1 · Overview

pump.fun charges a creator fee on every trade and pays it to the coin's on-chain creator. funded sets that creator to its own fee account, and forwards what lands there to the reel you named. That is the entire trick: the fee is native to pump.fun, the recipient is the creator, and nothing is routed through a contract of ours.

Everything after that is mechanical. Fees accrue as the coin trades, an hourly job collects them and credits the handle in dollars, and once the balance clears $1.00 it becomes queued Stars. Every step prints a receipt, and every $20.00 of lifetime fees prints another.

2 · Launching a coin

You paste an Instagram reel link plus the usual coin fields and an optional first buy. The server tags the coin with that reel, pins the metadata to IPFS, and builds a pump.fun create_v2 transaction. Your wallet signs; the coin exists.

3 · Where the fees go

pump.fun accrues creator fees into a program-owned vault keyed by the creator address. Before graduation the pump program collects; after graduation the pump-amm program pays into its coin-creator vault. Both are read together, so a coin keeps paying its creator across the graduation.

The creator fee is a share of every trade, and the rate is pump.fun's, not ours. On the bonding curve it is 0.300% of each buy and sell. Once a coin graduates to PumpSwap the rate steps with market cap — it rises to 0.950% in the 420–1,470 SOL band, then declines as the coin grows, down to 0.050% above 98,240 SOL.

• To the creator: 100% of the creator fee, from the first trade.
• funded's share: 10% of the creator fee, used to buy back and burn $FUNDED. The remaining 90% is what becomes Stars.
• Counted as paid from the moment it is generated — fees belong to the creator whether swept yet or not.

What "fees generated" means on a coin

Creator fees are charged on volume — every buy and every sell. The chain does not store a coin's cumulative volume anywhere; the bonding curve only carries its current reserves. What it does carry is the net SOL taken in, and a round trip (buy then sell) nets to roughly nothing there while still paying fees both ways.

So the figure shown on each coin is a floor, marked with a +. The real number is higher for any coin that has been traded back and forth. The exact figure needs every trade event indexed, which is a separate piece of work.

The rate itself is exact: it is read from the coin's own bonding curve, and falls back to pump.fun's published schedule when the coin sets no override.

4 · The hourly sweep

Fees do not arrive continuously in dollars; they sit in the vault as SOL. At the top of every hour a job collects each handle's vault and moves the whole balance to the treasury in one transaction. The fee wallet signs the collect, the treasury co-signs and pays the network fee, so a vault never needs its own SOL for gas.

Cron 0 * * * *, one transaction per handle. The SOL/USD rate at sweep time is frozen on the receipt. Vaults under 0.001 SOL are skipped and keep growing — the claim would cost more than the take. A failed sweep credits nothing and is retried next hour; the fees stay in the vault meanwhile.

5 · Getting paid in Stars

Creators never log in and never hold a wallet. Money reaches them as Instagram Gifts, landing in the same balance their other Gifts do. When a handle's balance clears $1.00, the whole balance becomes queued Stars, floored to whole Stars.

1. Queue — balance ≥ $1.00 becomes one gift row, frozen at today's Star price.
2. Send — funded sends the Gift on one of the creator's Reels.
3. Confirm — the gift is marked sent with the Reel link, which prints on the receipt.
4. Cash out — Stars land in the creator's Instagram balance and pay out at $25.

6 · The Instagram payout

This is the leg people ask about most, so here it is in full. Everything up to this point is automatic and on-chain. This part is not: Instagram has no API for gifts, so a person sends them.

Where a gift can land

A gift is always sent on one specific reel. There is no way to gift a profile, a photo, a story, a comment or a Live replay. The handle is who gets paid, but the target is a reel they posted.

That is why every coin page shows a handle while every receipt shows a reel link. The link is the proof the gift actually landed.

Who can receive

Eligibility is Instagram's call and it is not purely mechanical. Meta's wording is that gifts are available to "selected creators at this time". The published bar is a professional (Creator or Business) account, 18 or over, roughly 500 followers, and one of the 45 supported countries — but a creator can meet every one of those and still not be giftable.

The good news: there is no opt-in. Instagram turns gifts on automatically for eligible creators. They do not sign up, agree to anything, or connect a wallet. That is what makes this work at all.

They can turn gifts off, though — either across all their reels or on a single reel — from their professional dashboard. So an eligible handle can still have reels we cannot use.

