How to Run a Competition for Your Pump.fun Coin

A pump.fun coin is the easiest case for a volume competition, because everything the platform needs is derivable from one URL. There is no integration, no application, and no gatekeeper — you paste a link, fund a pool in USDC, and the leaderboard runs itself.

Here is the whole flow, with the Solana-specific parts called out.

Before you start

You need three things:

• The coin's pump.fun page URL — the pump.fun/coin/… link. The mint address has to end in pump; that is the check that keeps the pump.fun track scoped to actual pump.fun coins.
• A wallet to create the competition with. It signs the creation request and is your creator identity.
• At least $50 for the prize pool, plus the platform fee on top. That $50 minimum is enforced server-side, not just in the form.

You do not need a partnership, an API key, an email account, or any change to your token.

Step 1 — Pick the pump.fun track

The launch wizard opens on a venue choice: pump.fun coin, a supported launchpad coin, or a generic EVM token. Picking pump.fun sets the tracking chain to Solana and switches the import to pump.fun's own coin lookup rather than the DexScreener path the EVM track uses.

Step 2 — Paste the coin URL, get pools

Paste the coin page URL and hit Import. The platform resolves:

• the mint address,
• the coin's name, symbol and image,
• and the pool addresses that will be tracked.

The confirmation card shows the token and how many pools are tracked. That pool count is the thing to actually look at — it is the definition of what will count. Volume that touches those pools counts; volume anywhere else does not.

One detail worth internalising: the link that gets stored is the canonical coin URL, not whatever you pasted. Coin links picked up from a client or a share button often carry query parameters or path variants, and the creation API validates the URL strictly. The importer normalises it for you, which is why pasting a messy link still works.

If the import fails, it is almost always one of two things: the URL is not a recognisable pump.fun coin page, or the mint does not end in pump.

Step 3 — Name it

The wizard pre-fills a name from the token — "<Token> Trading Competition" — which is fine and is what most competitions use. The name and optional description are what appear on the competition page, on cards, and in share links, so if you are running several campaigns on the same token, make them distinguishable by more than the date.

Step 4 — Set the window

Volume counts inside the window only. Trades before the start time do not count, even if the competition is already visible — the sync explicitly refuses to read anything before startAt. This is deliberate: without it, a campaign would retroactively reward flow that was happening anyway.

Presets are 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks and a month, and the default start is the top of the next hour. A week is the common choice. Shorter windows concentrate the field and make the leaderboard tense; longer windows spread the same pool thinner but give latecomers a reason to enter.

Day boundaries inside the campaign are anchored to the start time, not to midnight UTC. A competition that begins at 14:00 rolls its day at 14:00. That matters if you use a daily cap or a raffle.

Step 5 — Prize pool and payout shape

The pool minimum is $50; the wizard offers $250 / $500 / $1,000 / $2,500 / $5,000 as quick picks. Then pick how it splits:

Optionally add raffle draws: a fixed prize drawn daily or weekly among traders who hit a minimum volume in that period. The reserve is draws × prize per draw and it is carved out of the same pool — the wizard shows you the split as a bar, so you can see exactly how much the leaderboard loses. The raffle must be strictly smaller than the pool, and the wizard blocks you if it is not. Its job is to keep the small end of the field trading when they can no longer reach rank 3.

Step 6 — Review, create, fund

Review shows the resolved venue, token, pool count, pool split, payout shape and window. Creating signs the request with your wallet and takes you to funding.

This is the Solana-specific bit. Because the competition tracks Solana, its payment rail is Solana too: the prize pool is funded in USDC on Solana, not on Base. EVM-tracked competitions fund in USDC on Base. The competition sits in a pending-payment state until the funding transfer is verified — it is not visible to traders as a live competition before then, which is the point. The escrow is the credibility.

The amount is the pool plus the platform fee (10% by default), quoted as a single total. A $500 pool is a $550 transfer.

Step 7 — Publish and watch

Once funded, the competition publishes — live immediately, or scheduled if the start is in the future.

From there, Solana volume is read on-chain against the tracked pools and the leaderboard rolls up on a fixed schedule — roughly every 20 minutes. The page counts down to the next real sync rather than showing a cosmetic timer, so a leaderboard that has not moved means no new trades, not a broken page.

Two columns are worth understanding when you read your own leaderboard: counted volume, which is what rank and points are computed from after any caps, and raw traded volume, which is everything the wallet did. When they differ, the difference is the rules doing their job.

Solana specifics, collected

• Chain: tracking runs on Solana; the pump.fun track cannot be pointed anywhere else.
• Mint constraint: pump.fun competitions only accept coin addresses ending in pump.
• Pools: detected from the coin page, not entered by hand. The tracked set is fixed at creation.
• Funding: USDC on Solana, plus platform fee, in one transfer.
• Rewards: denominated in USDC.
• Market type: permissionless launches are spot volume competitions. Traders also accrue 1 VXP per $1 of spot volume, on top of your prize pool.

After it ends

Ended competitions stay in their settlement window for a further period so the last day's volume finalises before anything is paid — a leaderboard that stops reading the moment the clock hits zero would systematically underpay whoever traded last.

When you measure the result, use cost per acquired trader and volume retention rather than peak volume. What a prize pool actually buys covers what to expect by budget tier, and the launch playbook covers pool sizing and timing in full. To see how competitions read from the trader's side first, browse the live ones.