The meme coin market has shown clear signs of recovery in December. Pump.fun — the leading platform for launching meme coins — is reporting another increase in newly minted tokens.
Analysts also note that investor sentiment is shifting toward higher risk appetite as the end of the year approaches.
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How does Pump.fun reflect increased risk appetite in December?
The number of new meme tokens created each day on Pump.fun has remained above 20,000 throughout December, according to Dune data. On December 2nd, the number exceeded 25,000. This was the highest level since mid-September and marked a significant change.
This recovery has not yet matched the peak levels seen in early 2025. However, this indicates a change in investor sentiment.
Many seem to think this is an opportune time for retail funds to flow back into low-cost tokens or newly launched tokens.
Although the number of new tokens shows a moderate increasing trend, Pump.fun’s revenue and DEX volume remain down more than 80% compared to the beginning of 2025.
One positive indicator stands out. That’s because the number of active addresses (including new addresses and repeaters) has consistently hovered around 100,000 on average since August. During this period, the market experienced multiple large liquidation events, but user participation did not decline sharply.
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Additionally, Michael Nadeau, founder of The DeFi Report, highlighted a notable comparison of user retention rates between Web2 and Pump.fun. Pump.fun achieved higher retention rates of 12.4% in week 4 and 11.4% in week 8. In contrast, Web2 averages range from 5% to 10% in week 4 and 2% to 5% in week 8.
These data points look encouraging in a market environment defined by depressed valuations and persistent extreme fear in the final quarter of this year.
Additionally, a well-known trader, Daan Crypto Trades, observed that meme coins outperformed major altcoins in the past two weeks.
“Memes have been the outperformer for change over the past two weeks. It has been a long time since memes have performed well. This is after a long period of outperformance dating back to 2023 and 2024,” Daan Crypto Trades said.
He added that this performance could be an early sign that the market is ready to accept higher risk levels. However, he cautioned that this trend is short-term and may not reflect long-term changes.
BeInCrypto’s recent report also highlights at least three indicators that suggest meme coin season could return in December. If this scenario materializes, the Pump.fun ecosystem could attract retail investors, investors who take on higher risks in search of potentially larger profits.
At the time of writing, the Pump.fun ecosystem ranks as the third best-performing category in the market during the first week of December, according to Coingecko.
