Pump.fun Creator Rewards Under Fire, Walletchi Brings NFTs to Apple Wallet

Pump.fun’s creator-callout rewards are drawing criticism because critics say they can pay promoters to create demand while followers buy tokens that promoters may already hold through side wallets. Bubble Maps was cited as finding five wallets that bought tokens before Angelo’s callouts and sold minutes afterward, with deposits linking multiple wallets to him. It reportedly counted 534 callouts in two weeks, about 40 a day, and estimated $130,000 in profits across linked wallets: $50,000 from side-wallet trading and $80,000 in callout rewards. Angelo’s public wallet was reportedly down about $100,000 in the first half of October. These figures were presented as estimates, and the speaker stressed that public-wallet performance may omit other wallets, fees, and rewards.

The discussion questioned whether rewards tied to fees on promoted tokens encourage callers to sell into demand from followers. Bando said 97% of Pump.fun traders lost money over the prior 30 days, more than $3 million went to bundlers, and the team extracted another $43 million. The cited figures showed a small number of wallets with large realized profits but 114,000 wallets making under $500; they do not show how much traders risked, whether wallets belong to the same people, or whether profitable wallets were connected to promoters. Ferrer was reported near the top of the callout-rewards leaderboard at $116,000, while the average called-out token had a $12,000 market cap and another speaker put the median at $14,000.

Speakers described the reward model as unusual and potentially unsustainable, arguing it can make token promotion profitable even when a caller’s public trading wallet loses money. Chicken Wizard proposed locking creator rewards for 30 days and paying them only if a coin was not an instant rug, along with a “rug to fund” that would return a small dividend to affected users. Mike Gia said Pump.fun subsidizes rewards and may not be able to do so indefinitely, though he expected it to continue while the platform remained the leading launchpad. Speakers also questioned claims of 900,000 new users per month, saying wallet figures would require very high churn to support them; some activity might be bots or farming, but genuine newcomers could also be drawn by reported gains.

The broader concern was that followers may not understand that callers can earn from rewards or side-wallet trading even when their public wallets show losses. Speakers compared the activity to gambling, where casual participants may accept poor odds for entertainment, but warned that losing users may leave and damage crypto’s reputation. Some said a continuous stream of new buyers replacing those who lose money resembles a Ponzi, while acknowledging uncertainty about the law in different regions. Pump-and-dump activity, bundling, and wash trading were described as risks for public or law-enforcement scrutiny; speakers did not establish the legal status of the conduct.

Walletchi’s creator said the project puts NFTs into Apple Wallet and Google Wallet as passes, not as an App Store listing. About 140–150 people had the product on their phones, and roughly 150 had a pet NFT in a Wallet pass that they could interact with without MetaMask. The creator said approval was difficult because Apple and Google treat Wallet as trusted infrastructure, and described the passes as using rails shared with payment cards, boarding passes, and store-rewards points. ERC 8426 enables the interactive NFT pets; its open-source, MIT-licensed SDK is available on npm.

A Walletchi pet can be fed by tapping its pass, drawing tokens from a balance held by the NFT, with activity trackable on testnet. The creator said existing NFTs can be wrapped into passes and a DRC can launch new ones. Actions can initiate blockchain transactions using wallet abstraction, smart contracts, and 6551, but Wallet passes have no API or codable surface, so Walletchi relies on a workaround and actions currently require opening pass details. The creator said iOS 27 added more card-design options and 14 preset buttons, but had no role in Apple’s updates, which came after his pass was approved.

Minting was shut down after infrastructure costs rose and a Privy account hit its limit; the creator estimated 1,000 mints could have cost thousands of dollars, though existing pets remained usable. The synopsis said 115 Walletchi NFTs remained. Feeding burns part of the input, redistributes part to other Walletchis, and sends another portion to a prize pot; when a pet dies, its owner stops receiving rewards and gets an email and a soulbound tombstone NFT. The last survivor is set to receive Tesna tokens, though the creator cautioned the pot might have little value. He was unsure whether Walletchi would launch, worried users might see its mechanics as a Ponzi, and hoped legacy projects might adopt the technology.