Dylan Kerler
 Image: no public image; placeholder illustration, memecoin.wiki | |
| role | co founder and CTO of pump.fun |
|---|---|
| known for | pump.fun bonding curve platform, WIRED report on 2017 tokens |
Dylan Kerler is the technical co founder and CTO of pump.fun, a reclusive English developer whose alleged history of launching and dumping tokens as a teenager was the subject of a 2024 WIRED investigation.
Dylan Kerler is an English software developer, the technical co founder and chief technology officer of pump fun, the launchpad that industrialized meme coin creation on Solana. Alongside Noah Tweedale and Alon Cohen, known as alon, he founded the platform in January 2024 through the UK company Baton Corporation; court filings list him as CTO. The trio, covered together at pump fun founders, have said they built the site's fair launch bonding curve model after being rug pulled themselves as traders. Of the three, Kerler is by far the least visible, maintaining almost no public presence while his code underpins the largest token factory in the trenches.
The WIRED investigation
In late 2024 WIRED published an investigation reporting that a developer named Dylan Kerler had launched at least eight tokens in 2017, when he was 16 years old, including eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash. According to the report, the tokens were promoted on the BitcoinTalk forum with airdrops and ambitious promises; EthereumCash reached a value of about 1.3 million pounds before the developer began secretly selling holdings, sales that coincided with an 88 percent collapse in the price. Analysis cited in the reporting estimated the developer earned up to $75,000 in ether at 2017 prices, worth several hundred thousand dollars by 2024. WIRED connected the 2017 developer to the pump.fun co founder through matching email addresses, reused usernames, overlapping links to Brighton in the UK, and identical code across the coins. Neither Kerler nor pump.fun responded to WIRED's requests for comment, and follow up coverage by Protos, PANews and others stressed that these are allegations of past conduct that predate pump.fun and have never been the subject of a legal finding.
Role at pump.fun
Within pump.fun's division of labor, Tweedale runs the company, Cohen fronts it publicly, and Kerler builds it. The platform he architected removed liquidity seeding, contract deployment and rug mechanics from meme coin launches, replacing them with a uniform curve and graduation to open trading, a design that has processed millions of token launches. Kerler is a named defendant, with his co founders and Baton Corporation, in the consolidated class action Aguilar v. Baton Corporation in the Southern District of New York, which alleges the platform sold unregistered securities. The founders contest the claims and no liability has been established.
Significance
Kerler embodies one of the era's sharpest ironies, extensively noted in the coverage: the anti rug platform's architect is alleged to have run the exact playbook, promote, pump and quietly sell, that his own product was built to make impossible.
References
- https://www.wired.com/story/pumpfun-founder-memecoin-rugpulls-teen/
- https://protos.com/pump-fun-co-founder-dylan-kerler-linked-to-2017-ico-scams-report/
- https://www.panewslab.com/en/articles/fromg1m8
- https://decripto.org/en/pump-fun-investigation-of-one-of-the-fouder-dylan-kerler-allegedly-linked-to-ethereumcash-and-ebitcoincash-rug-pulls/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump.fun
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69593359/aguilar-v-baton-corporation-ltd-dba-pumpfun/