Pump.fun Shuts Down Its Bonkers Live Streaming Service

For a moment, Pump.fun felt like it was channeling the internet’s ID. Anyone could make a meme coin and set up a livestream to hype it. Now, citing its inability to keep up with moderation, Pump.fun has shut down live streaming.

“To ensure the absolute safety of our users, we will be pausing the live streaming functionality on the site for an indefinite time period until the moderation infrastructure is ready to deal with the heightened levels of activity,” Pump.fun said in a statement on its website.

Trevv, a star of Pump.fun’s live stream meta who is currently pumping a coin named after a racial slur and streams in blackface in public places, bemoaned the change in a post on X. “Nooooo,” he screamed into a camera from the seat of a car, covered in Nutella. “Pump.fun, why have you shut down! What have I done! Pump.fun! I’m going to have to get a minimum-wage job again! Noooooooo! Please open your lives back up, please!”

Pump.fun was very easy. A user could set up an account in a few clicks and generate a Solana-backed coin with a brief name, ticker, and description. Then they could start streaming and do whatever they wanted to get attention and drive up the price of their coin.

The site faced increasing criticism over its live streams in recent weeks from both inside and outside of the crypto community. “This week on Pump. fun: Man pretending to be a dog, man sitting on a toilet and refusing to move until coin hits 25 million, mann threatening to shoot his dog if the coin doesn’t hit 1 million, man threatening to hang himself if the coin doesn’t hit 1 million, young couple punching their 3 year old every 4 minutes until they hit a certain market cap, 12 year old kid threatening to shoot his entire family with a shotgun unless coin hits a certain market cap,” an NFT account said in a post on X.

This week on pump fun:

– Man pretending to be a dog
– Man sitting on a toilet and refusing to move until coin hits 25 million.
– Man threatening to shoot his dog if the coin doesn’t hit 1 million.
– Man threatening to hang himself if the coin doesn’t hit 1 million.
– Young…

— T.M.A (@Tma_420) November 25, 2024

“This is the state of the trenches. Soon or later, something bad is going to happen and we will get a lot of negative attention,” the post said. “We are moving backwards, not forward. @pumpdotfun needs to stop these live streams.”

That’s a list of bad things that had already happened. Pump.fun’s live streams confirmed everyone’s worst fears about crypto. It was a way for people to generate value out of their own suffering in an attention-driven economy.

Pump.fun’s live streams went down on Monday afternoon and it released a statement about moderation later that day. “We acknowledge that recent events on our platform’s live streams have caused concern,” it began. “From the outset, we’ve taken a firm stance on moderating for inappropriate activity. This includes proactively removing coin images, names, descriptions, comments, tagging any NSFW content, taking down live streams, and more recently, taking down videos. Our commitment to upholding a safe and respectful environment remains unwavering.”

Earlier this week, Pump.fun was not a safe and respectful environment. This was the website where one dev faked his own hanging and another fired a handgun out of his window every time the price of his coin jumped.

This PumpFun dev was shooting out of his window every time his coin pumped 😂 pic.twitter.com/CHB9XVdv24

— Gordon (@AltcoinGordon) November 24, 2024

Pump.fun said that its platform had grown so fast that it couldn’t keep up with moderation. It said it had taken down hundreds of streams every day and had doubled the number of human moderators on its team. “As the most popular crypto app with user-generated content, we’re navigating challenges that many other social platforms have faced during their growth phases and are taking similar steps to address the core issues,” it said.

It also promised complete transparency as to what would and wouldn’t be allowed. “We will also provide creators and users greater visibility into individual moderation decisions to ensure everyone understands the process and outcomes,” it said. “We’re here to grow alongside our community, and to ensure that this platform becomes stronger and better through every challenge we face.”

Pump.fun without the live streaming component is a losing proposition. The reason the site exploded in recent weeks is because of the wild shit people were doing on camera. Pump.fun didn’t say when its live streaming service would return and did not return Gizmodo’s request for comment.