pump.fun founders

pump.fun founders

Image: official logo
members	Noah Tweedale (CEO), Alon Cohen (COO), Dylan Kerler (CTO, @outdoteth)
company	Baton Corporation Ltd
founded	January 2024
headquarters	London, United Kingdom

pump.fun was founded in January 2024 by three young English entrepreneurs, Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen and Dylan Kerler, operating through the UK company Baton Corporation Ltd.

pump fun was launched on January 19, 2024 by three English entrepreneurs then in their early twenties: Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen and Dylan Kerler. The trio operate through Baton Corporation Ltd, a company registered in the United Kingdom with headquarters in London, where Tweedale serves as chief executive and all three sit as directors. Court filings list Tweedale as CEO, Cohen as COO and Kerler as CTO. For most of the platform's history the founders were semi anonymous, known only by their handles; Tweedale told WIRED that this was for personal safety, to avoid the platform's large crypto holdings making them targets for blackmail or attack. All three have said they built pump.fun after being rug pulled themselves while trading meme coins, and designed its fair launch bonding curve model in response.

Noah Tweedale

Tweedale, who posts on X as @sapijiju, is the chief executive of Baton Corporation. He is the least publicly visible of the three in day to day platform drama but has given long form interviews about pump.fun's ambition to become a social trading network, including a Delphi Digital podcast on building the future of social trading and a YouTube appearance titled around taking pump.fun to a $100 billion valuation. He has publicly argued that pump.fun is "not a casino" and made a case for transparency in meme coins, and in 2026 he questioned rival Hyperliquid's business model in a widely covered exchange. In November 2025, after onchain observers claimed the team had cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars (reports cited figures around $436 million to $465 million moved to stablecoins), Tweedale denied that the transfers were founder cash outs, describing them as internal treasury movements.

In an August 2026 conversation with Crypto Insider, relayed by Wu Blockchain, Tweedale said scaling back communication with the community after the fundraise was a mistake, and that team silence during the token's slump fed a vicious cycle of investor anxiety and selling. He also writes the company newsletter under his @sapijiju handle, where he called the week of August 3 to 9, 2026 the platform's first week above 10 million dollars in fees.

Dylan Kerler

Kerler is the platform's technical cofounder. In 2024 a WIRED investigation reported that a person named Dylan Kerler had launched at least eight tokens in 2017, at age 16, including eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, tokens that rose on airdrop driven promotion and then collapsed after large sales by their creator, in what investors at the time called rug pulls. Analysis cited by the report estimated the developer earned up to $75,000 in crypto at 2017 prices. These reports are allegations of past conduct and predate pump.fun; they have not been the subject of any legal finding. Kerler maintains almost no public presence; reporting on his low profile links him to the X handle @outdoteth. A July 2026 tweet from @STACCoverflow, part of the corpus, shows @outdoteth alongside Cohen's @a1lon9 at a London rental "within view of Buckingham Palace, May 2024," consistent with Baton Corporation's London headquarters.

Alon Cohen

Cohen, known as alon (@a1lon9), is the platform's public voice and is covered in a dedicated article, alon.

A disputed founding account

A variant, hostile founding sequence circulates on X, separate from the founders' own account above. Trader @UziCryptoo (59,973 followers) posted it on March 6, 2026 under the header "Meet the biggest scammer in crypto industry," claiming Cohen "decided to fix broken launches on SOL after getting rugged like all of us on his coin; met Noah Tweedale and Dylan Kerler... launched PumpFun on January 24 with the other 2 bros." This is one trader's hostile retelling, not corroborated by press reporting, and is presented here as attributed commentary rather than established fact.

The same tweet documents an unfulfilled promise, again the same commentator's critical framing rather than a press confirmed claim: it quotes Cohen from a Twitter Space saying "Our goal is to reward users, our airdrop will be more lucrative than anyone else in the space," followed by an "airdrop coming soon" announcement in July, with @UziCryptoo noting the token was down 81 percent seven months later.

This phrasing closely echoes an October 19, 2024 Twitter Space quote that Decrypt attributed by name to cofounder Sapijiju (Noah Tweedale), not Cohen: "Our airdrop, no guarantees here, will probably be a lot more lucrative than anyone else in the space," reported two days later on October 21, 2024. @UziCryptoo's retelling, posted seventeen months after that Space with no date attached, appears to attribute Sapijiju's words to Cohen and to drop the original hedge; it is preserved here as the hostile retelling it is, not as an independent Cohen quote.

Legal matters

All three founders are named defendants, alongside Baton Corporation and several Solana entities and executives, in the consolidated class action Aguilar v. Baton Corporation in the Southern District of New York, which alleges the platform sold unregistered securities and, in amended complaints, adds racketeering claims seeking treble damages of roughly 5.5 billion dollars. The founders contest the allegations, and no liability has been established (see pump fun lawsuits).

The case's central evidentiary claim rests on a confidential whistleblower. Per a Cryptonews report syndicated by Yahoo Finance, the informant surfaced in September 2025 with nearly 5,000 internal chat messages allegedly showing developers, traders and bots coordinating on transaction timing and block ordering across pump.fun, Jito Labs and Solana entities. A RootData annual review, mirrored by Bitget, reported that a further batch of over 10,000 logs followed in October 2025, with the informant's identity still unknown as of that review. These remain plaintiff side allegations, not court findings.

