9 in 10 FOMO app traders lost money on Solana, and the app took $40 million in fees

01 · One coinRAX: up 76x, then down 93%

The FOMO app shows you what other people are buying. You can buy the same coin in seconds. On 27 August, thousands of its users piled into a coin called RAX.

RAX was created that evening on Pump.fun, a site where anyone can launch a coin. The first FOMO user bought it 37 seconds later. Within the hour, about 4,500 FOMO users had bought it.

The early ones did well. One who bought in the first few minutes nearly doubled their money and sold soon after. Buyer number 2,197 came in 34 minutes after launch and paid $24.50. Eighteen minutes later they sold for $14.66.

RAX rose about 76 times in its first 40 minutes. Within an hour of the peak it had lost 93% of its value.

RAX was one coin among hundreds of thousands. To see how the app's users did overall, we followed the coins they bought through the app on Solana from 13 January to 7 October 2026, including trades the same wallets made in those coins outside the app. After fees, nine in ten wallets were behind, and FOMO collected $40 million in fees on Solana over the same months. In the coins that caught on, the few who bought first did well, and most of the crowd that came after them lost.

02 · The appWhat is the FOMO app?

FOMO is a phone app for trading crypto, made by FOMO Labs. It launched in 2025 and had more than 625,000 users by September this year, according to Crypto Briefing, which describes it as one-tap copy trading. Its App Store page promises you can see what friends and top traders are buying in real time. It trades on Solana, Base, BNB Chain, Robinhood Chain and other networks. This story covers Solana.

Most of what people buy there are memecoins: tokens with a name and a picture but no business behind them. Anyone can make one in a minute, and most never take off. Each FOMO user gets their own wallet. When they tap Buy, the app's own wallet signs the trade, pays the network fee and sends the swap to a trading pool, often through an aggregator such as DFlow or Jupiter. FOMO then takes a fee in USDC, a digital dollar.

The app grew fast this year. The number of wallets buying through the app on Solana each month rose about tenfold from June to September, and its fees grew with them. In September 2026 alone it collected $12.8 million in fees on Solana.

03 · The countDo FOMO app traders make money?

Most do not. For each wallet we added up what it got back from selling each coin, plus what its unsold coins were still worth, and took away what it paid for them and what it paid the app in fees. Nine in ten wallets ended behind.

Most losses were small. The median wallet put $130 into coins and lost $25. A much smaller group lost a thousand dollars or more each, and they carry most of the money lost.

Together, the app's traders lost about $395 million on Solana over these months. That total depends on what their unsold coins are worth, and we show the range in section 08. Under every rule we tried for counting whole wallets, close to nine in ten stay behind. Memecoin buyers outside the app lose too: in our study of Solana memecoin buyers, three in four of them lost money in the launch weeks we followed.

04 · The crowdDoes following the crowd on FOMO pay?

The app is built around seeing what other people buy, so we checked whether it mattered when a user joined in. We took the 2,200 coins that drew 1,000 or more buyers on the app and ranked every buyer by when they first bought through it.

Together, the first 10 buyers of each coin made +71% on what they spent, and two in three came out ahead. The next few hundred did less well, and by the thousandth buyer the gains were gone. Buyers after that lost 11% of what they spent, and only one in four made money. Those late buyers were seven in ten of all the app's buyers of these coins.

Minutes counted too. Wallets that bought in the first few minutes after the app's first buyer came out ahead on average. In these coins, two thirds of buyers came in two hours or more later, and as a group they lost money.

These are coins that turned out popular, which flatters their first buyers. Across all the coins the app's users bought, including the many that never took off, even the first 10 buyers lost 6% on average. The same split shows up by a coin's age: in the popular coins, buys made in a coin's first hour did better than buys made a day or more after launch.

So in the coins that drew the biggest crowds, early buyers made money on average, and later buyers, as a group, lost it. But which coins would draw a crowd was only clear afterward.

05 · The winnersWho makes money on the FOMO app?

The money that was won went to very few wallets. The best 1% of wallets took 94% of all winnings. For every wallet that won five figures or more, about six lost as much.

The best 1% mostly won on later buys. Of their net profit, 69% came from coins they bought two hours or more after the app's first buyer, and half from coins where a thousand or more FOMO users had bought before them. Only 10% came from buys among a coin's first 10 on the app. A few wallets in the late crowd won big, even though the crowd as a whole lost.

