On Pump.fun, King of the Hill was the top slot on the front page, announced by Pump.fun in February 2024 for whichever coin climbed to about $30k of market cap and held it. Today Pump.fun doesn't document King of the Hill or any front page ranking, so treat old rules of thumb as history, not a guarantee.
Key points
- The only primary source is a Pump.fun post on X from February 2024 describing about $30k market cap as the bar for the King of the Hill spot.
- Pump.fun's current docs and FAQ say nothing about King of the Hill or how trending lists are ranked.
- Market cap on the curve rises only with net buying, so any market cap threshold is really a curve progress threshold.
- Running the published constants ourselves, the curve completes near 410 SOL of market cap once about 85 SOL has gone in.
- Dollar thresholds move with the SOL price. Count in SOL when you plan.
That slot sat on the bonding curve stage, well before a coin was close to graduation.
Where did King of the Hill come from?
In February 2024, a few weeks into Pump.fun's life, the team posted on X that a coin reaching about $30k of market cap would take the King of the Hill spot at the top of the front page. You can read the original announcement yourself. It was simple and a bit gamey: one coin wears the crown until another one climbs past it.
It caught on fast. Creators started talking about "hitting KOTH" as a milestone in its own right, somewhere between launch and graduation, and a whole layer of advice grew up around how to get there first.
Then the site kept changing. Most guides skip this part.
Why did King of the Hill work so well as a hook?
King of the Hill was a strong hook because it gave a meme coin something to aim for that wasn't the moon. A creator with 3 SOL and a decent Telegram group could plausibly get there in an afternoon, take a screenshot of the crown and post it everywhere, and that screenshot pulled in a second wave of buyers who'd never have found the coin otherwise. We still meet creators who measure launch day by it, two and a half years later, even though the page they're picturing no longer looks the way it did.
What does Pump.fun document today?
Pump.fun documents coin creation, fees and the bonding curve in the Pump.fun FAQ, and King of the Hill isn't among those topics. Nor is any description of how the trending row, the featured spots or any sorted list on the front page gets built either. The February 2024 post remains the only public statement about a front page ranking, and it describes a page that has since been redesigned more than once.
So when someone tells you the exact market cap that wins the crown in 2026, ask them for a source. If they can't link one, they're repeating forum lore.
How does King of the Hill pump fun map to curve progress?
Why is a market cap target really a curve target? Pump.fun prices coins on a constant-product curve seeded with a virtual reserve of 30 SOL against roughly 1.073 billion virtual tokens, per the bonding curve docs and the program README. Out of a 1 billion supply, 793.1 million tokens are sold on the curve. Price only rises when net SOL flows in, so a given market cap always corresponds to a specific point on that curve.
We ran the numbers. These come from the published constants by our own arithmetic, not from a Pump.fun table, and they ignore fees.
| Market cap | Net SOL in the curve | Curve tokens sold |
|---|---|---|
| About 28 SOL | 0 SOL (launch) | 0% |
| 100 SOL | About 26.7 SOL | About 64% |
| 150 SOL | About 39.5 SOL | About 77% |
| 200 SOL | About 50.2 SOL | About 85% |
| 300 SOL | About 68.3 SOL | About 94% |
| About 410 SOL | About 85 SOL | 100% (curve complete) |
What does a $30k market cap mean on the curve today?
A $30k market cap means a different point on the curve depending on the SOL price. At $150 per SOL that's 200 SOL of market cap, which by our math means roughly 85% of the curve tokens are already sold. At $200 per SOL it's 150 SOL, around 77%. At $100 it's 300 SOL, almost at the finish. In people's heads the dollar figure stayed fixed while the SOL price, and possibly the curve parameters of early 2024, moved underneath it.
Notice something else in that table. Token share climbs much faster than the SOL raised, because early buys get far more tokens per SOL. A progress bar based on tokens and one based on SOL would show quite different numbers for the same coin, so don't panic if a third-party tool disagrees with what you see on the coin page.
