Solana memecoin frenzy sends PumpSwap trading volume to record $1.2 billion

• PumpSwap has reached a record trading volume of $1.28 billion in 24 hours as Solana's memecoin market revives.
• Despite high trading volumes, PumpSwap's fee generation remains modest, with $2.98 million in fees recorded on Jan. 5.
• The resurgence of memecoin trading on PumpSwap highlights a renewed interest in Solana's market, though sustained profits are uncertain.

PumpSwap, the trading arm of the Pump ecosystem, is suddenly putting up eye-popping numbers as Solana’s memecoin market heats up again.

The spike comes amid the broader “memecoin comeback” trade that’s been building since the turn of the year, especially on Solana. Traders have been rotating into high-beta corners of the market as bitcoin holds above key levels and liquidity improves post-holidays, lifting a basket of meme names across chains.

Data tracked by DeFiLlama shows the Pump DEX ecosystem doing $1.28 billion in volume over the past 24 hours, pushing 7-day volume to $6.15 billion and 30-day volume to $19.69 billion. Cumulative volume is now nearly $176.8 billion, a reminder of how quickly retail flows return when memes catch a bid.

A snapshot from Jan. 5 shows how dominant PumpSwap has become inside its own ecosystem: roughly $1.21 billion of daily volume came from PumpSwap compared with $63.7 million from pump.fun’s older route.

PumpSwap is Pump's built-in decentralized exchange on Solana where newly launched tokens can trade once they “graduate” from Pump.fun. Pump.fun is a Solana memecoin launchpad that lets anyone create a token in minutes, usually with a simple bonding-curve style sale that helps bootstrap early liquidity.

Japan-focused and anime-based tokens seemed to be the flavor for new token issuances in Asian afternoon hours on Tuesday, though these themes can rapidly change based on newer narratives or demographics of users most using the platform at any given time.

But there’s a catch. Despite the record trading, fee generation isn’t exploding the same way. On Jan. 5, fees were about $2.98 million, with around $1.21 million marked as protocol revenue and roughly $881,700 going to holders.

A lot of memecoin trading is fast in-and-out churn, often in low fee pools.

On top of that, competition between Solana venues tends to compress fees as platforms fight to be the default route for swaps.

PumpSwap’s surge is another signal that the market’s “fun” corner is back — and when memes run, they drag the rest of Solana activity with them.

Whether the volume sticks (and turns into meaningful revenue) will depend on how long traders keep playing, and whether this turns into more than a week of meme season noise.

• KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
• This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
• Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
• Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
• Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.

• Bitcoin's correlation with the Japanese yen has reached a record high.
• Both BTC and the yen took a beating in final months of 2025, with sell-offs in both running out of steam after mid-December.
• The tight correlation weakens BTC's appeal as portfolio diversifier.

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