Pump.fun Let Staff Go Just Before Their Tokens Were Due to Pay Out

3 mins mins

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One of crypto’s biggest revenue generators is facing uncomfortable questions about the timing of its recent layoffs. According to a Sandmark investigation based on documents and recordings obtained directly from former employees, Pump.fun terminated staff in early April, approximately two months before those same employees were due to begin receiving their PUMP token allocations. For at least one person, the timing meant missing out on a seven-figure sum, even accounting for the token’s steep decline from its 2025 peak.

Pump.fun is the Solana-based platform that allows anyone to launch a memecoin in seconds at no cost. Since its rise in late 2024 it has become one of the most prolific revenue generators in the crypto sector, with lifetime revenues of around $1.3 billion and more than 20 million tokens created on the platform. The company grew rapidly, expanding from a handful of employees to close to 100 earlier this year. That growth, according to co-founder Noah Tweedale in a recorded group meeting obtained by Sandmark, was itself cited as the reason for the cuts — the company had expanded too fast and needed to move more nimbly. Staff were told in late March, dismissed in early April, and given one week of severance pay for each month worked.

What makes the timing difficult to dismiss as coincidental is the structure of the token grant agreements employees had signed. Under those agreements, signed in mid-2025, a quarter of each employee’s PUMP allocation was due to unlock one year later, placing the first vesting date squarely in June 2026, roughly two months after the April terminations. Former employees also allege that a second wave of redundancies took place in mid-July, with one person claiming to have been let go the day before their tokens were scheduled to vest. Sandmark reports that more than 40 people in total have been laid off across both rounds, though the latter claims could not be independently verified.

The layoffs sit within a broader picture of mounting pressure on the platform. Pump.fun operates legally under the name Baton Corporation in the UK, despite having blocked British users since late 2024, following a warning from the Financial Conduct Authority that it may be providing unauthorised financial services, and it remains on the regulator’s warnings list. The company’s UK accounts, which should have been filed by the end of June, are now overdue. A former employee was also sentenced to six years in prison in December 2025 for draining approximately $2 million from a company wallet in 2024. Pump.fun’s daily revenue continues to run at around $1 million, according to on-chain data, which makes the contrast between its commercial performance and its governance difficulties all the harder to ignore.

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