The word "launchpad" is doing two very different jobs, and the gap between them is where beginners lose money. When an exchange runs a launchpad, it has picked one project, checked it, and is offering that single token to its own users. When people call Pump.fun a launchpad, they mean something close to the opposite: an open venue where anyone can create any token in minutes, with nobody screening what gets made. Same word, two products. The one distinction that matters is who selected the asset, and who is left holding the risk if it fails. Knowing which of the two you are dealing with tells you how much of the homework, and the risk, falls on you.
The naming collision
Both models get called a launchpad because both are places where new tokens first appear, and that surface similarity hides the real difference. An exchange launchpad is a gate: a small number of projects pass through it after review. An open venue like Pump.fun is a doorway with no lock, where the number of new tokens is effectively unlimited. Treating the two as the same category is the mistake, because the questions you should ask, who vetted this and what happens if it goes to zero, have completely different answers depending on which one you are standing in. If you are new to the platform side of this, the plain-language starting point is what Pump.fun is, and this article sits next to it to settle the launchpad confusion specifically.
What an exchange launchpad is
An exchange launchpad is the exchange version of a public offering. In industry terms it is an initial exchange offering, or IEO, described as the process of raising capital for a startup by selling its token directly through an established exchange, with the exchange acting as the middleman between the project and investors (source: Wikipedia, Initial exchange offering). The defining feature is selection: the hosting exchange conducts due diligence and vets the project before the sale, checking the team, the plan, and the tokenomics, in part to protect its own reputation. One token, chosen and reviewed by the exchange, sold to that exchange's users. The first example from a major venue was Binance Launchpad in January 2019, and that template, a curated sale to a known user base, is what the word launchpad originally meant.
That vetting reduces risk while leaving plenty of it in place, and honest sources say so. The same model grew up precisely because the earlier free-for-all, the initial coin offering era, let projects raise money online from the public while bypassing the traditional intermediaries that would vet a deal (source: Wikipedia, Initial coin offering). An IEO adds a gatekeeper, but a buyer is still exposed to the project failing on its own merits. The point for this comparison is narrower: on an exchange launchpad, someone with a reputation to lose looked at the token first.
What Pump.fun is
Pump.fun is the open doorway of that pair, a permissionless venue on Solana where any person can mint a new token in a couple of clicks, and the platform is explicit that it does not stand behind what gets created. Its own terms of service describe the tokens as user-generated digital assets and state that the platform is not responsible for them, does not recommend that any of them be bought or held under any circumstances, and expects you to do your own due diligence about the creator before you touch one (source: Pump.fun Terms of Service). Selection is absent here: nobody at the venue decided this particular token was worth offering. If you want the mechanics of how a coin is actually created and traded there, that is covered separately in how Pump.fun works.
The scale is the tell here: because minting is open to everyone, the platform produces a constant stream of new tokens, far more than any vetted launchpad would ever offer, and it trades today as an active, established venue on Solana (source: CoinMarketCap, Pump.fun). That flood is the model working as intended: an open venue optimizes for letting anyone try, and it leaves filtering out by design. How many coins have launched there, and what usually happens to them, is its own topic in coins launched on Pump.fun.
Pump.fun's own token, PUMP, trades on established exchanges, and on BloFin it is the PUMP/USDT market. If you are weighing that trade, the first thing to price in is what the position costs, which the BloFin fee schedule sets out in full.
Who picked the token, and who carries the risk
Strip away the shared word and the difference is a single question with two answers. On an exchange launchpad, the exchange picked the token and put its name on that choice, so some of the screening work was done for you before the sale opened. On Pump.fun, nobody picked it, because anyone can list anything, so every piece of the judgment, is this real, is the team honest, is the liquidity going to vanish, falls entirely on you. The vetting on one side falls short of a guarantee, and on the other side there is no vetting to speak of at all.
That is why the downside lands differently: when a vetted sale disappoints, the loss is still yours, but you were buying something a reviewer had at least examined. When an open-venue token fails, and the base rate of failure there is high, the only parties in the room were you and the creator. The specific ways these tokens go wrong, and how to spot them, are the subject of Pump.fun risks, and Pump.fun is only one of several open launch venues on Solana, mapped in the Solana launchpad landscape. Before you act on either kind, be clear which one you are in, because the amount of homework it leaves for you is the whole difference.
Looking to trade PUMP? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the PUMP/USDT Spot trading page or PUMPUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Is Pump.fun a launchpad?
People call it one, but it is not a launchpad in the original sense. A traditional launchpad is an exchange offering a single token it has selected and reviewed. Pump.fun is an open, permissionless venue where anyone can create any token with no screening. Both are places new tokens appear, which is why the word gets reused, but the vetting that defines an exchange launchpad is absent on Pump.fun.
Does an exchange launchpad guarantee a token is safe?
No. Vetting reduces risk, it does not remove it. An exchange conducts due diligence and stakes its reputation on the projects it lists, so some screening happens before the sale. A vetted token can still fail on its own merits, and you still carry that loss. The difference from an open venue is that a reviewer looked first, not that the outcome is guaranteed.
Who vets tokens on Pump.fun?
Nobody at the platform does. Pump.fun's terms of service call the tokens user-generated digital assets, say the platform is not responsible for them, and tell you to do your own due diligence about the creator. There is no selection or approval step, so every token, good or bad, can appear the same way. The judgment is left entirely to the buyer.
Why do both get called launchpads?
Because both are the point where a new token first becomes available to buy. That shared function makes the label stick to both. The trap is assuming the label implies the same protections. An exchange launchpad implies selection and review, while Pump.fun implies neither, so the same word describes two very different levels of gatekeeping.
Which one carries more risk for a buyer?
An open venue like Pump.fun leaves far more risk on the buyer, because there is no vetting and the failure rate is high. An exchange launchpad shifts some of the initial screening to the exchange, though the buyer still owns the outcome. In both cases you are responsible for your own decision, but on Pump.fun you are responsible for all of the diligence as well.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. Primary sources are Wikipedia's initial exchange offering and initial coin offering entries, Pump.fun's Terms of Service, and CoinMarketCap. All facts independently verified against cited documentation current as of September 2026.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, or trading advice. Digital assets are volatile and many newly launched tokens lose all value. Do your own research and consider your own circumstances before trading.