Pump.fun live streams are going too far — even for the crypto community's liking

Pump.fun has come under severe scrutiny after reports of users threatening self-harm and violent acts — during promotional live streams on the platform — if their tokens fail to reach certain price levels or market caps.

Launched in January by a mostly pseudonymous team, Pump.fun has gained traction as a decentralized launchpad for memecoins on the Solana blockchain, enabling users to create their own tokens in a few clicks. 

The platform introduced its live stream feature in August, allowing users to promote their token launches. However, this has led to increasingly dangerous behavior, including criminal acts and suicide threats, causing serious concern for even the most high-risk degenerate participants in the crypto community. “This behavior might attract regulatory scrutiny or lead to calls for banning such platforms due to concerns over fraud, manipulation and the safety of participants,” one community member said .

One of the most worrying live streams was highlighted by Pudgy Penguins safety program manager “Beau,” who warned Pump.fun that someone was reportedly using the feature to threaten to hang themselves if their coin didn’t reach a certain market cap. “Absolutely heinous and it needs to come down and see if you can get them help,” they said. "Shut down the live stream feature. This is out of control.”

Other reported incidents include a kid threatening to shoot his family, threats of harming animals, child abuse, various sexual acts and people locking themselves in cages.

Trading Strategy co-founder Mikko Ohtamaa suggested that the platform has two options: retain no moderation in line with crypto-anarchism and get shut down quickly by the police, or close the livestream feature and get shut down later when regulators wrap their heads around the issue.

“I advocate for freedom of speech, but these streams are causing practical issues where people are breaking the law in live broadcasts,” Ohtamaa said. “This will trigger a shutdown when the mainstream media catches wind of this. It will become an easy target for career politicians and police to go after, and further ‘crypto is only for criminals’ narrative.”

However, some emphasized the decentralized nature of the platform, arguing that the content should not be censored , while others urged against calls for authorities to step in and advocated for allowing time for the community to self-regulate.

Pump.fun responds

Alon, one of the platform's founders, acknowledged the community’s “very legitimate concerns,” but claimed content is actively moderated and that “ hundreds ” of streams have been taken down.

“Although we strongly stand for free speech and expression, it's our responsibility to ensure that users don't see clearly repulsive/dangerous content and that bad actors aren't given a platform to act as they wish,” Alon said. “Let me make it abundantly clear: we actively moderate illicit content on the site. That includes images, videos, live streams and comments.”

Alon noted that pornographic content is allowed, but users can change their settings to avoid seeing those types of coins. They also admitted Pump.fun’s moderation isn’t perfect, promising to be more transparent about the rules. Alon said the platform has a large team of moderators and engineers working “around the clock” to deal with the scale of new coins, streams and comments, urging the community to report any projects they are aware of where moderation isn’t enforced.

However, given Pump.fun’s decentralized nature, terms of service may not be present or enforced in the same way as traditional platforms.

The Block reached out to Pump.fun and Alon for further comment.