Saturday's hottest new coins paid their creators about 2,400 SOL in fees

Who gets paid when a new coin trends? As of 9:00 AM ET on 4 October 2026: mostly the wallet that launched it. On pump.fun, PumpSwap and Meteora's launch pools, the creator of a coin collects a share of every trade's fee, whether or not they still hold the coin. We checked six coins that hit the trending lists on Saturday.

Four creators earned through fees. $CRAWL's creator, who bought none at launch, has collected about 759 SOL; it paid 77.7 SOL of that to 10 wallets at 8:41 PM ET Saturday, sent about 68 SOL more elsewhere, and held 620 SOL on Sunday morning. $SPEC's creator locked its own 2.3% launch buy until October 2027, then claimed about 823 SOL in pool fees between 3:45 PM and 12:09 AM ET and moved almost all of it to one other wallet. $KNIGHTCAT's creator collected 401.9 SOL in two claims and sent 321.9 SOL on. $SPLICE's creator collected about 400 SOL and sent 262 SOL on.

That's about 2,380 SOL, roughly $290,000, in under a day. Two of them sold their launch buys ($SPLICE's 0.36%, $KNIGHTCAT's 2%), $CRAWL's creator never bought, and only $SPEC's creator still holds a stake, locked until 2027. None of that breaks a rule. A fee-earning creator doesn't need the coin to go up, only for it to trade.

Two coins launched on Agency, the AI-agent launchpad, started differently. $CLAUDIA's creator bought 24.5% of the supply at launch, at 11:33 AM ET Saturday, and sold all of it within the same minute: 25.3 SOL back for 9 in. $AIDEN's creator bought 12.5% at 1:17 PM ET and sold within the minute too, about 12.1 SOL back for 4. The same $AIDEN wallet did it twice more: a 37% buy sold within the minute at 2:08 PM ET Saturday, and a 20% buy sold within the minute at 7:40 AM ET Sunday. $CLAUDIA and $AIDEN both ran past $1 million afterwards without their creators. On Agency, trading fees don't go to the creator at all: they go to one shared Agency wallet, which held 2,792 SOL at 9:00 AM ET Sunday.

Why would a creator buy big and sell within a minute? A few reasons fit what we saw, and they aren't exclusive. The buy and the sell together put a burst of volume on a brand-new chart, the kind of activity trending lists and scanners pick up: in our own snapshots of Jupiter's and GeckoTerminal's trending lists, $CLAUDIA showed up two minutes after its creator's round trip, and $AIDEN three minutes after. On Agency, trading fees go to Agency rather than the creator, so selling is the only way an Agency creator gets paid. And the first buy on a fresh curve gets the lowest price, so selling straight away locks in a profit before anyone else can move the price. The $AIDEN wallet repeating the same move three times suggests a routine rather than a one-off.

None of that proves a scheme: it's a trade, and the creator took the risk the coin wouldn't move. What a buyer should know is that the wallet that launched a coin may already be out, and on fee-earning coins, may be earning from every trade they make.

What did holders get? On-chain, we can see one payout: $CRAWL's 77.7 SOL to 10 wallets, which fits CrawlNet's promise that "crawler owners receive 20% of all fees." We found no SOL paid to holders of $SPEC, $SPLICE or $KNIGHTCAT. Agency's coins advertise holder rewards; the one we checked, $MIND, pays non-transferable loyalty points.

How to check a coin yourself: open the creator's wallet on Solscan (the coin's page lists it as Creator). Look for "Collect creator fee" or "Claim position fee" in its history, and check whether it still holds the coin. Our coin pages list each of these wallets.