What we actually do

1. The handle's balance crosses $1.00 and a gift is queued, with the Star count and the Star price frozen at that moment.
2. We find a giftable reel for that handle and re-check it before sending, because the creator may have turned gifts off since we last looked.
3. Stars are purchased and the gift is sent on that reel.
4. The reel link goes on the receipt. No link, no "sent".

When it cannot be sent

The gift is marked held with a specific reason, and the dollars stay in the creator's balance. Held is not lost and it is never ours.

What the creator sees

A gift notification on their reel, exactly like any other gift from any other viewer. The Stars land in their normal Instagram balance at $0.01 each, and at $25 they can withdraw to their payout account.

7 · Instagram's cut

A Star costs about $0.02 to buy; Instagram pays creators $0.01 per Star received. So roughly half of every gift stays with Instagram. That is Instagram's cut, not ours, and it is printed on every receipt, profile and queue entry rather than folded into a "net" number.

8 · Receipts and milestones

Every money event prints a paper receipt with a number, a barcode and the frozen rate: one per sweep, one per gift, and one every $20.00 of lifetime creator fees. Milestone receipts are how a creator's coins keep showing progress between gifts, and each step is printed exactly once no matter how often the page is viewed.

• Fees received — printed when a sweep confirms on Solana. Carries the transaction signature.
• Gift — printed when a gift is queued; stamped Funded with the Reel link once sent.
• Fee milestone — printed when lifetime fees cross $20.00, $40.00, $60.00 and so on.

9 · Custody and keys

Reserved fee wallets are created and signed through server wallets. Their private keys never touch our servers or database; we store the wallet address and a wallet id mapped to the handle. The only transaction a fee wallet ever signs is the hourly sweep to the treasury. Every handle's dollar balance is kept separate, and gifts debit only that handle.

10 · Held gifts and eligibility

Eligibility is Instagram's, and it is not purely mechanical. Meta's own wording is that "Instagram gifts are available to selected creators at this time" and that they are turned on automatically for creators who are eligible. The published bar is a professional (Creator or Business) account, 18+, roughly 500 followers, and one of the 45 supported countries — but selection is Instagram's call, so a creator meeting every published criterion may still not be giftable.

A gift is always sent on a reel. There is no way to gift a profile, a photo, a story or a comment. The creator can also disable gifts for all reels, or for one individual reel, from their professional dashboard — so a handle that is eligible can still have reels we cannot gift.

If Instagram will not accept a gift, it is marked held with the reason, the dollars stay in the creator's balance, and it is re-queued once they become giftable.

Handles are matched case-insensitively. If a creator renames their account, the fees stay with the handle the coins were launched to; the handle a coin is tagged for cannot follow a rename.

11 · FAQ

Does the creator need to do anything before I launch?
No. The handle is reserved automatically and fees accrue from the first trade. Gifts are switched on automatically by Instagram for eligible creators; if they are not eligible yet, the balance is held for them.

Can I launch a coin for a handle that already has coins?
Yes. All coins gifting the same handle pay into the same balance.

What if I typo the handle?
The creator is permanent on-chain. Check the live preview before signing; the handle you see there is the one that gets paid.

Why is "paid" bigger than the gifts sent?
Because fees are the creator's the moment they are generated. Paid counts everything generated; gifts show what has already been converted and sent.

Is this affiliated with Instagram, Meta or pump.fun?
No. Instagram is only the rail the gifts travel on; pump.fun is the launchpad and market.

12 · For creators

Someone launched a coin pointed at one of your reels. You were not asked, you owe nothing, and there is nothing to sign up for.

What happens

1. A trader launches a coin and points its creator fees at one of your reels.
2. Every buy and sell pays a creator fee. It is counted from the first trade.
3. 10% goes to $FUNDED buybacks and burns. The rest is converted and arrives as an Instagram Gift on that reel.
4. Stars land in your normal Instagram balance and pay out at $25, like any other gift.

To receive, you need

• A professional (Creator or Business) account
• To be 18 or older
• At least 500 followers
• To be in one of the 45 supported countries
• To have been selected by Instagram for Gifts

You do not switch anything on. Instagram enables Gifts automatically for eligible creators. You can turn them off globally, or on a single reel, from your professional dashboard.

If you are not eligible yet

Nothing is lost. The balance is marked held with the reason and keeps growing while the coin trades. The day Instagram makes you eligible, it re-queues and sends.