原文标题：He Built Memecoin Factory Pump.Fun. Did He Make a Small Fortune Dumping His Own Shitcoins as a Teen?
Original article by Joel Khalili, Wired
Original translation: BlockBeats
Editor's note: The highly anticipated pump.fun platform coin PUMP rose to around $0.007 after it went online on July 15, and then started a unilateral decline. The public sale price of $0.004 did not effectively stop the decline, and PUMP fell below $0.003 today, which hit investors' confidence in PUMP. Although the PUMP public sale explicitly prohibits US users from participating, it does not affect the US Meme players who also suffered losses in Meme transactions and broke their defense. Burwick Law, a well-known law firm that has initiated Meme coin investment lawsuits many times, announced yesterday that it would expand the scope of the lawsuit against the Pump platform and include Solana Foundation, Solana Labs and Jito in the list of defendants.
In addition, the "average age" of the Pump.fun team has also become a point of heated discussion in the crypto community. According to a previous report by the New York Times, Pump.fun is headquartered in London, UK, and is led by three entrepreneurs in their early 20s: Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerler. The three have registered a physical company, Baton Corporation, with Noah Tweedale as CEO, and all three are directors of the company. They met in Oxford, UK, and have many years of experience in trading meme coins such as Dogecoin.
This is an article from WIRED in April this year, which may help readers understand the Pump.fun platform and the people behind it.
Pump.Fun, the world’s largest Memecoin factory, lets anyone create their own cryptocurrency. But years before the platform launched, a co-founder by the same name, Dylan Kerler, had made a small fortune issuing and selling his own tokens.
According to WIRED, an individual named Dylan Kerler issued eight tokens in 2017. At the time, Pump.Fun co-founder Dylan Kerler was only 16 years old. Two of the tokens - eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash - gained traction on crypto forums before their prices plummeted and investors accused the developers of a rug pull.
According to an analysis by blockchain security company CertiK, the developer who uses the name Dylan Kerler earned as much as $75,000 in cryptocurrency in 2017 just from the sales of eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash - based on today's currency prices, this part of the assets may be worth up to $400,000.
“After waiting for market share and price to rise, they quickly cashed out and left,” said CertiK Chief Security Officer Tielei Wang. “We strongly suspect that EthereumCash is a tool designed by developers for rug pull.”
Pump.Fun’s raison d’être, according to its co-founders, is to protect investors from unscrupulous actors by standardizing how tokens are issued, but there’s evidence that Dylan Kerler was exactly the kind of developer the platform was trying to protect against early on.
As of press time, neither Pump.Fun nor Dylan Kerler responded to multiple requests for comment.
The rise of Pump.Fun and its mysterious founder
Pump.Fun was founded in January 2024 by three entrepreneurs in their early twenties, Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerler. The platform quickly became the preferred incubation and trading venue for Memecoin.
These cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and are primarily intended for speculation. According to third-party statistics, in just 15 months, Pump.Fun has generated more than $600 million in revenue through a 1% trading commission.
The three co-founders rarely disclose their identities, locations, or company structure. Tweedale told WIRED last year that the anonymity was for "personal safety" to prevent blackmail or attacks on the huge crypto assets managed by Pump.Fun.
Of the three, Kerler has the least public information. Aside from being listed as a director in the UK company registry Companies House, he has almost no public connection to Pump.Fun. Tweedale told WIRED that Kerler was responsible for leading the development team to write platform code and iterate on features. Aside from an X (original Twitter) account named @outdoteth, Kerler has almost no online presence.
However, a series of "digital clues" left in corners of the Internet such as GitHub, YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium, etc. still link this name to the suspected rug pull operations of eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash.
Digital footprints: Tracing back early token rollouts
In 2017, the two tokens, eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, were initially promoted by two accounts on the crypto forum BitcoinTalk: DOMAINBROKER and ninjagod, both belonging to the same user. According to a forum message, after the DOMAINBROKER account was "suspected of being hacked," the user began to communicate with investors using the ninjagod identity.
In a forum post promoting eBitcoinCash, DOMAINBROKER provided an email address containing Dylan Kerler's name and called it a "personal email address"; in another EthereumCash topic post initiated by ninjagod, several forum users directly called Dylan Kerler the developer of the project.
Meanwhile, multiple clues suggest that Pump.Fun co-founder Dylan Kerler was in the same area as the developers of eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, who said in an old Telegram group that they were in Brighton, England.
Voter registration records reviewed by WIRED show that Kerler was still registered at an address in the Brighton and Hove area of the UK in at least 2024. When a reporter visited the address on April 15, a resident who responded via intercom refused to reveal his identity but said that Kerler "no longer lives here", which indirectly confirmed the accuracy of the voter registration.
Companies House documents show that an entity under Pump.Fun was registered at the same property in Brighton and Hove. The address is also shared by two other companies, both of which list Kee Fatt Phoon, 62, as a director. Mr Phoon is also registered as a voter at the address.
Aliases and associations: Dylan Kerler or Dylan Phoon?
Dylan Kerler appears to have used the alias "Dylan Phoon", which is the same last name as Kee Fatt Phoon, suggesting the two may be related.
Until recently, a GitHub account using the nickname "outdoteth" maintained an old code repository that included a Gmail address named after Dylan Phoon; the avatar used for that address also appeared on a Medium account named DylanKerler1, as well as on Dylan Phoon's LinkedIn and YouTube accounts.
The above YouTube account uploaded a video about the cryptocurrency Skycoin. Although the project was created by someone else, its logo also appeared on ninjagod's BitcoinTalk account, which can be regarded as an indirect clue that the two are from the same person.
