Kraken to hold additional airdrop from pump.fun after glitches on tokensale

On July 12, the initial public offering of the PUMP token created by the Pump.fun platform, a “memcoin factory,” took place. The tokensale was completed in just 12 minutes, attracted $500 million, but caused dissatisfaction among some participants due to technical failures. According to the organizers, 89.7% of the distribution went through Pump.fun itself, while only $51.5 million went to centralized exchanges (CEX), including Kraken, KuCoin and Bitget.

On the Kraken platform the volume of sales amounted to $30 mln. However, many investors were unable to receive allocations due to failures in processing applications. In response, the exchange’s CEO Arjun Sethi announced an additional airdrop: users who submitted applications during the selloff will not need any actions – allocation will happen automatically. Notifications about it will arrive in the mail.

Problems arose on other platforms as well. Bybit users reported that they did not receive tokens even when placing an order on the 9th second from the beginning of the sale. The exchange apologized, explaining it by API overload, and promised compensation to the victims through the support team.

Despite technical difficulties, PUMP ICO became one of the largest in history. According to Investopedia, it was among the top 3 in terms of funds raised. At a price of $0.004, the token’s market capitalization reached $4 billion. The average deposit was $44,209, and more than 75% of all tokens were distributed to 843 addresses, including 179 wallets with amounts of $1 million or more.

Prior to the start of trading on centralized exchanges scheduled for July 15, PUMP is already available in Hyperliquid’s premarket, where it is priced above the presale: the high was $0.0072.

Opinions on the results of the offering were divided. Dragonfly investor Hasib Qureshi noted that the token will receive 25% of the platform’s commissions, which means it will become one of the most profitable in the industry. At the same time, analysts including rezxbt criticized PUMP’s tokenomics – 40% of the offering was under the control of the team, which creates a risk of concentration and subsequent pressure on the market.