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Solana Meme Coins Outperform Ethereum by 800% YTD
According to a recent report from market data platform CoinMarketCap, Solana-based meme coins emerged as the frontrunners in the first quarter of the year, outpacing Ethereum’s meme coin ecosystem and artificial intelligence (AI) tokens.
This shift in popularity indicates a shift in dynamics within the cryptocurrency market, with meme coins is gaining traction and challenging previously dominant narratives such as smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Solana Ecosystem Dominates Growth Chart
The CoinMarketCap relationship highlights that the Solana ecosystem has consistently been at the top of the growth charts over the past eight months, with over 20 new tokens introduced in Q2 alone.
The Ethereum ecosystem followed closely behind with 14 new tokens, while derivatives and stablecoins saw relatively less growth with 5 and 4 new tokens, respectively. This surge in Solana-based token offerings indicates growing interest in the network and its potential.
In particular, the Solana meme coin ecosystem has gained significant momentum in price performance and popularity since October 2023. While Ethereum remains the dominant blockchain, Solana’s growing prominence suggests a noteworthy trend in the cryptocurrency space.
Interestingly, SOL memes performed significantly better than ETH memes, with an average return of 8,469% compared to Ethereum’s 962%, as seen in the chart below.
While “speculative capital” from other chains poured into Solana, attracted by the explosive gatherings Thanks to tokens like dogwifhat (WIF) and Bonk Inu (BONK), other meme coins have also seen a surge in prices, attracting further attention and capital.
The biggest winners in the meme coin space include the cat characters MEW, POPCAT, and Book of Meme (MEME). These tokens have even outperformed popular ones like WIF, BONK, Ethereum’s Pepe coin (PEPE), and Shiba Inu (SHIB).
Notably, political memes have also emerged as a popular subcategory, with the leading meme coin MAGA (TRUMP) gaining over 5100% since the beginning of the year, largely due to former President Donald Trump’s vocal support for cryptocurrencies and acceptance of cryptocurrencies for campaign donations.
Ethereum Tops Fee Revenue Chart
Despite Solana’s significant gains, Ethereum continues to dominate the Level 1 (L1) smart contract market, which represents 62.11% of the top L1s. The report highlights that Ethereum’s recent milestone was driven by the SEC’s approval of Ethereum Spot ETFs.
However, Binance Smart Chain (BNB) and Solana have also gained ground, adding $42 billion and $18 billion to their market share among L1 networks. Solana currently leads the way with over 1.6 million daily active addresses, followed by BNB with 1 million active addresses.
In the second quarter, Ethereum saw record gas fees, reaching levels not seen since 2020 due to the growing adoption of Level 2 Solutions and the market excitement around Solana-based meme coins.
Despite accounting for 62% of the market cap among the major L1s, Ethereum accounted for 70% of the daily revenue, generating about $2.7 million. Solana ranked second with about $900,000 in daily revenue.
Second According to Lookonchain, Ethereum led the fee revenue rankings last year with $2.728 billion, followed by Bitcoin with $1.302 billion.
Other notable networks include Tron ($459.39 million), Solana ($241.29 million), Binance Smart Chain ($176.56 million), Avalanche ($68.83 million), zkSync Era ($59.77 million), Optimism ($40.4 million), and Polygon ($23.91 million).
While both platforms have seen success across various financial metrics and growth charts, Solana’s native token, SOL, has performed significantly better than Ethereum’s ETH token.
At the current trading price, SOL is valued at $143.25, up 650% year-to-date. ETH has seen a more modest increase of 68% over the same period and is currently trading at $3,310.
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com