Curriculum·S202 Token Analysis and Tokenomics·about 32 min
Red flags and honest memecoin treatment
By the end of this lesson you can
- →Run the eight-item red flag checklist, and distinguish a disqualifying finding from a question
- →State the base rate for new token launches from published data rather than from anecdote
- →Explain what a memecoin is honestly, including the one structural feature that favors it
- →Size participation in a negative-expectancy activity so that the outcome is survivable
Sophomore · enrolled learners
This lesson opens with The base rate on a launchpad, 2024 to 2026.
- What happened
- Pump.fun allows anybody to create a token in seconds, which then trades on a bonding curve until it accumulates roughly 85 SOL of purchases, at which point it graduates and migrates to a conventional automated market maker. Across the millions of tokens created on the platform since January 2024, fewer than two percent have ever reached graduation, meaning about 98 percent never accumulated enough buying to reach a real trading venue at all. Reported monthly rates during 2025 ranged from about 0.37 percent to 1.78 percent, hovering around 0.7 to 0.9 percent for much of the year, and a rise above one percent of daily launches in 2026 was reported as a six-month high.
- The decision point
- This is not an autopsy of a scam. It is the published base rate of an entire activity, available continuously, on a platform that publishes it. Graduation is also not success; it is the point at which a token becomes tradeable on a normal venue, so the roughly one percent is the survival rate to the starting line rather than to any outcome worth having.
What you will be able to answer
- →What is the graduation base rate on a major launchpad?
- →Which red flags are disqualifying rather than questions?
- →What is the one structural feature that favors memecoins?
- →How do you size participation in a negative-expectancy activity?
Orientation and Year One are open: anyone can read them without an account. From Year Two onward the lessons are for enrolled learners, because progress through the later years only means anything if it is tracked against a record.
It is free. We do not sell the list and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Sources and review
- https://www.cryptopolitan.com/pump-fun-token-graduations-six-month-high/
- https://crypto.news/how-meme-coins-are-made-bonding-curves-pump-fun-rug-pulls/
- https://public.bnbstatic.com/static/files/research/low-float-and-high-fdv-how-did-we-get-here.pdf
- https://www.fticonsulting.com/insights/articles/squid-game-blockchain
Confidence medium·Volatility medium·Reviewed 2026-08-05·Owner unassigned
Contested
Graduation rates are reported by third parties from on-chain data and vary by month and by methodology, particularly in how duplicate and test launches are counted. The order of magnitude, around one percent, is robust across sources; specific monthly figures should be quoted with their date.
The observation in S202-02 that memecoins outperformed the low-float cohort over one studied window is not evidence that they are a good investment, and this lesson must not be revised in that direction. Full circulation removes one specific exposure and says nothing about expected return. P10 applies with particular force here.
J306-04 owns the cultural and community-formation treatment of this category. This lesson owns the analytical treatment and the base rates. Keep the split.