised $16.5 million through a crypto token, which was an unregistered securities offering.

The SEC alleged that Dragonchain (DRGN) tokens generated $14 million in a presale and an initial coin offering (ICO) that occurred in October and November 2017. Furthermore, it said that the firm was required to register as the tokens constituted investment contracts under securities laws.

Additionally, the SEC stated that DRGN tokens worth $2.5 million were sold between 2019 and 2022. According to the agency, these funds were used to cover operational costs and advance the company’s technology.

The lawsuit was put on hold in October when Dragonchain proposed a settlement to the SEC. The pause was extended in January when the agency suggested the case should remain on hold due to President Trump’s comprehensive executive order advocating for the nation’s “leadership in digital assets.”

Following the news of the SEC’s potential dismissal, the DRGN token’s value surged by 95% in a day, reaching over 8.5 cents. However, it’s still down approximately 98.5% from its January 2018 peak of $5.46, as per CoinGecko.

Under Trump’s administration, the SEC has backed off from several cases involving crypto. The SEC’s Crypto Task Force was established in January, a day after Trump returned to the White House, to guide the regulator’s engagement with the crypto industry.

High-profile lawsuits against crypto firms like Coinbase, Ripple, and Kraken have also been dismissed by the SEC. Furthermore, investigations into other crypto firms like OpenSea, Crypto.com, and Immutable have been dropped, with no further action planned.

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The introductory wave of crypto agent projects in 2024 was fueled by indiscriminate excitement for AI projects. Following a $50,000 Bitcoin donation by Marc Andreessen in October 2024 and the success of token launchpads earlier in the year, numerous AI agent projects joined the space in Q1 of 2024, leading to a rapid dilution of liquidity by Q1 of 2025. As with any nascent sector, initial hype didn’t always equate to lasting viability, leading to a subsequent cool-down period in the crypto AI agent sector.

The market segment is now transitioning into a more mature phase, with the emphasis shifting from speculative hype to revenue generation and product performance. The successful projects in this evolving landscape will be those that can generate reliable revenue, cover the costs of operating AI models, and provide real value to both users and investors.

AI agent applications stress the practical implementation and commercialization of this technology, specifically in fields like automated trading, asset management, market analysis, and crosschain interaction. This strategy aligns with multi-agent systems and decentralized finance + AI (DeFAI) initiatives like Hey Anon, GRIFFAIN, and ChainGPT.

A breakthrough in AI agent technology arrived with DeepSeek-R1, an innovation that challenges traditional AI training methods. Unlike previous models, which relied on supervised fine-tuning (SFT) followed by reinforcement learning (RL), DeepSeek-R1 takes a different approach, optimizing entirely through reinforcement learning without an initial supervised phase. This shift has led to significant improvements in reasoning capabilities and adaptability, paving the way for more sophisticated AI-driven crypto agents.

DeepSeek-R1’s pure RL model allows AI agents to learn through trial and error in real-world conditions, dynamically adjusting their strategies based on immediate feedback. This method allows for greater adaptability, making it especially useful for multi-agent AI systems in DeFi, where real-time market fluctuations require agents to make autonomous, data-driven decisions. These agents adapt quickly to market fluctuations, ensuring more efficient capital deployment.

Launched in late November 2024, iDEGEN is the first crypto AI agent built on DeepSeek R1. This integration of DeepSeek’s R1 model emphasizes how crypto AI agents can inherit such enhanced reasoning capabilities, competing with other established AI models at a fraction of the cost. This shift toward RL-powered, multi-agent AI in DeFi automation underscores why closed-source AI models (such as OpenAI’s GPT-based systems) are becoming an unsustainable expense.

The key to longevity in this sector lies in continuous innovation, adaptability and cost efficiency. Open-source AI models like DeepSeek-R1 are lowering the barriers to entry, allowing blockchain-native startups to develop specialized AI solutions. The ICO era of crypto agents is evolving, and the next wave of winners will be the ones that can turn innovation into long-term viability.

Note: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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Rivetz was founded in 2013. The company has been into selling blockchain hardware. However, now the company is not active. Between July and September 2017, Rivetz had raised $18 million via an unregistered securities offering. It had over 7,200 investors. 

In a complaint on Wednesday, the SEC said that the company has sold RVT tokens which were promoted as a securities token. It was presented as an investment opportunity to lure investors. The SEC said the RIVETZ positioned the ICO in way that it claimed that the RvT tokens were “investments that purchasers could buy and sell on the secondary market.”

“Token buyers could not purchase any goods and services using RvT tokens, and the tokens had no other use in any Rivetz product or service. In fact, several months after the tokens were distributed […] Sprague stated on social media that Rivetz did not have ‘a specific release date’ for the Rivetz app through which consumers could use the RvT token,” claims the SEC.

The SEC complaint charges the ICO creators and Rivetz founders. It claims that the founder was given $1 million from the proceeds and “a separate loan of $2.5 million, which he used to purchase a house in the Cayman Islands that he then leased back to Rivetz Int’l.”

Recently, the SEC has been strict with compliance. Earlier this week it also threatened to sue the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase for non-compliance.

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