Memecoin issuing platform Pump.fun’s new bounty product has sparked its first controversy.
A user posting under the name Arivu on The task appeared to reference a token called $Bountywork, but the bounty description itself used the misspelled version “$boutywork.”
Arivu said he followed the task exactly.
“Guys, I followed everything exactly like the name mentioned in the line,” he wrote on X, adding that it wasn’t his fault because he tattooed the exact name mentioned by the bounty creator. “Please, I gave my life,” he wrote.
The typo then became the deal.
A Solana token using the BOUTYWORK ticker began trading on PumpSwap, reaching a market cap of over $600,000 shortly after going live. It seized over $3.5 million in volume in 24 hours, 2,630 holders and approximately $43,000 in liquidity.
Arivu later posted that he received $20,000, but thanks to trading fees from a token that someone had launched. He shared the symbolic address and thanked the users, saying they had changed his life.
“Pay anyone to do anything”
Pump.fun GO, announced last week that it would allow users to create and complete bounties for almost any task. The company pitched it as a way to “pay anyone to do anything,” a phrase that sounds like Internet fun (and most bounties are light challenges) until the task becomes more exploitative, like permanent body modifications.
Negative reactions to the new platform were swift.
An A phone call to the tattoo parlor made by CoinDesk went unanswered on two occasions.
Nikita Bier, the widely followed product manager at X, was more direct:
“It’s sad that all the rich people have abandoned crypto and now the whole industry is just American teenagers forcing poor people to do shameful things.”
Tattooing wasn’t the only task that pushed Pump.fun GO beyond the normal memecoin theater.
Other open bounties reviewed by CoinDesk have shown how widespread the challenges are. Some were silly internet challenges, like one that asked users to complete a watermelon eating challenge in less than 60 seconds for a reward of around $93.
Another offered people about $663 to go to Skid Row in Los Angeles, a 50-block neighborhood with one of the largest homeless populations known for its drug markets and extreme poverty, and interview two homeless people on camera to find out who they voted for.
But some started to become dangerous.
One bounty asked people to drink an entire bottle of alcohol while promoting a token, with videos showing multiple submissions from users appearing to drink bottles in about a minute.
Another offered someone about $266 to shave their head while shouting “Jobcoin.”
This is where the exploitative nature of the memecoin frenzy appears.
Pump.fun GO turns attention into bounty, bounty into content, and content into symbolic exchange. The person who performs the stunt may receive a small reward. The creator can toss a coin around it and capture much more if the market takes off.
The more attention something gets, the more profit it can potentially generate.
To be clear, Pump.fun has no role in the types of feeds users choose to create and has an active moderation team that removes dark or malicious content. Pump has moderated the platform’s activity since its launch.
CoinDesk has contacted Pump.fun for comment.
However, this is not the first time that Pump.fun has found itself involved in controversial social experiments.
Previously, the platform live-streamed videos ranging from extreme dark humor to dark behavior, all in an effort to boost its tokens to a few million dollars in market capitalization.
As some of these streams went live, several videos that emerged, including suicide streams, death threats, and a man permanently locked in his toilet, were disturbing to say the least.
And that is the uncomfortable part of this story.
On one hand, it’s the wild and wacky side of the crypto internet: a typo, a bounty, a Solana token, a viral photo, and a chart that rises vertically before most people understand what happened.
On the other hand, when crypto is reeling from a bear market and trying to be taken seriously by the masses, such stunts show how quickly memecoin incentives can damage crypto’s reputation as a serious contender on everyday financial rails.
