Est. 2011-02-14
Kenneth Reitz published the first release of requests on Valentine's Day 2011. Its tagline, "HTTP for Humans", became the bar the whole ecosystem measured itself against.
Solana · Community-run · Creator-backed
The most imported name in Python.
The most imported name in Python.
Now importable into your wallet.
$REQUESTS is a community-run tribute to the library behind the internet's favourite line of Python: import requests. The deployer walked away. The holders didn't, and the man who wrote the library pulled up a chair. Liquidity burned, community at the wheel, returning 200 OK since October 20, 2026.
Contract
6ceuPfcE67PLs3Z6CbJpFpqNyAevVocP2zsDkbM1pump
Mint revoked
Freeze revoked
LP burned
0% tax
10.7% locked
Community-run
KR
Kenneth Reitz, creator of requests, calls $REQUESTS his latest endeavor on X
status 200 OKlatency 41mschain solana
LIVE · DEXSCREENER
updating…
Price
$0.043668
0.063387 SOL
Market cap
$35.0K
Fully diluted
Liquidity
$15.9K
64.8 SOL pooled
24h volume
$829K
6,202 buys · 5,456 sells
24h change
+41.9%
1h −20.9%
Endorsement
The man who wrote requests is in.
Kenneth Reitz created requests in 2011, along with httpbin, pipenv and certifi. On October 22, 2026 he put $REQUESTS in his X bio as his latest endeavor and started talking about utility in public. Every quote below is verbatim and links to its source.
“
To learn more about my latest endeavor, please see also: @RequestsToken.
KRKenneth Reitz · @kennethreitz42 · profile bio
“
Currently considering different utility approaches for $requests
KRKenneth Reitz · @kennethreitz42 · October 22, 2026
“
I was thinking of maybe some kind of way to earn requests by using an appropriate license on our open sorce repo or something like that
KRKenneth Reitz · reply on X · October 22, 2026
Who
Creator of requests (2011), httpbin, pipenv and certifi. Handed requests to the Python Software Foundation in 2019. Writes at kennethreitz.org.
What this is
A public statement from his own account, made in a personal capacity. It is not a statement by the Python Software Foundation or the requests maintainers, and it is not financial advice.
About
Why requests?
Some libraries get downloaded. This one got taught. requests is the first thing most people type when Python meets the web, and it has been for fifteen years.
The default verb
GET, POST, sessions, auth, timeouts. Tutorials, textbooks and a million scripts open with the same import. It is less a dependency than a habit.
Stewarded by the PSF
Since 2019 the project has lived under the Python Software Foundation, where volunteers keep it boring, stable and everywhere. Hundreds of millions of downloads a month, quietly.
“
$REQUESTS is not the library and not the Foundation, and it makes no claim on either. It is a community token that the library's creator has chosen to put his name behind, carried by a crowd of people who think import requests deserves a coin, who picked it up when the deployer dropped it, and who would rather see a 200 than a 404.
2011
requests 0.0.1 ships
A single-file wrapper around urllib2 with an API people actually wanted to use.
2019
Home at the PSF
The repository moves to the Python Software Foundation, where it is maintained to this day.
2026
$REQUESTS changes hands
October 20: launched on pump.fun, graduated to PumpSwap the same day, deployer gone, holders take over. October 22: Kenneth Reitz names it his latest endeavor.
Open source
Built on giving things away.
requests exists because one person published something useful for free and kept it that way. Everything on this page about open source starts from that fact, and the numbers below are the scale of it.
Downloads last month
1.2B
requests on PyPI, October 2026
GitHub stars
54.5K
psf/requests, 12.9K forks
Runtime dependencies
4
urllib3 · certifi · charset-normalizer · idna
Free since
2011
Apache-2.0 licence, fifteen years
Open source is the quiet agreement that built the modern internet: write something useful, publish it under a licence that lets anyone use it, and let strangers build on top.
requests is about as pure an example as exists. Kenneth Reitz released it on Valentine's Day 2011 with a two-word promise, HTTP for Humans, and the whole ecosystem reorganised around it. It is imported in tutorials, textbooks, data pipelines, bank back-ends and government services. It has been downloaded more than a billion times in the last month alone. It has never cost anyone a cent.
