PumpSwap explained: where pump.fun coins go when they graduate

PumpSwap is pump.fun's own decentralised exchange: a constant-product AMM on Solana, launched on March 20, 2025. When a pump.fun coin completes its bonding curve, its liquidity migrates to a PumpSwap pool and the coin keeps trading there. If you have seen a coin described as graduated, that is the move being described.

What PumpSwap is

PumpSwap is an automated market maker, or AMM: a pool that holds two tokens and prices trades from the ratio between them. There is no order book. You swap against the pool, and your trade shifts the ratio, which moves the price for the next trader.

The practical difference from a bonding curve is who sets the price. On the curve, a formula does, and the curve is the only counterparty. In a pool, the price is whatever the reserves say after the last trade, and the pool is shared by every trader and tool that routes to it.

Constant product means the pool keeps the product of its two reserves steady as trades go through. It is the same family of design as Uniswap v2 and Raydium's v4 pools, which is how The Block described it at launch. Anyone can create a PumpSwap pool for a token pair, according to pump.fun's public program documentation, but the pool that matters for a pump.fun coin is the one created when it graduates.

What graduated means on pump.fun

On pump.fun, a coin graduates when its bonding curve has sold every token reserved for it. pump.fun's program documentation describes it precisely: the curve's complete flag is set at the end of the buy that takes its real token reserves to zero. From then on the curve no longer trades.

Next, a migrate instruction moves the curve's liquidity into a new PumpSwap pool. Two details from pump.fun's docs are worth knowing:

• It is permissionless. Anyone can call it on a completed curve, so migration does not wait for the creator or for pump.fun.
• The LP tokens are burnt. The liquidity tokens the pool issues for the migrated liquidity are destroyed, so that liquidity cannot be withdrawn afterwards.

Before PumpSwap, graduating coins went to Raydium, and The Block reported that the launch removed the 6 SOL migration fee that route used to carry. Most coins never get here at all: fewer than 2% of pump.fun tokens have ever graduated, according to on-chain trackers. For the curve side of the story, including the rough threshold, see what happens when a pump.fun coin migrates.

How the PumpSwap liquidity pool works

A PumpSwap liquidity pool holds the graduated coin on one side and the quote currency on the other, and every trade is priced from the ratio between them. The deeper the pool, the less each trade moves the price.

The pool created by migration is the coin's canonical pool, a term pump.fun's docs use to separate it from any other pool someone creates for the same pair. Three practical points:

• Burnt LP is not a price floor. The migrated liquidity cannot be pulled, but holders can still sell into the pool, and a large sell moves the price hard. Burnt liquidity rules out one kind of rug, not a dump.
• Every trade pays a fee. Fees go to liquidity providers and the protocol, and since May 2025 a share of trading fees on canonical pools goes to the coin's creator. pump.fun has adjusted its fees over time, so check its current documentation for the rates.
• Aggregators can route to it. Once a coin sits in a standard pool, other trading tools can reach it, which brings new buyers and new sellers.

Bonding curve vs PumpSwap pool

The bonding curve and the PumpSwap pool both price a coin by formula, but they behave differently enough that a coin's chart often changes character at graduation.

For the curve maths, see what a big first buy does to a pump.fun price. For the full picture of the platform, how pump.fun works.

Why copying across the migration works

Copying a wallet across a pump.fun migration works because a copy follows the wallet on-chain, not a venue. The trader's buy on the curve and their sell in the PumpSwap pool are both public Solana transactions from the same wallet, on the same token.

copypump sees the trade on-chain, runs it through your rules, and places yours at your size. When the trader sells, the sell is copied the same way, whether the coin is still on its curve or has graduated. A coin you bought on the curve can be sold after it migrates.

A few settings matter more around graduation than anywhere else:

• Market cap band. A minimum and maximum decide whether you copy curve-stage coins, graduated coins, or both. The band never blocks an exit.
• Max impact. A fresh pool can be thin. This skips a buy if your own order would move the pool more than you allow.
• Slippage. Auto starts at 30% and widens if the price keeps running, so fast trades go through. Max chase, not slippage, is what caps your entry.

What graduation means for your risk

Graduation is one of the most volatile moments in a pump.fun coin's life, because new buyers, early sellers and thin fresh liquidity arrive together. Many wallets that bought on the curve use the attention around graduation to take profit.

If you buy because a coin just graduated, you are often buying from those wallets. The same logic applies to anything that puts a coin on a front page: see why pump.fun trending is often late. If you copy a wallet that trades graduations, the useful part is its exit: you want its sell copied as fast as its buy. Graduated or not, most memecoins lose value, so size every copy as money you can lose.