What happens when the curve completes?
Curve completion is the moment real token reserves run out: the curve marks itself complete and liquidity migrates to PumpSwap automatically. By the same arithmetic that happens near 410 SOL of market cap, after about 85 SOL of net buying. Pump.fun lists a 0.015 SOL fee for that step. The graduation guide covers that step, and the full curve walkthrough lives on our bonding curve page.
What does the front page look like now?
Today's front page leans on trending and featured lists. Pump.fun hasn't said how those are ranked. Watching it day after day, we notice the coins up there usually have trades landing every few seconds, lots of different wallets in the trades tab, a chart still pointing up, people posting in the thread and, now and then, a creator live on stream. Those are observations. We can't tell you the weights, and nobody outside the company can either.
One more thing changed. In early 2024 there were far fewer launches per hour, and a single top slot could stay with one coin for a good while. With many more coins competing now, any visible spot turns over faster.
For more on those signals, plus an order of operations for launch day, read how to trend on Pump.fun.
How do you push toward the top of the page?
Pushing toward the top of the page is two jobs. One is net buying, which is the only thing that moves market cap along the curve. The other is visible activity from many people, which is what visitors and probably the ranking look at.
Set a SOL target, not a dollar one
Check the SOL price on launch day and turn any market cap goal into SOL. At $150 per SOL the old $30k mark equals 200 SOL of market cap, which the table above ties to about 50.2 SOL of net buying. Planning in SOL keeps the goal fixed when the dollar price moves.
Bring your own buyers first
A community that buys in the first minutes is the cheapest net buying you will ever get, and it is the kind nobody questions. Early buys also get the most tokens per SOL: by our math the first 26.7 SOL of net buying already sells about 64% of the curve tokens.
Add spread-out activity
Spread-out activity is what makes the trades tab look like a crowd: trades from hundreds of different wallets, which a Softatjeh run spreads across 500 to 10,000 fresh wallets. Make sure buys outweigh sells overall. Only net SOL flowing into the curve raises market cap, so without it the chart just churns sideways.
Fill the page
A finished page is the first thing visitors judge: a real image, a description, working links and a thread with genuine posts. Visitors decide in seconds. A coin that touches a visible spot with 14 holders and an empty thread rarely keeps the people who clicked through, so finish the page before launch and let every front page visitor land on something complete.
Watch and adjust
Checking the page every 15 minutes is enough to catch a slowdown early. If trades slow down, raise the pace instead of dumping a big buy all at once. Steady activity reads better than one spike, and a run paced anywhere from 15 minutes to 10 hours lets you stretch the same volume across the hours that matter most.
Where does Softatjeh fit in?
Softatjeh covers the activity part: our volume tool for Pump.fun coins handles the trades. Each run spreads trades over 500 up to 10,000 fresh wallets, sends through Jito bundles and can be paced over as little as 15 minutes or as long as 10 hours. If the coin graduates halfway through, trading simply moves on to the canonical PumpSwap pool. Extras are optional: replies, favorites, follows of the creator, feed bumps. Holder retention lets 20 to 80% of the wallets hold on to a little of the token after the run, so your holder count doesn't fall off a cliff overnight.
You pay 1% of the volume you target, never less than a 100 SOL target, and it already includes the trading charges Pump.fun and PumpSwap take, network costs and Jito tips, with nothing billed on top. A 300 SOL run costs 3 SOL. Payment goes to a deposit address the console shows you; you never connect a wallet.
Which King of the Hill myths keep coming back?