The case's 2026 procedural timeline: Judge Colleen McMahon allowed a second amended complaint in an order dated December 9, 2025, which was filed January 7, 2026; motions to dismiss were due January 23, 2026, oppositions February 13 and replies February 20. A June 2026 Cryptopolitan status report found the latest docket activity dated April 14, 2026, with no trial date set.

A December 2025 viral rumor claimed a US court would imminently ban pump.fun outright. A fact check by Daily Crypto Briefs found only the private civil class action behind the claim, noting that while plaintiffs do seek permanent injunctions and even a federal receivership, no shutdown order exists on the docket.

In 2026 the company also faced reporting that it laid off more than 40 employees shortly before their PUMP token grants vested; the company did not publicly respond to those claims. In June 2026 pump.fun posted an opening for a Chief Legal Officer paying 1 to 5 million dollars a year; the listing itself disclosed company internals, including over 300 million dollars in daily trading volume and more than 500 million dollars of profit the prior year, run with fewer than 100 employees. Cohen promoted the listing on X on June 24, 2026.

Buybacks, vesting and founder silence

Press coverage has tracked the company's buyback program alongside the litigation. Yahoo Finance reported on April 5, 2026 that pump.fun had spent 350 million dollars on PUMP buybacks since July 2025, removing about 116 billion tokens, or 32.9 percent of circulating supply, while the token still traded 81 percent below its September 2025 peak. On April 29, 2026 the company burned 128.22 billion PUMP, about 370 million dollars and 36 percent of circulating supply, and replaced its all revenue buyback policy with a rule routing 50 percent of net fees through an irreversible buyback and burn contract. By August 2026, crypto.news put cumulative repurchases at 15.7 percent of the original trillion token supply.

Insider selling discourse continued into 2026. The same April 2026 Yahoo Finance piece cited March onchain data showing a wallet linked to the team moving 1.75 billion PUMP to Bitget, which community members read as insider selling; the company did not confirm that reading, and the claim is attributed to onchain observers quoted by Yahoo Finance rather than to any admission.

Founder token vesting began in mid 2026. On August 12, 2026 the first monthly unlock after a twelve month cliff released 6.875 billion PUMP, roughly 4.17 billion to the team and 2.71 billion to early investors, per CryptoTicker; the July 2026 unlock had released 82.5 billion tokens.

Commentary has also tied the token's slump to founder silence. The RootData annual review noted that Cohen, normally hyperactive online, went more than a month without posting during the informant disclosures in late 2025, and that neither Kerler nor Tweedale publicly responded to the chat log allegations. Tweedale addressed the pattern himself in the August 2026 Crypto Insider conversation described above, calling the team's reduced communication after the fundraise a mistake. No rich list or net worth entries for any of the three founders appear in 2026 coverage; searches of crypto billionaire lists return nothing for Tweedale, Cohen or Kerler.

References

1. Wikipedia, Pump.fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump.fun
2. PANews: https://www.panewslab.com/en/articles/fromg1m8
3. Protos: https://protos.com/pump-fun-co-founder-dylan-kerler-linked-to-2017-ico-scams-report/
4. decripto.org: https://decripto.org/en/pump-fun-investigation-of-one-of-the-fouder-dylan-kerler-allegedly-linked-to-ethereumcash-and-ebitcoincash-rug-pulls/
5. courtlistener.com: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69593359/aguilar-v-baton-corporation-ltd-dba-pumpfun/
6. members.delphidigital.io: https://members.delphidigital.io/media/pump-funs-sapijiju-building-the-future-of-social-trading
7. meme-insider.com: https://meme-insider.com/en/article/pump-fun-not-a-casino-co-founder-makes-case-for-transparency-in-meme-coins/
8. Yahoo Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pump-fun-co-founder-denies-123201184.html
9. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpYR9oAQWRA
10. Crypto Briefing: https://cryptobriefing.com/pumpfun-layoffs-before-pump-vesting/
11. dlapiper.com: https://www.dlapiper.com/en/insights/publications/2025/02/meme-coins-alleged-to-be-securities-in-two-new-class-actions
12. Yahoo Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/whistleblower-drops-5-000-secret-210125260.html
13. Bitget: https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560605120230
14. Cryptopolitan: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/pump-fun-legal-chief-court-drama-persists/
15. burwick.law: https://www.burwick.law/active-cases/pump-fun-and-solana-rico-lawsuit-aguilar-v-baton-corporation
16. dailycryptobriefs.com: https://dailycryptobriefs.com/news/pump-fun-lawsuit-court-ban-rumor/
17. Yahoo Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/pump-fun-350-million-pump-210555552.html
18. news.bitcoin.com: https://news.bitcoin.com/pump-fun-burns-370-million-pump-tokens-revenue-buyback/
19. crypto.news: https://crypto.news/pump-fun-fees-top-10m-as-revenue-overtakes-hyperliquid/
20. cryptoticker.io: https://cryptoticker.io/en/pump-fun-record-week-unlock-solana-memecoins/
21. en.bloomingbit.io: https://en.bloomingbit.io/feed/news/118342
22. Bitcoinist: https://bitcoinist.com/linked-to-ico-scams-pump-fun-co-founder-accused-of-rug-pulls-in-2017-report/
23. X post by @STACCoverflow: https://x.com/STACCoverflow/status/2080569821259804768
24. X post by @UziCryptoo: https://x.com/UziCryptoo/status/2029967381146259685
25. Decrypt: https://decrypt.co/287465/pump-fun-token-solana-airdrop-record-week