How Fomo went from 100,000 users to 3 million in a year

Fomo, a mobile app for trading crypto tokens, has surpassed 3 million lifetime users, Coinfomania wrote on 5 October 2026, citing co-founder Seyong.Fomo Trading App Surpasses 3 Million Users, Says Co-Founder. In a November 2025 video interview, a co-founder had put the count at “about 100,000 users and 80% of those are normies”.fomo: Paul and Se, at 00:05:49.

In between, it raised money. Its 22 June 2026 announcement said more than 625,000 people had joined and completed over $4 billion in trading volume since launch a year earlier,fomo blog: Series B led by Index Ventures (2026-06-22). and that Fomo had closed a $75 million round led by Index Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures and existing investor Benchmark. Fortune reported that the round valued Fomo at $550 million.Fortune Term Sheet: Index and USV back Fomo.

Unusually for a private company, Fomo’s revenue is visible on-chain, and its founders have explained on camera how they find users. Together they show how the app grew, and where the growth stands now.

The numbers

DefiLlama, which tracks on-chain activity, records the fomo Wallet’s monthly revenue at $0.73 million in October 2025, $2.31 million in June 2026, $15.15 million in August and $31.53 million in September, before it fell to $12.55 million in October.DefiLlama: fomo Wallet daily revenue (API snapshot 2026-11-02). DefiLlama also tracks spot trading volume through the app from May 2026: $274 million in June, $3.41 billion in August, $7.47 billion in September and $2.19 billion in October.DefiLlama: fomo Wallet daily spot volume (API snapshot 2026-11-02).

The user counts come from the company side. Katsikaris wrote on LinkedIn that fomo had crossed 1,000,000 users in the week before 4 August 2026.Charlie Katsikaris on LinkedIn, 4 August 2026. The co-founder’s 3 million figure followed on 5 October.

Crypto Briefing reported that by late August 2026 the app was capturing approximately 46% of daily Solana trading terminal volume,FOMO overtakes Axiom Exchange as top revenue-generating trading app. and that weekly revenue peaked at more than $9 million during the summer.

Two volume figures sit side by side. Co-founder Park Se-yong said in an interview with COINOTAG, published 17 October, that Fomo counts 2.7 million overseas users and processes roughly $200 million in trading volume every day.Fomo hits 2.7M users with $200M daily volume - COINOTAG. DefiLlama’s data shows October spot volume averaging about $71 million a day, from $2.19 billion over 31 days, and DefiLlama counts spot trades only. The co-founder also put cumulative volume at $14 billion to $15 billion, against $14.8 billion in total tracked by DefiLlama from May.

The founders’ account

Fomo’s leaders say the product comes first. Paul Erlanger said on The Crypto Tape that “we really focus on product driven growth”.Paul Erlanger on Why Retail is Now in the Driver’s Seat | The Crypto Tape, at 00:24:56. A co-founder said in a video interview on building the social network for finance that “build a good product and people will come,” though the app also needs other channels to distribute it, or else it is “kind of like tree falls in the forest”.Fomo Co-Founders on Building the Social Network for Finance, at 00:22:52.

On the same show, a co-founder credited word of mouth for a day with “7,500 first deposits,” saying many came from referrals, where a user tells a friend, or a trader tells other traders. Erlanger also said on The Crypto Tape: “We haven’t done any paid ads and we’ve never paid anyone to actually use the product”.

He added that the user base was global from early on. “We’ve done really no global growth and already 50% of our user base is non US,” he said, and then “Um, actually more now”.

Part of the pitch is that crypto’s plumbing is hidden. A co-founder said on the Steady Lads Podcast that 110,000 people had traded on the app the previous day, across several blockchains. In that co-founder’s telling, the same users trade across different coins because it is one experience, and “to you it’s just one coin”.Is The Bottom In? What The Lads Are Buying! (Steady Lads Podcast, with Fomo cofounder), at 00:26:14.

Creators

On the creator side, a co-founder said on the Steady Lads Podcast that Fomo was “able to do 50 million impressions a month across 100 creators,” and that the company manages this “all in house”. A co-founder described the model in another video interview: “We have these creator managers. They’re fully in house”.How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood’s Strategy is Wrong, at 00:33:04. The company manages a group of 30 to 40 creators, he said, “constantly getting rid of the bad ones, adding new ones”.

The share of users arriving this way has changed. The co-founder said that at the time about 50% of users were referred from creators, and that the number is now closer to 15%.

Two people who ran the program describe it in their own posts. Charlie Katsikaris wrote on LinkedIn that he and Will Timberlake had built a network of 100+ creators, with 200,000+ users directly attributed through tracked creator links. He also wrote that on September 1st he would join Fomo full-time as Head of UGC & Content. Timberlake runs TK Media, which counts Fomo as its flagship client.Will Timberlake (TK Media) on LinkedIn, 26 September 2026. He wrote on LinkedIn that his firm launched the campaign the day Fomo went live in April 2025, and that for the first three months “we saw next to nothing”. He later cited 400,000+ users driven through direct links and well over $2M paid out to creators.

A co-founder explained the economics in a video interview. One user, he said, might have a lifetime value of $30 and cost only 80 cents to reach, while another costs $3 because they need to see the content 10 times rather than two before they convert.

Referrals

The second channel is written into the product. Fomo’s help centre says that when someone signs up through your referral link, you earn 25% of their trading fees on every trade they make.fomo Help Center: How referral codes and fee discounts work. The new user gets a 10% discount, taking the standard rate from 0.50% to 0.45% per trade. The terms of service bar users from referring themselves or accounts they control.fomo Terms of Service (dated August 17, 2026), section 8 Referral Program.

Affiliates get more support than a bare link. Fomo’s affiliate page says they receive a dedicated affiliate manager, creative assets, campaign ideas and a private community of other affiliates.fomo Affiliate Program page. Datawallet, a review site, wrote that the affiliate page reports more than $1.1 million paid to date.Fomo App Referral Code: 10% Off Trading Fees.

What comes next

After the September peak, on-chain revenue and spot volume both fell back in October. The user count the company reports kept rising over the same weeks: 3 million lifetime users by early October, and 2.7 million overseas users by a co-founder’s mid-October count. The next few months of on-chain data will show whether trading per user recovers or September was the top of the curve.