Reading a memecoin pump: spikes, paid boosts, cooling off and settling

Most pumps on new Solana memecoins follow a rough shape: a sudden spike in price and trading, a peak where attention is at its highest, a cooling off as early buyers sell, and then either a settled range or a slide to lower and lower prices. You can often tell which stage a coin is in by reading the 1-minute and 5-minute candles, comparing the dollar size of buys and sells rather than how many there are, and checking how deep the liquidity is. None of this tells you what a coin will do next. It describes what the chart is showing now.

This is education, not financial advice. Patterns we have seen before do not predict any single coin, and most memecoins end up worth close to nothing.

How do you read where a coin is in a pump?

You check a handful of things in order, all free to see on a DexScreener page. If the terms are new, start with how to read a DexScreener page.

Look at the 1-minute chart. Are the latest candles much bigger than the ones from an hour ago?
Switch to 5-minute candles. This smooths out the noise and shows whether the coin is still making higher highs, pulling back, moving sideways or making lower lows.
Compare buy and sell volume in dollars. The count of buys and sells can point the opposite way to the money. Check the volume split and the biggest trades in the trades tab.
Check when promotion was bought. A paid profile or a batch of boosts that appears partway through a sharp climb is worth noting, along with what the price did next.
Look at the liquidity. Compare the pool's value with the size of the trades going through it. Thin pools move violently in both directions.
Ask whether the lows are holding. A coin that keeps finding the same low is behaving differently from one that sets a new low every few minutes.

What does a spike look like on the chart?

A spike is a run of tall green candles on the 1-minute chart, often several in a row with short wicks, after a period of small or sleepy candles. Volume jumps at the same time, and the buy count climbs quickly. On the 5-minute chart the whole run can look almost vertical.

Spikes on new coins often start from very little. A coin that has drifted down quietly can have a pool so small that a few thousand dollars of buying moves it a long way. Bots that watch for sudden volume add their own small buys, and the coin appears on "top gainers" lists, which brings more people to look. See sniper bots on Solana for how automated buying works.

The important point is that everyone who bought before the spike is now sitting on a profit, and every new buyer gives them someone to sell to.

Why do paid boosts often turn up near the top?

In our records, a paid DexScreener profile or a batch of boosts bought partway through a sharp climb has often come close to the top of that climb. That is an observed pattern, not proof of anyone's plans. We cannot see who paid or why.

Boosts and profiles are bought by all sorts of people: teams building something, communities that have taken over a coin, and holders who want more traders to see a coin they already own. That last group has an obvious reason to buy during a run, because visibility is worth most while the price is already moving. More eyes can mean more buyers, and more buyers make it easier for anyone holding a large bag to sell without crashing the price.

So a mid-pump purchase often marks the point where attention, and the supply of fresh buyers, is about as large as it will get. Read are DexScreener boosts and paid profiles a red flag? for what each product is and what it costs.

Why do buy and sell counts mislead?

Counts treat a $5 buy and a $5,000 sell as one trade each. During a pump, hundreds of small buys from new traders and bots can sit alongside a handful of large sells from early holders. The counts then say "more buyers than sellers" while the money says the opposite.

DexScreener shows both numbers. Check:

Buy volume against sell volume in dollars, not just buys against sells.
The size of the largest sells in the trades tab. A few sells of several hundred dollars can outweigh dozens of small buys.
Makers, the number of different wallets. Many small buys can come from a few wallets.

What does cooling off look like?

Cooling off is the stretch after the peak when early buyers take profit. The candles turn red, often sharply at first, and the price gives back a large part of the climb. Volume usually stays high for a while because people are selling into whatever buying is left.

You can often see it in the bounces: each attempt to recover reaches a lower high than the last, and sell volume in dollars runs ahead of buy volume, even when the buy count is higher. On a small coin, much of it can happen within minutes of the top.

What does settling look like?

