Solana-based meme coin launchpad Pump.fun announced Monday a $3 million fund that replaces traditional venture capital gatekeepers with market-driven token launches.

The platform’s new investment arm, Pump Fund, will distribute the capital through its “Build in Public Hackathon,” funding 12 projects with $250,000 each at a $10 million valuation, the company said Monday in a statement on X. 

Unlike conventional accelerators, where founders pitch to judges, winners will launch tokens and let market demand determine their fate.

“Your users are the ones that fund you by betting on you early. Those who can capture the minds of the people are empowered like nowhere else,” Pump.fun wrote in its statement.

The hackathon accepts projects across all verticals and maturity levels, including non-crypto projects, and requires participants to own at least 10% of their token supply while they “build in public” by posting on X, forming communities, and streaming on Pump.fun.

The platform, which has facilitated over 14 million token launches and generated more than $1 billion in revenue during its first two years, says it will prioritize “organic traction” over traditional metrics like founder pedigree or connections.

However, experts question whether Pump.fun’s model can ensure transparency, as the platform sets a February 18 deadline and promises its first winners by day 30.

Musheer Ahmed, founder and managing director of Finstep Asia, told Decrypt the fund requires greater clarity on governance and distribution processes, stressing the need to ensure projects don’t receive “bias or favours/preferred treatment from the Pump.fun team.”

He compared the market-driven approach with traditional VC processes where “investment committees’ evaluation of a start-up and also the profile of the founder/s and the core team” drive decisions, calling those judgements “essentially subjective.”

Ahmed said that while Pump.fun plans to pick winners based on “the traction and users that each project onboards,” he pointed out the critical need for verification mechanisms to ensure traction is “genuine” and is “not AI-driven or bot-driven” to prevent gaming the selection process.

Pratik Kala, head of research at Apollo Crypto, told Decrypt the model represents “certainly an interesting concept” that could provide “social proof and signal that people are excited about a project,” drawing parallels to prediction markets.

“It’s hard to say what rights (if any) tokenholders have—we have seen numerous examples of using tokens as a bootstrapping mechanism, then siphoning off real money into equity structures,” he added, noting that LaunchCoin attempted a similar model last year but failed.

“Overall, I think it’s too early to tell if this model will work,” Kala said. “For this to succeed, there has to be transparency and look-through on the project’s success and dollars flowing back to tokenholders.”

The announcement comes as Pump.fun attempts to rehabilitate its image following a turbulent 2025 after pausing livestreaming over animal cruelty and self-harm broadcasts.

It is also facing a class action alleging that its parent, Baton Corp., operated an illegal securities exchange by enabling the issuance of 50,000 unregistered tokens while collecting nearly $500 million in fees.