Can Base Challenge Solana’s Memecoin Dominance?

The return of Solana has been the story of this cycle so far, with the network growing thanks to technological improvements, lucrative airdrops and, most notably, memecoins.

Memecoins have evolved from an unserious, short-lived asset class to a forward-looking alternative to low-float, high-FDV tokens that don’t leave enough upside for retail.

Today, most memecoin activity takes place on Solana, although activity continues to migrate to L2 ETHs like Arbitrum and Base. The base has been particularly busy lately. Although the Coinbase-incubated L2 shows promise of becoming a meme hub, activity on Solana continues to dominate and remain within its ecosystem. Can Base compete with Solana in the memecoin arena?

In this article, we will examine the current status of these platforms, their capital flows, and major projects to assess what makes Solana the memecoin capital and how Base compares to it.

🐕 The Solana Memecoin scene

A key part of Solana becoming the L1 darling of this cycle has been its memecoin activity.

Fueled by an internal capital increase from airdrops like Jito, Jupiter, Kamino, Parcl and Tensor, memecoins plummeted and reached A market capitalization of $1 billion in one weeka spectacular success and an excellent marketing campaign for a channel which is now pushing a TVL above $4.8 billion.

Solana may owe much of its narrative momentum to memecoin fever, evident in the activity on Pump.fun, a popular memecoin launcher, which represented some days 83% of all tokens launched and even toppled Solana in 24 hour revenue. This success, however, would not have been possible if the network did not already have such a powerful memecoin arena with main character tokens such as WIF, BONK, and BODEN, to name a few.

• dog hat (Teleprinter: Wireless; Market cap: $3.3 billion) is a cute Shiba Inu with a knitted hat who became Solana’s mascot thanks to his memeability, extensive promotion by Crypto Twitter personalities, and the allegiance generated by the rise of your token with a market capitalization of $10,000 to several billion dollars. Status.
• Jeo Boden (Teleprinter: BODEN; Market capitalization: $194 million), a derisory vision of American President Joe Biden which triggered the PolitiFi meta, also lives in Solana. In its first week, it generated numerous 1000x returns, a performance that permanently married some to the SOL memecoin scene.
• Bonk (Teleprinter: BONK; Market cap: $2.65 billion) is Solana’s OG memecoin. This is a December 2022 Shiba Inu that saw incredible price action last fall and launched memecoins for the chain.

Generally speaking, Solana not only has the most important memecoins in the cycle, but also a thematic range of tokens, from dogs and cats to politicians.

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🧑🏻‍🦲 The basic Memecoin scene

Base has quickly risen to establish itself as one of Ethereum’s top L2s, thanks to its memecoin ecosystem helping it build a consumer-friendly reputation.

Projects like DEGEN and ami.tech have brought consistent activity to the network and established a culture for Base as a social hub. That said, while March saw an epic rally in the network’s TVL, it appears to have stabilized in recent weeks. If the Base TVL is still far from that of Solana, its daily volumes are impressive. Last week, the network reached a record $854 million in daily volumes.

TVL in blue. Volumes in green.

Although the BALD mat of 2023 may have left an initial bitter taste in the mouths of memecoin players, the ecosystem has developed more momentum during more recent memecoin cycles, although it’s still the Wild West.

• Brett (Teleprinter: BRETT; Market capitalization: $440 million) is a token inspired by a character from the comic strip “Boy’s Club” by Pepe creator Matt Furie. While niche can be good, it can also reduce the audience and, therefore, the demand for a token.
• Toshi the cat (Teleprinter: TOSHI; Market cap: $146 million), named after Brian Armstrong’s cat and Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, is Base’s leading pet-inspired memecoin.

Traders show their allegiance to the channels that helped them get rich. While SOL traders were able to purchase the token for a tiny fraction of its current market cap, Base still does not have a native token due to regulatory review, and if/when it does, it can be assumed that there will be relatively milder upside potential for retail traders. During this time, there have been few impactful ecosystem drops on base, unlike the Solana community.

Although Base has unique memecoin communities, they lack the broader appeal of tokens in other ecosystems like Solana; rather, they are aimed at a more crypto-native audience. This uniqueness sets the channel apart, but the narrow thematic scope could limit the channel’s success as a major meme hub.

Although Base was able to leverage its cheaper and faster transactions to create an early class of memes, the strongest memecoin communities on Ethereum still exist primarily on the mainnet. Solana has momentum and a more palpable narrative in this cycle, and while Base continues to be one of the busiest L2 ecosystems, Base still has a lot of catching up to do in the memecoin arena.

Final Thoughts

Solana and Base exist on different levels when it comes to memecoins.

Solana has solidified its position through a diverse and thriving memecoin ecosystem supported by large airdrops and a robust community. In contrast, despite its impressive growth and support from Coinbase, Base has yet to achieve the same level of mainstream appeal and capital creation that lends itself to the degenerate environment necessary for memecoins.

Solana’s continued growth, evident in its increasing TVL and daily volumes, highlights its place in the spotlight this cycle. As the memecoin landscape evolves, it will be interesting to see if Base can foster a standout memecoin that can differentiate Base within and outside of the Ethereum ecosystem.

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