Alon Cohen
Co-founder of pump.fun
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Alon Cohen (“alon”) pump.fun, the Solana launchpad that made minting a memecoin take less time than making coffee, and is now the public face of the most divisive product in crypto.
Who they are
Alon Cohen is a co-founder of pump.fun, the Solana platform that lets anyone create and launch a token in under a minute. He co-founded it with Noah Tweedale and Dylan Kerler after a run of failed attempts to get traction for NFT, SocialFi and DeFi products on the EVM. For most of the platform's early life he was known publicly only as "alon", an X account with no verified biography attached to a real name, which is roughly the standard configuration for someone running a business that prints several thousand tokens a day.
History
Pump.fun launched in January 2024 and rewrote the economics of memecoins by removing every barrier to launching one, which produced both an explosion of genuine community tokens and an industrial-scale supply of instant rugs. Cohen became the platform's spokesman by default, defending it through waves of criticism about scam density, dev abandonment and the general condition of the trenches. He has publicly framed the ambition as going beyond token launches entirely, stating an intent to compete with legacy social platforms like Facebook and TikTok. In March 2026 he announced a protocol change capping creator fee modifications to a single post-launch edit, part of a broader series of adjustments made after the "vamping" fee controversy damaged trust among Solana traders. He is one of the very small number of people whose product decisions directly move the market this encyclopedia documents.
Notes
- Co-founded pump.fun with Noah Tweedale and Dylan Kerler; the platform launched in January 2024.
- Built EVM products in NFTs, SocialFi and DeFi before pump.fun without finding traction.
- Operated publicly as the pseudonymous "alon" before his full name was widely known.
- Has stated an ambition for pump.fun to compete with legacy social media platforms.
- Announced a March 2026 change capping creator fee edits to one post-launch modification.
- Faced sustained industry criticism over the "vamping" creator-fee controversy on Solana.
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Official links
Links point to accounts we believe are official at time of writing. Always double-check a handle before trusting it. Impersonators are everywhere in crypto.