- Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the exchange would airdrop PUMP tokens to some users who attempted to place an order, but were unable to complete it due to “system constraints.”
- Eligible users will be emailed soon, according to a Kraken staffer, though some users complained that they were never able to place an order.
- Demand for Pump.fun’s ICO token appeared to greatly exceed supply given to the memecoin launchpad’s exchange partners; Bybit has apologized to users who experienced issues placing orders, but has not made a similar airdrop pledge.
Crypto exchange Kraken will airdrop tokens from Pump.fun's public PUMP token sale to some users whose orders failed due to the exchange's system constraints, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi announced.
"The sale was fully allocated in under sixty seconds and demand far exceeded available supply," Sethi said in his announcement. "Our records indicate that some clients arrived on time for the PUMP sale but were unable to complete their orders due to system constraints...We reviewed internal order logs and client activity to identify those affected."
Kraken did not immediately disclose how many users were affected, but the exchange's global head of consumer business said on X that the firm is working on a list and will email affected clients "soon." The Block was unable to immediately reach Kraken for further comment.
"Eligibility is based on verified order intent during the sale window," Sethi said. "No action is required. The distribution will be automatic and free of charge."
The airdrop will require Kraken to purchase tokens on the secondary market; though not all tokens have been distributed, perpetuals marketplace Hyperliquid places the value of PUMP at around $0.0067 at publishing time, a significant premium on the $0.004 public sale price.
Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun raised about $450 million onchain on Solana through its ICO token sale, while apparently selling the rest through its exchange partners: Bybit, Kraken, BitGet, MEXC, KuCoin, and Gate. Kraken was not the only exchange partner to run into issues during the sale; Bybit has apologized to its users, some of whom complained that they were unable to purchase tokens despite placing orders just nine or ten seconds after the window opened.
"Due to an unexpected API delay the offering was oversubscribed, resulting in a portion of users successfully receiving their allocations, while others [did] not," Bybit said on X. An earlier version of its post said the API delay was "from pump.fun"; the exchange later edited those words out of its statement. An additional update from Bybit is expected soon.