As for the very first buyers, on Solana they are often not people at all. Sniper bots and the coin's own creator buy in the first second of a launch and sell into the crowd that follows, as we found in our look at Pump.fun snipers and bundles. Sandwich bots also take a slice of ordinary buyers' trades (how sandwich attacks work on Solana). We did not test whether either kind of bot hit FOMO users on Solana. On Robinhood Chain, where we did check, bots front-ran thousands of the app's buys this year.

06 · The feesWhat does the FOMO app charge?

FOMO charges a fee on its trades, usually in USDC. Small trades pay a minimum. Until the end of July the most common fee was 95 cents, the same fee our look at Solana trading-app fees found. From August it was 10 cents. Bigger trades pay more, in step with their size.

The minimum hurts small buys most. Before August, a buy of under ten dollars paid a median 22% of its size in fees. Across all the money its users traded on Solana, the fees came to 0.5%. Over our window that added up to $40 million.

The median wallet paid about $4 in fees and lost $25 overall. Small as that is, fees changed who came out ahead. Before fees, 15% of wallets were in profit. After fees, 10% were, so a third of the wallets that were ahead before fees ended behind.

Fees were about 10% of everything the app's traders lost; the rest was lost on the coins themselves. We counted fees on Solana only. The app also earns on other networks and from futures trading, so its total revenue is higher (Crypto Briefing).

07 · StayingDo FOMO traders get better?

Wallets that kept trading lost a smaller share of their money as the months went on. We took the wallets that traded in the month they joined and again three or more months later, and compared each one with itself. In their first month they lost 13% of what they spent. From the third month on, the same wallets lost about half as much.

Wallets that won early were more likely to stay. Of the wallets that came out ahead in their first month, 72% traded again in a later month. Of those that lost, 53% did.

08 · How sureHow sure are these numbers?

The share of wallets that made money barely moves when we change the rules. Under every rule we tried for counting whole wallets after fees, between 9% and 12% ended ahead. Counting only coins that were fully sold, 21% came out ahead, because that leaves out the unsold coins, which lost money overall.

The dollar total moves more, because of coins still held at the end. Many are hard to sell, so we valued them at the last day's average price and never above what that coin traded in its last day. Valued at their last price with no limit, the loss shrinks to $204 million; valued at nothing, it grows to $490 million. We also ran an independent check: an AI agent rebuilt a sample of 30 positions from the raw trades without seeing our figures, and its money spent and fees came within 2% of ours on every one.

09 · MethodHow we did this

We used Bitquery's Solana trade data from 13 January to 7 October 2026. The same history is sold as files on the Bitquery Data Store. A FOMO trade is any trade signed by the FOMO app's own wallet. For each wallet and coin we added up what the wallet paid and got back, in the app and in trades it made with the same wallet elsewhere. Coins still held were valued as described in section 08. FOMO's fees are the USDC payments to its fee wallet in the same transactions.

Sometimes the app's own wallet, or an account FOMO uses to collect fees, shows up in the data as the trader. We traced those trades back to the user through the fee payment in the same transaction. We left out coins a wallet already held before 13 January, because our records of one routing service's trades before that date do not give reliable amounts. Our fee total is 1% below DefiLlama's figure for FOMO on Solana over the same dates, which also counts some fees on trades FOMO routes to other networks.

10 · EvidenceTransactions and wallets cited

FAQ

Do FOMO app traders make money?

Most do not. Of the wallets that bought coins on Solana through the app this year, nine in ten were behind after fees. The median wallet lost $25.

How much does the FOMO app charge?

A fee on its trades, usually in USDC. Small trades pay a minimum, most often 95 cents through July 2026 and 10 cents after that, and bigger trades pay more. Over the nine months we studied, its fees on Solana came to $40 million.

Is the FOMO app good for trading?

That depends on the trader, and this is not advice. In our data, one wallet in ten made money after fees, and the best 1% of wallets took 94% of all winnings.

What is the FOMO app?

A phone app for trading crypto, made by FOMO Labs. Users see what friends and top traders are buying and can buy the same coins in seconds. It works on several networks; this study covers Solana.

Who makes money on the FOMO app?

Very few wallets. The best 1% took 94% of all winnings. Most of their profit came from coins they bought hours after the app's first buyer. Only 10% came from being among a coin's first 10 buyers on the app.

Does buying early on FOMO help?

Only in hindsight. In coins that later drew big crowds, the app's first buyers came out ahead and buyers who came in hours later lost. Across all coins, including the many that never took off, even the first 10 buyers lost money.