The catch is the part nobody downloads: maintenance. Reviewing pull requests, cutting releases, answering security reports and keeping fifteen years of compatibility intact is work, and it falls on a handful of volunteers. The four libraries underneath requests are maintained the same way. When that work goes unfunded, the stack the internet leans on is one tired maintainer away from trouble.
That is the gap the Open Source Fund concept is meant to close: route value from the token back to the people doing the work, in public, with receipts. Reitz has written about what the download counts did to him in Focus on Family More Than Code. It is worth reading before anyone romanticises the job.
01
Share by default
The code that moved the internet was given away, not sold. Value in open source grows the more people use it. We want the token to behave the same way: owned widely, hoarded by no one.
02
Maintainers are the infrastructure
Volunteers keep the plumbing working while everyone else builds on top. Any utility that comes out of this project should route value back to the people doing that work, starting with the libraries requests itself depends on.
03
In public, with receipts
Decisions in open threads, money on a public chain, claims linked to sources. Every number on this page says where it came from. If it cannot be verified it does not go here.
04
Credit where it is due
Name the people, link the originals, respect the licences. requests is Apache-2.0; its dependencies are MIT, MPL and BSD. A tribute that forgets who it is paying tribute to is just a logo.
What import requests actually imports
the dependency tree the Open Source Fund would start withrequestsA simple, yet elegant, HTTP library · Apache-2.0
urllib3Connection pooling, TLS, retries. The engine under the hood.
certifiMozilla's root certificate bundle, so HTTPS can be trusted.
charset-normalizerWorks out what encoding a response is really in.
idnaInternational domain names, handled correctly.
From Kenneth's blog
He has written in public for fifteen years about software, interfaces and what building things does to the person building them. A reading list, newest first.
Read the blog
Oct 2026I Built the Escape HatchOn httpbin, the testing service he built alongside requests, and what it means when a tool is used by things its author never imagined.
Sep 2026The Interface Is the CurriculumInterfaces teach habits. He wrote requests' usage examples before its implementation, and argues designers should ask what users are practising.
Aug 2026Flow State, MeteredHow agentic coding tools turn programming from deep focus into coordination, and why a subscription meter should not set your pace.
Aug 2026Announcing RetroVaultA native macOS front end for RomM, released open source under GPL v2 or later, because no Mac client could launch the games.
Jun 2026Focus on Family More Than CodeYears of overwork on software whose download counts came to define him, and eight lessons from it. Required reading on what maintaining costs.
ArchiveAll essaysEverything else, from API design to music theory.
KRKenneth Reitz · @kennethreitz42
To learn more about my latest endeavor, please see also: @RequestsToken.
Profile bio
KRKenneth Reitz · @kennethreitz42
May the spirit of the Ethos of Python™ guide well into today's happenings 🙏📿🌀
Oct 22, 2026 · 12:05 PM
KRKenneth Reitz · @kennethreitz42
Currently considering different utility approaches for $requests
Oct 22, 2026 · 1:14 PM
KRKenneth Reitz · reply in thread
Or maybe just option to receive it if you have the project installed (requests, that is)
Oct 22, 2026
Tokenomics
Simple, like the API.
One supply, one pool, no team behind a curtain. Everything below is a property of the token on-chain, not a promise on a slide.
954,919,787.
Current supply · of 1,000,000,000 minted · 6 decimals · Token-2022
Free float 71.8% · 718.3M
PumpSwap pool 13.4% · 134.1M
Locked, Streamflow 10.3% · 102.5M
Burned 4.5% · 45.1M
Shares of the 1,000,000,000 minted. Supply and holder count update live via Jupiter, pool size via DexScreener; the lock is the vault balance on October 22, 2026. Holders now: 365.