A few claims keep coming back in Telegram groups, and none of them hold up against the sources.
| Claim | What we can actually check |
|---|---|
| "KOTH is always at $30k" | That figure comes from one post in February 2024, priced in dollars, under a SOL price and front page that have both changed since. |
| "KOTH means you are about to graduate" | By our math a coin at 200 SOL of market cap still has roughly 35 SOL of net buying to go before the curve completes. |
| "Bumps win the crown" | Tiny repeated buys barely move market cap. Net SOL flowing into the curve is what moves it. |
| "Pump.fun publishes the ranking" | The docs and FAQ cover fees and the curve. Front page ordering is not described anywhere public. |
The second row surprises people most. Going from 200 SOL to roughly 410 SOL of market cap takes about 35 more SOL of net buying under today's constants, and that last stretch is often where coins stall, because early holders start taking profit just as the price gets interesting. Plan for it instead of assuming the top slot carries you over the line.
What can you realistically expect from the front page?
Market cap moves with net buying, and volume is a different number. A run can trade 300 SOL back and forth and leave the market cap close to where it started, because buys and sells cancel out. If the coin climbs, it's because buyers outweighed sellers, and the most durable buyers are people who actually like the coin.
No tool can promise the top slot. Not us, not anyone. Ranking rules are private, they change, and every other creator online at that moment is trying for the same rows.
What can a creator actually control?
What you can control is whether the page is worth landing on. Plenty of coins touched a visible spot for a few minutes and still died, because the people who clicked through saw 14 holders and an empty thread.
Mind the local rules too. Each country sets its own approach to promoting tokens, and we aren't giving legal advice here, so check where you live if you're not sure. Each swap in a run is a regular Solana transaction from one of many wallets, at varied sizes and times, much like a crowd of separate traders. We never ask for your keys, a signature or a wallet connection. We're not affiliated with Pump.fun.
Quick answers
What market cap did a coin need to become King of the Hill?
A coin needed about $30k of market cap to become King of the Hill, according to Pump.fun's February 2024 post on X. At $150 per SOL that equals 200 SOL of market cap, roughly 85% of the curve tokens sold under today's constants. Pump.fun has published no current figure, and the front page now runs on trending and featured lists.
Does King of the Hill still exist?
King of the Hill is absent from Pump.fun's current documentation. The Pump.fun FAQ and bonding curve docs cover coin creation, fees and the curve, and the February 2024 post on X remains the only public statement about the crown. Creators still use the term in 2026, but no current crown rule can be confirmed, so treat it as history.
Does King of the Hill mean the coin graduated?
No, King of the Hill does not mean the coin graduated. Graduation happens when the curve sells its last real tokens, near 410 SOL of market cap after about 85 SOL of net buying by our arithmetic, and liquidity then moves to PumpSwap. The $30k mark from 2024 sat earlier: a coin at 200 SOL of market cap still needs roughly 35 SOL more.
How much SOL does it take to reach a given market cap?
Reaching 100 SOL of market cap takes about 26.7 SOL of net buying under today's Pump.fun constants, and 200 SOL takes about 50.2 SOL, ignoring fees. Completing the curve near 410 SOL takes about 85 SOL. These are our own calculations from the published 30 virtual SOL, 1,073,000,000 virtual tokens and 793,100,000 tokens sold on the curve.
Can a volume bot get my coin King of the Hill?
A volume bot can add trades and a large number of distinct wallets, traits common on coins near the top, but it cannot guarantee a ranking Pump.fun does not publish. A Softatjeh run spreads trades over 500 to 10,000 fresh wallets. Market cap still rises only with net buying, so churned volume alone leaves the curve where it was.
Why do different sites show different curve progress?
Different sites show different curve progress because some count tokens sold and others count SOL raised. Early buys get many more tokens per SOL. By our math, 26.7 SOL of net buying already sells about 64% of the curve tokens, so a token-based bar runs well ahead of a SOL-based one for the same Pump.fun coin.
Climb with steady activity
Rankings change, but busy trading and a growing list of traders always help a page. Set up a run, see what it costs before paying and skip the wallet connection entirely.
Mitchel Davis writes and maintains the Softatjeh guides and revises them whenever Pump.fun changes its curve, feed or PumpSwap rules. Found a stale number? Tell us at support@softatjeh.com.