Pump.fun betas: why every runner spawns copies, and how to spot the trap
A meme starts running. Within minutes, the launch feed fills with "baby" versions, "2.0" versions, its wife, its dog, the same name with a different ticker. Traders call them betas: smaller coins that are supposed to follow the runner up. The real question is who launched them, and why.
The short version
โข A beta lives on borrowed attention. Its only story is someone else's chart.
โข Launching one costs almost nothing, so a few wallets launch almost everything: 65% of pump.fun launches are followed by another launch from the same wallet within 24 hours, while 80% of creators launch only once.
โข Creators who stay with one meme graduate about 3ร more often (4.1% vs 1.3%). A beta from a serial creator starts with the worst odds there are.
What is a beta?
On pump.fun, a runner is a meme that is clearly winning: buyers pile in, the bonding curve fills, it graduates. A beta is a new coin built to ride that wave. Some copy the name outright. Others use a variation: "Baby $X", "$X 2.0", "$X's cat". The pitch is simple: "if the runner did 50ร, the beta only needs to do a fraction of that."
The runner earned its attention. The beta borrows it. That's the whole difference, and it matters, because borrowed attention disappears the moment the runner cools down.
Who launches them?
Anyone can, in about thirty seconds. That's the problem. Our live tracker measures who launches memes on pump.fun, and the pattern is stark:
- 65% of launches are followed by another launch from the same wallet within 24 hours, yet 80% of creators launch only one meme. In other words, a small group of wallets that launch all day long produces most of the feed.
- Creators who don't relaunch graduate about 3ร more often than those who do (4.1% vs 1.3% over seven days).
- After graduation, memes from serial creators (3+ launches in 24 hours) crashed by half within ten minutes 66% of the time, against 41% for first launches.
A beta is the easiest meme a serial creator can make: no idea needed, the narrative already exists. So when you buy a beta, there's a good chance you're buying from the wallets with the worst track record on the platform.
We haven't isolated betas as their own group yet. These numbers describe who launches memes in general. A dedicated beta study is next on our list.
Why it now happens at industrial scale
Copies have always existed. What's new is the tooling. Some sites now let you pick a running coin from a list and launch a "paired" beta in one click, and some sell visibility on top: send SOL to a wallet and your beta gets a better spot on a board, with nothing paid back. When launching copies becomes a product, the number of copies explodes, and every one of them competes for the same buyers.
That changes the math for you as a buyer. When a runner trends, there aren't three betas anymore. There are dozens, launched minutes apart, and the attention that was supposed to lift one of them is split between all of them.
Five checks before you buy a beta
- Check the contract address, not the ticker. Copies reuse names and tickers on purpose. The address is the only thing that can't be copied.
- Look at the creator's history. If the same wallet launched ten memes today, this one is the eleventh lottery ticket, not a project.
- Look at the launch block. Wallets that buy in the very first block, before anyone could click, are usually the creator's own. They're there to sell into your buy.
- Check the links. A website that doesn't mention the token, a site borrowed from another project, or an X account that is just someone else's tweet: all fake depth.
- Ask who benefits. If a platform earns from every beta launched or from selling board positions, it wins whether the beta lives or dies. You don't.
How the live map helps
The Eburon live map already flags most of this, for every launch, in real time: โญ original and ๐ฏ copy when several memes share a name, ๐ญ serial creators and their record, ๐ฃ copies of memes whose creator is in jail, ๐ญ borrowed websites, and the share of buys made by round-trip bots. Look for a beta on the map before you look at its chart.
And if you'd rather learn it the fun way, the copycats are in our maze game too: in RugRun, the ๐ธ copycats drain your bonding curve every time you touch one.
See the copies before you click. The live map shows every new pump.fun meme as it's born, with its creator's record and whether it's an original or a copy.
Open the live mapKnow someone who hunts betas? Send them this first.
Data: public Solana on-chain activity collected by the Eburon tracker. Creator figures measured over seven days; graduation crash figures over 642 graduations. Not financial advice.