SolSim

Pump.fun launches a token a minute. Most go to zero before lunch — real wallets, real losses, learn-by-rugging. SolSim was the paper-trading sandbox: a Chrome extension that overlaid a fake wallet on top of Axiom.trade so I could practice the motions without spending SOL. That was the project. Then somebody put real money in.

• Next.js
• Chrome Extension
• Supabase
• Solana
• Pump.fun

No real money on the line — until there was.

1. Spring 2025 — into the arcade

   Spent two weeks reading before writing a line: Web1/2/3, hashing, public keys vs seed phrases, PoW vs PoS, why Solana picks throughput over Bitcoin's security, where SPL tokens live on top of the chain. Built a deck of crypto basics I almost believed.

2. What SolSim was

   Chrome extension that overlaid a fake wallet on top of Axiom.trade. Same Buy / Sell terminal, same candlesticks, fake SOL. Yellow smiley face in the corner where Phantom usually goes.

   [image: Chrome browser on Axiom.trade showing a dark-mode candlestick chart for a memecoin called Eggonomics, with the SolSim extension panel overlaid on the right — yellow smiley logo at the top, simulated total balance $545.91 (+$45.50, +9.09%), and an asset list of Solana and Joe tokens beneath]

3. Stack

   JavaScript, Next.js for the UI components, Supabase for the wallets table, Chrome Extension for the surface. Lived on top of someone else's UI; let them ship the charts.

4. Mar 16 — listed

   Chrome Web Store accepted the build. 158 store-page views in the first week. @getsolsim opened the same day — 50 followers, a Mar 30 tweet about risk-free practice, an Apr 2 tweet promising SOL to whoever paper-traded best.

   [image: Twitter / X profile for SolSim @getsolsim — yellow smiley profile picture, banner of stitched-together app screenshots, bio reading 'Solana meme coin simulator. Learn the ropes, test your strategies, and trade with confidence — all risk-free.', joined March 2025, 5 Following / 50 Followers, pinned tweets including the Apr 2 competition announcement and a Mar 30 strategy reminder]

5. Mar 23 — the bump

   Chrome Web Store impressions: flat at zero through mid-March, spiked to roughly 100 on the 23rd, trended back to zero by April. The shape of every extension launch I've watched.

6. Compared to what

   Palo 16.7K impressions over six months. ClipChat 780 over half a year of chaotic single-digit days. SolSim 512 in three weeks, then off.

   [image: Three Chrome Web Store developer dashboard impression charts stacked together — Palo AI at 16.7K with months of jagged growth, ClipChat at 780 with chaotic low single-digit oscillation, and SolSim at 512 with a flat baseline that spikes near 100 around March 23 before trailing back to zero by April]

7. 0.01 SOL yay

   Someone in the Discord sent 0.01 SOL — $1.47 — to the SolSim wallet. The smallest possible transfer. Only one that ever arrived. Building cool stuff is fun.

   [image: Phantom mobile wallet on iPhone — account @JRSafe / Safe Safe — total balance $1.47 (+$0.0244, +1.69%), Solana holding of 0.01273 SOL worth $1.47, Ethereum and Sui at $0.00, with Receive / Send / Swap / Buy action buttons across the top]

8. Flux Bundler — the detour

   Spent a week on a different rig: bundling real transactions through Solana's RPC instead of simulating them. Generated 20 wallets, asked the funnel for exactly 4.0000 SOL to start a buy. Got close enough to the protocol to feel it, then walked away — different project, real money on the line.

   [image: Flux Bundler dashboard panel titled Test 1 (Created 3/24/2025) — left column lists 20 generated wallets, each with a truncated public address and 0.0010 SOL of seed funding; right column titled 'Buy (Funnel Active)' reads 'Please send exactly 4.0000 SOL to: GBf4CK2F12...' with a 'Waiting for the balance to be at least 4.0000 SOL...' status line below]

9. What the sandbox taught

   Manifest v3, content scripts, background workers, chrome.storage. Async everywhere. The deeper shift was leaving static pages behind and starting to think in state and data flow.