Settling is when the price stops falling and moves sideways in a band. On the 5-minute chart the candles get smaller, volume drops away, and the price stops setting new lows. Buyers and sellers are roughly in balance, at least for now.

A settled range describes the recent past. It is not a floor, and nobody guarantees it. A range can break in one large sell, a holder deciding to exit, or liquidity being withdrawn. Plenty of coins settle for an hour and then slide. For the wider picture of what can still go wrong on a quiet-looking coin, see can a safe-looking coin still rug?

What does sliding look like?

Sliding is a series of lower lows and lower highs. Each bounce is sold, each low is a little below the last, and volume fades as attention moves elsewhere. On the 1-minute chart it can look calm. On the 5-minute or 1-hour chart the direction is clear.

It does not always end in a rug pull. Sometimes a coin just bleeds until hardly anyone trades it.

Why do thin pools move so violently?

Price on a memecoin is set by the ratio of tokens to SOL (or USDC) in its trading pool. When the pool is small, each trade is a bigger share of it, so each trade moves the price further. A $900 sell into a pool holding $10,000 has a much bigger effect than the same sell into a pool holding $500,000.

This works both ways: thin pools are why small coins can rise many times over in minutes and fall just as quickly. Your own sell moves the price too. See market cap, FDV and liquidity and slippage and priority fees.

What did a real pump look like on 22 October 2026?

Here is one coin from our board, anonymised. It was graded A at the time, which means we found none of the rug warning signs we look for. A grade is about those warning signs, not about price, as what our grades mean explains.

The 80 minutes before: the price drifted down about 52%, with small candles and light volume.
The run begins: tall green 1-minute candles appeared and volume rose sharply.
About 11 minutes in: someone bought 30 DexScreener boosts and a paid profile.
About 10 minutes after that: the price peaked at roughly 20 times its low.
The next five minutes: the price fell about 65% from the peak.

During the fall, the board showed 455 buys against 257 sells. On counts alone that looks like strong demand. The dollar sizes told a different story: the typical buy was about $14, while the largest sells were roughly $700 to $940. Each of those sells was the same size as 50 or more typical buys.

Within about half an hour, this coin went through a spike, a paid boost close to the top, and a sharp cooling off where many small buyers met a few large sellers. We are not saying who bought the boosts or why. We are describing what the public data showed.

How does our Still clean page label these phases?

Our Still clean page puts a phase label on coins that keep a clean grade, based on recent price and volume:

Spiking: price and volume climbing fast.
Cooling off: falling back from a recent peak, usually with heavy selling.
Settling: moving sideways in a narrowing band without new lows.
Sliding: making lower lows.
Quiet: barely trading.

Alongside each label we show what happened next to coins in that phase, from our own records. That is observation of the past, not a forecast. A label describes what the chart has been doing, never what a coin will do or what you should do.

Why plan your exit before you buy?

Once a coin is moving fast, there is rarely time to think clearly. Plan your exit before you buy, while you are calm, and write it down.

Decide your loss limit first. Only use money you can afford to lose completely.
Decide where you would take your stake back out. Our guide to taking profits explains selling enough to recover what you put in.
Consider a ladder. Selling in stages at levels set in advance means each sale is smaller and moves the price less.
Know how stops work. You can place a stop-loss on Jupiter that sells if the price falls to a level you choose. See how to set a stop-loss and take-profit on Jupiter.

Stops are not guaranteed. In the example above, the price fell about 65% in five minutes. A stop in a fall like that triggers into heavy selling, and depending on your slippage setting it can fill far below your trigger, fill only partly, or not fill at all.

Some questions worth asking yourself before any trade:

Which phase does the chart look like it is in, and how sure am I?
Is sell volume in dollars bigger than buy volume, whatever the counts say?
How big would my sell be compared with the pool?
Where is my exit, and is it written down?

Not financial advice. This guide explains how things work. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Memecoins are extremely high risk and most go to zero.