BonkFun has rolled out a new incentive structure aimed directly at traders, marking another step in how Solana coin launchpads are quietly reshaping who gets rewarded.
The rollout of new features on Bonkfun shows a deeper infrastructure shift, highlighting the growing competition between meme launchpads as rival Pumpfun also pursues its own structural changes.
The update, announced on
Presentation of the Winners’ Arch.
Rewarding the best Solana traders with the biggest weekly trading rewards
This is how we help the best slicers earn more
pic.twitter.com/6eviqoQ1hN
– BONK.fun (@bonkfun) January 19, 2026
Rather than focusing on creators or deployers, the program ranks participants based on profits made and pays the top 50 traders each week directly on Axiom.
BonkFun reworks incentives to reward profitable trading
The structure involves traders operating on supported $1 pairs during the active reward window and ending the week with a positive realized PnL.
The size of the prize pool, combined with the explicit focus on trading skills rather than token creation, signals a clear shift in priorities.
BonkFun described the launch as its first concrete step toward “putting slicers first,” a phrase that has increasingly defined its recent messaging.
BonkFun COO Tom Solport framed the move as part of a broader reset. He said the team spent months reworking its systems to address what it saw as structural issues, particularly around creator fees.
Tom noted that the partnership with Axiom and the weekly rewards aim to make BonkFun competitive again after a period where incentives shifted away from active traders.
User reactions show this framework, with some welcoming the return of a leaderboard that makes performance visible and others joking about the return to trading almost around the clock.
Last week, BonkFun announced the launch of “BONK Classic” with no creator fees and a reduced swap fee of 0.30%, most of which is redirected to liquidity.
BonkFun has maintained an alternative option through its “BONKERS” launches, where creation fees may be higher but swap fees are reduced, giving communities the choice between a merchant-driven economy and a creator-driven economy.
Strategy divergence: BonkFun courts traders while Pump.fun doubles down on creators
This merchant-centric shift contrasts with Pump.fun, which continues to emphasize the creator economy even as it introduces new features.
Earlier in January, Pump.fun overhauled its creation fee system, allowing fees to be spread across multiple portfolios and adjusted for changes based on market capitalization.
– Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) January 9, 2026
Although the team acknowledged that past incentives were too biased toward creating low-risk coins, they did not remove creation fees completely.
The discrepancy is visible in the data, as in the last 24 hours, Pump.fun saw over 24,500 tokens created, compared to around 3,290 on BonkFun.
Pump.fun is also well ahead in terms of volume, active addresses and fee generation.
Yet BonkFun’s changes suggest it is focusing less on raw emissions numbers and more on re-attracting experienced traders through reduced friction and direct rewards.
Taken together, the developments indicate a subtle but deliberate shift in the coin launchpad landscape.
BonkFun is betting that rewarding traders and reducing creator mining will rebuild engagement on the trading side.
Pump.fun maintains its creator-focused model while adding funding, social features, and structural adjustments.
The competition hasn’t opened up, but the incentives on each platform are moving in different directions, reshaping the playing field without openly declaring a fight.
The post Bonkbot Shifts Coin Incentives to Traders with 200,000 Reward as Pump.fun Maintains Creator Fees appeared first on Cryptonews.
