Pump.fun and its co-founder account have been banned by X. What caused this wave of "account bans" in the crypto world?

Author: Bitpush

In the early hours of June 17th, Beijing time, the X (formerly Twitter) platform once again experienced a large-scale account ban incident, and the official account of the popular Meme token platform Pump.fun and its co-founder Alon were also not spared. This was yet another incident following the mass ban action on June 12th. Dozens of accounts belonging to KOLs and project teams in the crypto field, including the core GMGN ecosystem account and the Bloom Trading team, were simultaneously banned, marking the onset of a "ban storm" targeting the crypto industry on X.

According to community tracking, in addition to Pump.fun, a large number of accounts related to GMGN, as well as other independent KOLs and project accounts, have been banned.

Including:

GMGN related accounts:

• @gmgnai
• @haze0x (Founder)
• @arthur_gmgn (Co-founder)
• @Ga__ke (Associated Account)
• @brc20niubi (associated account)
• @Wolfy_XBT (associated account)
• @0xcryptowizard (associated account)
• @ivyflame (Team Member)
• @gmgnaiJapanese

Bloom related accounts:

• @BloomTrading
• @imBFFF00 (team member)
• @nftraian (team member)
• @CookerFlips (Partner)
• @vibed333 (linked account)

Other frozen accounts:

• @bullx_io
• @ElizaOS (Team)
• @shawmakesmagic
• @uxento
• @Nuotrix_

In-depth analysis of community comments and reasons

Although the X platform has not given a clear official explanation, various speculations and analyses are circulating within the community, attempting to explain the reasons behind the large-scale account bans:

1. Serious violations of API usage regulations, X platform strictly cracks down on "black market" data acquisition: Some analysts point out that certain crypto applications such as Pump.fun, GMGN, Bloom, and Uxento have used Twitter trackers and snipers (tools that can quickly track tweets or wallets). However, these tools did not obtain data directly from the X platform through legal means, but are alleged to have used "black market" or shared APIs—methods of accessing X platform data that are unofficial or unauthorized.

The X platform has begun to crack down on such behaviors. There have been precedents, as another tool, WuupX, received a cease and desist letter for violating Twitter's terms of service. Now, other accounts using similar settings are also starting to face bans. This unauthorized data acquisition method is considered to have infringed on the 'cake' of the X platform, as the official API fees for businesses can reach up to $42,000 per month. Unauthorized use for data scraping is highly likely to violate the platform's terms of service and is regarded as abnormal access behavior or abuse of system resources.

2. Platform Manipulation and Spam Behavior: Users such as @sakakimay1995 have analyzed that some banned accounts, particularly ElizaOS and GMGN, may be backed by automated posting frameworks (agents automatically posting on X) or generating large amounts of homogeneous content to lead users to purchase Meme coins. This kind of bulk-generated, structurally similar content that lacks sufficient user interaction can easily be classified by the platform as spam or platform manipulation.

3. The accusation of "excessive liquidity extraction" and potential fraud mechanism: Crypto KOL Mary (@MaryWynnReal) pointed out that the founder of Pump.fun was banned by X, possibly related to an anomaly named "Liquidity Harvesting 2.0 (Liquidity Harvesting 2.0)". Mary stated that this is an alleged mechanism through which funds in users' wallets mysteriously disappear and reappear in suspicious wallets.

She also mentioned that this move occurred just hours after an internal review on the platform hinted at a possible "unexpected over-innovation in financial concepts." Moreover, the Pump.fun homepage has been jokingly referred to by users as "DeFi Slot Machine (Slot Machine of DeFi)," a title that reportedly caught the attention of those "very laid-back and with only a superficial understanding of crypto memes regulatory interns."

4. Rumors about the "AutoRug" feature: Mary’s comments further revealed that insiders claimed the founder of Pump.fun had been developing a new feature called AutoRug, aimed at saving time for developers and "exit liquidity participants" (i.e., high-level bag holders). A Telegram administrator described it this way: "It’s really efficient. You launch a token, it rugs itself, and then you receive a push notification. It’s like Uber Eats, but what’s being delivered is financial despair."

5. Potential multi-jurisdictional violations: In addition to the "minor violations" of Regulation X, the ban may also be related to alleged violations in four jurisdictions, suggesting that the incident may have broader legal or regulatory implications.

6. Rectification of Meme Coin Promotion Accounts: Another perspective suggests that the recent wave of account bans may be a concentrated rectification by the X platform targeting accounts that frequently publish various Meme token contract addresses (CAs). Considering the high-risk nature of the Meme coin market and potential market manipulation concerns (for example, the Pump.fun platform's revenue of $1 billion in 2024 with only 0.4% of wallets in profit, and an 80% crash in Meme coins), the X platform may be strengthening its regulation over the promotion of such high-risk financial products.

7. Relatively "far-fetched" speculations: There are also some rather "outlandish" guesses, such as those involving the release of memes featuring Trump or Musk, but these are usually not considered the main reasons.

Community Response and Pump.fun Current Status

The incident occurred suddenly and on a large scale, raising doubts among many KOLs and project parties regarding the content regulation mechanism of platform X. Accounts that were banned are gradually filing appeals. As of the time of writing this article, the Pump.fun official website and operations through other channels remain active, and discussions in the community about this large-scale banning are still brewing. More details and an official response from platform X are yet to be observed.