In the past six weeks, more than 1 million new coins have been created. Of these, over 370,000 were launched on Ethereum, while 640,000 appeared on Solana, according to data from Dune.
Since April 1, the Ethereum network has seen the creation of 372,642 tokens, 88% of which were launched on the L2 solution Base. This surge is likely driven by low transaction costs and the hype surrounding meme tokens.
Coinbase Director Conor Grogan highlighted a similar figure, noting that this number is twice as large as the total from 2015 to 2023.
There were nearly 1 million new crypto tokens created in the last month, a number that is 2x the total number ever made on Ethereum from 2015-2023 pic.twitter.com/Dg7On7Muny
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) May 14, 2024
According to L2BEAT, the volume of locked funds on Base has increased by approximately 630% since the beginning of 2024.
Analytical platform Step Finance reports that 643,227 new tokens have been created on Solana since the start of April.
Another dashboard from Dune, which tracks assets on the Solana-based platform pump.fun, indicates that 466,914 of the new coins were meme tokens.
CoinMarketCap listed 500 recently added tokens, most of which were also meme coins. CoinGecko counts 614 such assets with a total capitalization of $55.4 billion.
Under Grogan’s post, community members saw the sharp rise in meme coins as a “net negative” leading to the spread of scams.
but that’s even worse
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They launch, rug retail for a few eth
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That’s real money that could have went into bigger “legit” projects
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Instead it’s now in the hands of the scammer, who will cash it into fiat
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Net negative, don’t let anyone gaslight you otherwise
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Dilution…— Talented Gamblers (@TalentedGamblrs) May 14, 2024
“That’s real money that could have gone into bigger ‘legit’ projects. Instead, it’s now in the hands of the scammer, who will cash it into fiat,” wrote Talented Gamblers.
Others considered this situation as “spam for sniper bot farming,” aimed at automatically purchasing new meme coins in hopes of a sharp rise.
Previously, Messari’s head of research, Martje Bas, stated that meme tokens will remain a vital part of the crypto industry and potentially evolve into a new asset class. She described them as a “Trojan horse” for the next era of native consumer applications.
Back in March, CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju expressed concern over the boom in the meme token segment. According to the expert, such projects simply harm the market.