What does the 0.02 SOL pay for?
It covers creating your coin on pump.fun (the on-chain accounts and network fees the platform wallet pays to create it). There is no dev buy on top. If creation fails, it is refunded automatically, minus a tiny network fee for the refund itself.
Why is the platform wallet the creator and not me?
So that every coin's creator fees land in one place and can be pooled into buybacks. That is the whole mechanism: fees from all coins flow to the coins with the most real volume. Your wallet is still shown on the coin's page as its launcher.
What exactly is "real volume"?
SOL bought and sold on the coin during the epoch, after three filters: the platform's own buybacks are removed; a wallet that buys and sells within 5 minutes has the matched amount counted at 10%; and no wallet counts for more than 10% of a coin's total. Every trade on a coin's page shows what counted.
Can I wash-trade my own coin to the top?
Round-tripping the same SOL is mostly discounted away, one wallet is capped at 10%, and eligibility needs 10 different wallets. You would need many wallets trading real size against each other for the whole epoch, paying pump.fun's fee on every trade, to earn a share of a pool those fees helped fill. The inputs are published, so people can see it too.
Can the platform's buybacks pump a coin's volume?
No. Buybacks are flagged and excluded from real volume and wallet counts, so a buyback can never earn a coin its next buyback.
What if no coin is eligible?
Nothing is bought that epoch and the fees stay in the wallet, rolling into the next pool (up to the per-epoch cap of 2 SOL).
How do I check an epoch was split fairly?
Open the epoch's recap page, download the audit JSON and hash it (SHA-256); it must match the published hash. The file lists every trade with its counted amount, each coin's totals, the rules and the resulting shares, so the split can be recomputed by hand or with a script.
Can I get alerts?
Yes. Connect a wallet, sign one message (no transaction, no cost), watch coins with ☆ Watch, and enable push alerts on your watchlist page. You get a push when a watched coin becomes eligible, enters the top 3, or when the epoch is about to end while it is eligible.
Is this safe?
Memecoins are extremely risky and most go to zero. Buybacks support coins with real volume; they do not guarantee anything. Trade only what you can afford to lose.