Wallet groups linked to early buyers show pump like trends on solana launchpad
Early-Buyer Groups and Fast-Wallet Teams on a Bonding-Curve Launchpad: A Prospective Measurement Study of pump.fun on Solana
Social and Information Networks
Summary
This paper looks at groups of cryptocurrency wallets working together on a launchpad platform called pump.fun on Solana. The authors find that some groups buy tokens early and seem to influence prices in ways that resemble market pumps. However, when comparing similar tokens, the price patterns are not clearly caused by these groups. They also show that joining early based on these groups' signals does not guarantee profit. The study highlights how some wallet clusters act faster and more actively but their impact is hard to separate from normal market behavior.
What this means in practice
- •For cryptocurrency traders: Identify coordinating wallet groups to better understand early token price movements and potential risks in bonding-curve launchpads.
- •For blockchain platform monitors: Detect concentrated wallet activity on bonding-curve launchpads to inform monitoring tools for abnormal token launches and pump-like behaviors.
Tested on one dataset.
Authors
Fail Gafarov
Abstract
We study coordinated groups of wallets on a bonding-curve launchpad (pump.fun on Solana), using a complete record of 200\,443 token launches, 15\,854\,121 curve trades and 51\,025\,958 SOL transfers over 88.3 hours. A prospective, multi-channel discovery procedure (co-buying, shared funding, joint signing, transfers, consolidation) yields 23\,710 wallet groups. Without ground-truth labels we validate them by out-of-sample link prediction, independent non-trading links and a comparison with naive co-buy clustering at equal numbers of flagged tokens: raw clustering collapses into one giant component, yet it ranks tokens at least as well as the groups, so the value of the structure is descriptive. Group activity is highly concentrated and splits into serial creators and long-lived rings of early buyers. Known members buy earlier than other buyers of the same token and extract more cash than an activity-matched placebo set, while late buyers' net cash flow is negative; tokens with members show a pump-like price path, but the contrast vanishes when controls are restricted to comparable tokens, so we report it as an association. A follower entering at the earliest group signal loses money out of sample in all 32 configurations and does no better than random entry. A few pools of tens to over a hundred fast wallets are associated with a two- to four-fold higher chance of reaching 20 SOL, also within creators, with a smaller excess at 60 SOL and none for graduation; on a final hold-out the team rules keep a precision of about one half to three quarters, yet many signals arrive when the curve already holds 20 SOL, one team supplies most of them, and they add no information beyond early curve state. We also document evaluation errors that turn the same data into apparent profit.