Curve Founder’s ‘Casino’ Jab at Pump.fun Echoes Language From a Live Federal Lawsuit

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Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, called Pump.fun “a casino of scams called memecoins” in a post on X Sunday night, and a federal lawsuit already pending against the platform accuses it of running exactly that kind of casino. Egorov’s post, sent to his roughly 43,000 followers, also criticized Phantom, Solana’s most widely used wallet, saying it “barely works” and that pairing it with a hardware wallet was a worse experience than using MetaMask on Ethereum. He credited the Solana Foundation with strong ecosystem support but said the network’s “flagship examples” fall short.

A Tweet That Matches a Federal Complaint

Egorov did not mention it, but the word he chose is already doing legal work in the Southern District of New York. Aguilar v. Baton Corporation Ltd., filed on behalf of Pump.fun token buyers, accuses the platform of selling unregistered securities in violation of the Securities Act and of running what the complaint itself calls an illegal casino. Judge Colleen McMahon is overseeing the case, which also names Solana Labs, the Solana Foundation, and Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko as defendants alongside Pump.fun’s own founders, Alon Cohen, Dylan Kerler, and Noah Tweedale.

The Numbers Behind the Casino Claim

According to Burwick Law, one of the firms representing plaintiffs, the case alleges retail losses on Pump.fun and its post-graduation token trading total between $4 billion and $5.5 billion, drawn from more than 4.25 million wallets that traded on the platform in 2024, over 60% of which lost money. These are allegations, not findings. Pump.fun has pushed back inside the litigation itself: in January, the company beat a sanctions motion accusing its lawyers of witness intimidation.

Solana’s Own Co-Founder Already Said Something Similar

Egorov is not the first person close to Solana to describe its token culture this way. In July 2025, Yakovenko called memecoins and NFTs “digital slop” with “no intrinsic value,” comparing them to loot boxes in mobile games, during a public exchange with Base creator Jesse Pollak, who countered that the content behind those tokens carries value in its own right. Yakovenko made the remark while acknowledging that memecoins accounted for 62% of Solana’s decentralized app revenue that same June. Egorov’s tweet, a year later, restates a version of the same complaint from outside the ecosystem.

The Wallet Complaint Holds Up

Egorov’s Phantom complaint is easier to check than his Pump.fun one. Phantom’s own help documentation lays out a multi-step process for pairing a Ledger hardware wallet, including updating firmware, enabling “blind signing” separately for each blockchain app, and closing the Ledger Live desktop app before connecting, and it warns that browser compatibility alone can block the connection. That does not confirm the specifics of Egorov’s experience, but it matches a documented, recurring friction point rather than an isolated complaint.

As of Monday, Pump.fun, Phantom, and the Solana Foundation had not responded publicly to Egorov’s post. A reply from any of them, particularly the Solana Foundation, would be the first public reaction to a complaint that overlaps with litigation naming two of them as co-defendants.