DeFi • July 29, 2026, 2:51PM EDT

Pump.fun token graduation rate jumps after BOOST changes launch incentives

Quick Take

BOOST comes into effect after a token has already bonded, so it doesn’t mechanically lift the share of tokens that reach the threshold.
The following is an excerpt from The Block’s Data and Insights newsletter.

Pump.fun's graduation rate reached 6.7% last Friday, roughly 8x higher than the average throughout June. This spike wasn’t a blip either, as it averaged 4.7% across the previous four days, against 2.5% the week before.

This recent increase in Pump.fun’s graduation rate lined up directly with BOOST, its new default launch mechanism that directly incentivizes higher graduation rates.

BOOST targets what Pump.fun calls "dead liquidity," i.e., the roughly 20% of migration liquidity that was previously locked permanently inside the PumpSwap pool upon graduation. With the new BOOST update, that capital now gets deployed into a series of automatic market buys during the first five minutes after migration, with every token acquired burned afterwards.

BOOST operates entirely after a token has already bonded, so it doesn’t mechanically lift the share of tokens that reach the threshold. It instead directly incentivizes traders to bid bonding tokens harder because an immediate post-migration liquidity injection or “instant buy pressure,” and a supply burn are guaranteed upon migration.

It will be worth watching whether the heightened graduation rates from BOOST will be a temporary "shiny new thing" blip or a permanent occurrence going forward. Though the fundamental changes in participants’ behaviors and incentives for pre-bond tokens point to the latter being more likely.

Meanwhile, Pump.fun’s native token (PUMP) is up by over 10% year-to-date on Monday, making it one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies of the year so far, beating out BTC’s -25% YTD performance.

It is worth noting that PUMP’s relative outperformance has occurred only recently, as the token is up nearly 60% in the last month alone. It currently trades at around an $850 million market cap, with a fully diluted valuation of over $1.8 billion.

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