Shaw's New Guide Shows How Pump.fun Moves Money and Tokens

Eliza Labs founder Shaw Walters has published an interactive guide to Pump.fun, letting readers follow what happens to their money and tokens as a coin moves from launch to a trading pool.

Shaw introduced How Pump Works on November 1 through his @shawmakesmagic account on X. The guide covers the bonding curve, PumpSwap, fee distribution, charity payments and Mayhem mode.

What a buy actually changes

The opening section lets readers put simulated SOL into a bonding curve and watch the number of tokens sold, the quoted price and market capitalization change. It then follows graduation into PumpSwap, where trading uses a pool containing both the token and its paired asset.

A separate pool simulator shows why trade size matters: buying changes the balance between the two assets and moves the price. Other controls let readers explore fee tiers, divide creator fees between recipients and see how token supply changes in Mayhem. The figures are model outputs, not live trades.

The site's program-source link leads to a public reverse-engineering project covering five deployed Solana programs: Pump, PumpSwap, Fees, Mayhem and the Donation Relay. That project reconstructs on-chain code; its stated scope excludes Pump.fun's website, apps and backend services. It is a community reconstruction, rather than an official release of Pump.fun's complete software.

The fee on the curve is only part of the bill

The guide separates who gets paid from what happens to price. Under Pump.fun's current fee schedule, SOL- and USDC-paired bonding-curve trades carry a 1.25% fee: 0.30% for the creator and 0.95% for the protocol.

Trades through Pump.fun's own web or mobile app also carry a separate platform fee of 0.45%, reduced to 0.40% with a referral code. After graduation, canonical SOL and USDC pools use market-cap-based fee tiers. The execution route and the coin's stage therefore matter when comparing trading costs.

Mayhem changes the supply picture as well. Pump.fun's documentation says eligible coins mint an additional billion tokens for the trading agent, bringing initial supply to two billion. The agent can buy and sell during the first 24 hours, then burns tokens it has not sold. Tokens it sells into the market can increase the supply held by other traders; extra activity does not necessarily mean a smaller circulating supply.

Readers want the mechanics and the controls

Early replies showed what readers were taking from the guide. Astrid Pilla thanked Shaw on behalf of visual learners, saying she had not understood Mayhem or known about Donate.gg. The Zealynx account focused on permissions, asking who holds the authority for the buy that follows graduation.

That question goes beyond the shape of a price curve to who can trigger actions around it. The guide also lists who can reset a locked fee split and limits on the Mayhem bot, giving readers specific controls to investigate alongside the animations.

Shaw framed the project as an educational tool. In a follow-up reply, he wrote: “I made it to educate you.”