Community takeover
The original deployer is gone. No founding team, no team allocation, no insiders on a vesting schedule. The holders run it.
10.7% locked in Streamflow
102,507,663 tokens sit in a Streamflow vault funded on October 22, 2026 and are released only on the vault's schedule. Vault on Solscan.
Mint authority revoked
No new tokens can ever be minted. One billion were created; since then the number has only gone down.
Freeze authority revoked
No wallet can be frozen or blacklisted by anyone.
Liquidity burned
LP tokens were burned on graduation to PumpSwap. The pool cannot be pulled.
0% tax
A Token-2022 mint carrying only metadata extensions: no transfer fee, no transfer hook. Checked against the mint account on-chain.
Market
Live from PumpSwap.
Pair 6Bs7…M9Bh · requests / SOL
Chart by DexScreener · Data refreshes every 30s
Status codes
Every good request has a status.
No roadmap, no quarterly promises. Just what happened, what is happening, and a teapot.
100
DoneContinueLaunched on pump.fun
October 20, 2026. Not a clean start: the wallet that deployed it lost interest almost immediately. The chart did what charts do.
200
DoneOKGraduated to PumpSwap
The curve filled the same day. Liquidity migrated to PumpSwap and the LP tokens were burned.
301
DoneMoved PermanentlyCommunity takeover
The holders picked up the keys: new socials, new site, and the library's creator at the table instead of a dev who was never coming back.
201
DoneCreatedCommunity opened on X
A home for memes, charts and the occasional actual HTTP question. Moderated by people who have read a traceback.
102
NowProcessingSite, metadata, listings
This page, the DexScreener profile, updated token metadata and tracker listings, so the first impression is a 200 and not a 500.
418
AlwaysI'm a teapotMemes
Lots of them. The library has a sense of humour baked into the spec and so does the community.
Potential utility
Entertained concepts, thus far.
A first look at where $REQUESTS could go. These are rough prototypes, not promises. Nothing is final, and the community will help shape all of it.
The core idea
A memecoin that funds the code the internet runs on.
Creator fees, split by one simple public rule, could go to three places.
Creator feesone simple public rule
→ 01The developer behind Requests
→ 02Automated buyback & burn
→ 03An Open Source Fund for Python maintainers
“
Kenneth Reitz, thinking out loud on X: “some kind of way to earn requests by using an appropriate license on our open sorce repo”, or “just option to receive it if you have the project installed (requests, that is)”. Ideas on the table, not commitments.
Concept 1
Automated buybacks
A small open-source bot that buys $REQUESTS in small slices once a threshold is hit, then burns it automatically. No human timing, and transaction links posted publicly every round.
Concept 2
Open Source Fund
Grants for the libraries Requests itself depends on: urllib3, certifi, charset-normalizer, idna. Bounties on real bugs and security fixes, paid when the pull request is merged.
Concept 3
thanks
A Python tool that scans your project's dependencies and shows you who to fund. One command, and the whole tree gets some love.
Concept 4
Public dashboard
Every claim, burn and grant, visible on-chain.
Open
Your ideas
Early days. Ideas will change, some may not make it, and better ones may come from you. Submit a proposal: it is listed publicly the moment you send it, and the community argues it out with @RequestsToken.
How to buy
Three lines. No boilerplate.
If you have ever installed a package, you can do this. If you have not, the steps are still three.
01
Get a wallet
Install Phantom or Solflare on desktop or mobile. Back up your recovery phrase somewhere that is not a screenshot.
02
Add some SOL
Buy SOL on any exchange and send it to your wallet address. Keep a little extra for network fees; they are tiny, but not zero.
Any major exchange
03
Swap for $REQUESTS
Paste the contract address into PumpSwap or Jupiter, set the amount, confirm. Always check the address ends in 1pump.