Another YouTube account named @dylankerler4130 has posted a video about the "Equis" project, which claims to "revolutionize the gaming industry." Equis was also promoted by ninjagod on BitcoinTalk, and its code is exactly the same as eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash. (The project did not attract investor interest on the forum)
In summary, the two names used by the co-founders of Pump.Fun - Dylan Kerler and Dylan Phoon - can be traced back to accounts related to the promotion of EthereumCash and eBitcoinCash on BitcoinTalk.
ICO Bubble and Early Rug Pull Model
Both eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash were launched by a developer using the name Dylan Kerler during the height of the ICO boom, when hundreds of token projects raised billions of dollars from investors through the ICO model, which became popular among crypto startups because it did not require equity dilution.
Conducting an ICO typically involves a three-step process: deploying a contract on the Ethereum network to mint tokens, describing the project’s vision on a website, and soliciting external investment. “Many projects are just a white paper and a website with a countdown timer — the threshold is very low,” Wang said.
Analysts point out that while some projects that raised funds through ICOs (such as Ethereum) are still operating, most ICOs are manipulated, exaggerated, or even outright fraudulent, which ultimately led to tighter regulation. Many developers exaggerate the purpose of the project, manipulate prices to create hype, and even fabricate rates of return.
“Developers are pushing the fantasy of high returns,” said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at blockchain analytics firm Nansen. “That’s where the FOMO comes from.”
The hype around the ICO craze led to a large number of gullible investors who did little due diligence in the pursuit of profits, a phenomenon similar to today’s investment in suspicious meme coins. “The meme craze has a lot in common with ICOs,” Søndergaard pointed out. “It’s very easy to sell a story to the public and then quickly reap the benefits.”
The boom and bust of EthereumCash
A developer going by the pseudonym Dylan Kerler began promoting EthereumCash, its most popular token, in early October 2017.
The developer followed the standard script: minting tokens on Ethereum, building a website, and promoting it on BitcoinTalk, Twitter, and Telegram. To create hype, they distributed tokens for free through so-called "airdrops" and promised to release a white paper. At the time, the white paper was seen as a symbol of legitimacy that could drive prices up.
“The release of a white paper can be a huge boost to traction,” Søndergaard said. “Even the promise of a release can be enough to stir up market sentiment.”
Screenshots of the deleted website of the project circulated on Telegram reveal how it was promoted to potential investors. The page claims: "We are committed to making the transition from fiat to crypto as smooth as possible while still maintaining an atmosphere of integrity and high-end (original grammatical errors retained)." An image of an EthereumCash bank card that claims to be used for physical consumption is also shown at the bottom of the page.
A table obtained by WIRED shows that in just a few days, hundreds of people have registered to participate in the EthereumCash airdrop. At the same time, discussions on the BitcoinTalk forum are heated. One user wrote: "Let's spread the word and let more people pay attention to this excellent token." As of October 19, the market value of EthereumCash has risen to about $1.3 million.
But just as early investors were getting excited, a developer named Dylan Kerler began shipping the product in secret.
CertiK analysis shows that Dylan Kerler distributed millions of EthereumCash to wallets under his control a few days after the token was created. One of the wallets starting with 0x7f3E2 was then used to sell a large number of tokens to the market.
0x7f3E2 sold hundreds of batches of EthereumCash on peer-to-peer trading platform EtherDelta between October 19 and 21. These sales coincided with a catastrophic crash in the asset’s price, which fell by 87.9%.
On Telegram and BitcoinTalk, panic spread. One user, presumably trying to have some fun, began referring to the token as “ECRASH.” Others accused the developers of being solely responsible. “Everyone is furious,” another Telegram user who participated in the EthereumCash airdrop told WIRED. “I think this is my first rug pull.”
The much-anticipated white paper never appeared, and eventually the developer, Dylan Kerler, who had written days earlier: “I can assure you that the project is making great progress,” disappeared from BitcoinTalk threads and Telegram groups.
In three transactions on October 20 and 21, the developer's wallet withdrew a total of 240 Ethereum (ETH) proceeds from EtherDelta - about $75,000 at the time. After each withdrawal, the ETH was immediately transferred to another wallet address (0xc8ae1), and then dispersed to three wallets: 0x7EAbb, 0x31728, and 0x952F3. Ultimately, the ETH was transferred to accounts on centralized trading platforms such as Binance, Bity, and the now-closed Cryptopia - which are commonly used to exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies.
In total, WIRED identified at least 20 wallets used by a developer calling himself Dylan Kerler that were used to issue, airdrop, or sell eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, or to transfer related revenue to centralized exchanges.
“The effect of this layering is to obscure the flow of money,” Søndergaard said. “If you have nothing to hide, there’s really no point in doing that. That’s suspicious in itself.”
Although some investors still have illusions about its return - on October 24, someone joked that "I smell the smell of white paper" - all signs have already pointed to the final end.
“It will be like a pump and dump, a round of pump and dump, and early investors will get their money back,” one developer wrote in a BitcoinTalk post in early October. “Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s the truth.”
What is faster than getting rich is forgetting
To this day, Pump.Fun is still going strong. According to third-party statistics, its platform has a daily revenue of up to $1 million. The founders' wealth has soared, far surpassing eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash. While this "wealth-making machine" continues to operate, Rug Pull, which goes against its original intention, is still being performed, and almost no one is interested.
Last November, a teenager started a live broadcast on Pump.Fun, creating and selling a token in just a few minutes, making a net profit of $30,000. He shouted "Holy fuck! Holy fuck!" and raised his middle fingers to the camera - this moment may be the true footnote of this era.
Recommended reading:
Pump.fun’s fall in three parts: legal hunting, coin price cut, and trust collapse
Pump.fun's IC0 drama: a tug-of-war of confusion, doubt and controversy
The beginning of “Meme 2.0”? Pump.fun and the future path of on-chain financing