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Why does a collaboration between Pump.fun and Kimchi end up looking like a scam?

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pump.fun signed influencer Kimchi, and the同名 token's market cap once surged to $40 million. But a poster with a QR code triggered a chain reaction: the founder deleted the post, the new coin plummeted 98%, the official token fell 70% from its peak, and ultimately retail investors bore the losses.

The original title: "Why the collaboration between Pump.fun and Kimchi looks just like a scam"
The original author: BlockBeats | We're hiring!

October 20, 2026, early morning. A wallet with a lifespan of only three hours minted a coin on pump.fun. Its name was Kimchi.

In the first transaction, it used 87 SOL, about $9,073, to buy 793 million coins, accounting for 79.3% of the total supply.

At the 40th second, three addresses began buying.

Less than a minute after the coin was issued, pump.fun's official account posted three images. There was no body text; the images showed billboards on New York streets: PILL YOUR FRIENDS, be the next kimchi.

At the 57th second, 750 million coins were transferred to another address. pump.fun's own profile page labeled this address as "Kimchi."

At the 19th minute, pump.fun co-founder Alon quote-tweeted those three images.

"Kimchi is the first person to truly bridge the gap between crypto and pop culture, the first example of turning a trader into a celebrity. The next wave of users will not come from crypto Twitter; they will come from the masses. We are honored to have him help us set the creative direction."

Kimchi's X account also added pump.fun to its bio, making the expression of cooperation between the two sides all the more obvious.

Clearly, pump.fun signed Kimchi, with the title written as "creative partner."

And the official advertisement appeared less than a minute after this coin was minted. The coin's creator fees were set to flow entirely to the address labeled Kimchi. This setting could not be changed afterward.

An hour later, the coin's market cap reached $35 million to $40 million. Kimchi held 75.32%, which was given to him.

Why sign an influencer

The claim that made Kimchi famous is this: he made $40 million on TRUMP coin.

His timeline is a row of luxury cars and famous watches, the standard setup of a major influencer.

pump.fun is desperate for influencer traffic because Fomo is strong.

Fomo launched in May 2025, raised $94 million, and is valued at over $550 million. It builds a trading terminal, but what it sells isn't tools—it's people: leaderboards push top earners into the spotlight, and feeds push every one of their trades. It doesn't sell coins; it sells idols.

From September 2 to 16, Fomo had higher revenue than the other platform on 13 of those days; during that half-month, it took 60% of the two platforms' combined total.

pump.fun's response was to throw money at the problem. A leaked August agreement: a $20,000 signing bonus, $30,000 per month, on the condition that funds are migrated over, a new wallet is used, X is linked, a public statement is made that this wallet is the only wallet, and the Fomo account is permanently deleted.

On August 7, its app got a redesign. Opening the homepage, what you see is no longer a waterfall of new coins—it's traders' feeds.

It is redecorating itself in its rival's image.

Over the past 30 days, pump.fun's launchpad revenue was $45.4 million, Fomo's was $19 million, and October's share recovered from 50% in September to 75%. The cost is $900,000 a day spent on buybacks and burns of its own token, totaling $490.7 million.

Signing Kimchi is also an easy move to understand and make sense of—Pump.fun still needs traffic.

If things ended here, it would be normal, but the outrageous part comes later.

The forwarded QR code

In the early hours of October 22, another new coin appeared. Its name was project kimchi.

A few hours later, Kimchi posted an image. A poster on a New York street, reading project kimchi and same internet, different outcome., with a giant QR code in the middle, and below it the Pump.fun logo and App Store and Google Play download badges.

Alon reposted it. The founder's repost pushed the new coin's market cap to $10 million to $15 million.

Then, Kimchi deleted the post and removed the @pumpfun from the bio. Alon deleted the post he had just retweeted.

The new coin went from over $10 million to less than $300,000, a drop of 98%.

And the "official" one from October 20 couldn't escape either. After the retweet incident, it fell 49%, leaving a market cap of $12.71 million, down 70% from its peak.

A collaboration was about to turn into a scam.

In this scam, some people did make money. Remember the three addresses that bought before the ad appeared on October 20?

Nine minutes, made $100,000.

Of course, there's also the address officially identified as Kimchi himself. 75.32% of the KIMCHI supply, over $7 million on paper. Plus creator revenue, now over 900 SOL, roughly $100,000, plus a sum of money of unclear origin: on-chain analysts found that within three hours he received 1.35 billion PUMP from Binance and OKX hot wallets, worth approximately $6.25 million to $6.43 million.

In three days, his paper gains exceeded $10 million.

The platform Pump.fun certainly profited too, with revenue of $1.61 million on October 20.

The losers were all retail investors.