10. Coins are Cool

    Slide 22 of the deck. Title card on a black background. Educational arc was officially over.

11. Mid-Starcraft

    Friday night, mid-Starcraft game with friends. Pivoted on the spot from simulating memecoins to launching one. Made @solsim on Pump.fun, named the token SOLSIM, kept the smiley face.

12. Apr 4 — the tweet

    Whole tweet was a Solana contract address with two hashtags underneath. No copy. No image. 14 replies, 8 likes, 6K views.

    [image: Twitter / X post from SolSim @getsolsim dated Apr 4 — entire tweet body is the Solana contract address GNwWV9y6XqbXcZFZBbUDcEXaMm8jegfwEJfN2z6Wpump followed by #Web3 #StayTuned, with engagement of 14 replies, 8 likes, and 6K views]

13. Discord — 200+ in a day

    Daily-joins chart had been flat at zero for the entire history of the server. The day the contract address went out it spiked nearly vertical, cresting above 200 joins in twenty-four hours, then crashed back.

14. Twitter — 167 followers

    Followers tripled inside a week. Two tweets cleared 6K and 8.7K impressions. Both tweets were base58 strings.

15. Funding — $316

    Three Phantom wallets seeded the launch: Safe Safe at $13.72, Account 2 at $182.21, Account 3 at $121.48. $316 of real SOL pointed at a token I'd just made.

    [image: Three Phantom mobile wallets side by side under the @JRSafe profile — Safe Safe at $13.72 / 0.11273 SOL, Account 2 at $182.21 / 1.5 SOL, Account 3 at $121.48 / 1.0001 SOL — with a sliver of a notification tray on the far left showing 12 Discord pings and three other red badges]

16. Fake coins, four of them

    Four meme coins launched under the yellow SolSim smiley before the real one stuck. Each chart followed the same shape: green spike, choppy plateau, single red candle straight to the floor. Test rugs.

17. The spike

    Account 2 went from $182 to $2,042.74 (+$1,945.60, +2002.93%) in a few days. 26.05M SOLSIM in the wallet, $4.56 of SOL on the side. Somebody, somewhere, was buying base58 strings off Twitter.

18. Locking 25M

    Locked 25M of the 26.05M SOLSIM until May 4, 2026 through a vesting dashboard. Removed the rug-pull option from my own hands — chart could still go to zero, but not because I sold.

19. Cashed out

    Swapped the unlocked tokens into 0.01198 BTC — $1,002.89 — and parked it in a separate Phantom account so it lived somewhere clean. Token chart kept printing red candles toward zero on a second monitor while I clicked through the swap. Died down. As expected.

    [image: Phantom mobile wallet under @Board314 / Account 1 — total balance $1,002.89 (+$10.36, +1.04%), entire balance held as 0.01198 BTC, Solana and Ethereum balances at $0.00, with the Pump.fun token chart still bleeding red candles in the background of the slide]

20. Exxon, Dallas

    Spent the Bitcoin like a Visa. BTC-backed virtual card, $5 flat conversion fee, Apple Pay on top. $3.80 at Greenhill School in Addison. $3.56 of gas at the Exxon in Dallas on the way home. Same Bitcoin that was a Pump.fun memecoin two weeks earlier.

21. Closing

    Lucky timing plus cool project equals lots of fun. That's the whole moral. Presentation ended on a question slide; nobody asked.

512 impressions → $2,042 spike → gas at Exxon

getsolsim.com

Paper-trading version got 512 impressions and a $1.47 donation. Memecoin version made $2,000 in a week because somebody, somewhere, was buying base58 strings off Twitter. Same builder, same yellow smiley, two orders of magnitude apart in attention — entirely a function of which casino I was standing in. Locked the supply so I couldn't be the rug, cashed the rest into Bitcoin, spent it at the Exxon on the way home.