Since April 2024, crypto projects have launched more than 1m tokens on Ethereum (370,000) and Solana (640,000). Most of them are meme tokens.<\/p>\n
What explains the popularity of such assets, and why do their creators pick the Solana blockchain? We answer with the exchange CoinEx<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meme tokens and meme coins are digital assets that reference internet memes, pop culture and online trends. Developers launch them as a joke or satire and typically focus on growing a community rather than technical innovation.<\/p>\n Investors often lump meme coins and meme tokens together, but there is a fundamental difference: the former are issued on their own blockchains (for example, Dogecoin), the latter are issued on networks such as Ethereum and Solana <\/strong>.<\/p>\n The first and best-known meme coin is considered to be Dogecoin \u2014 a fork of Luckycoin (itself a fork of Litecoin) named after the internet meme \u201cDoge<\/a>\u201d. The Dogecoin network was launched<\/a> in December 2013 \u2014 18 months before Ethereum\u2019s mainnet.<\/p>\n As smart-contract blockchains developed, a multitude of meme tokens appeared. They are now issued on Solana, The Open Network (TON) and other L1s, as well as Ethereum L2s such as Arbitrum and Base.<\/p>\n The CoinEx team highlights three reasons for their popularity:<\/p>\n We explore each in turn.<\/p>\n Launching meme tokens is far easier than in 2013, when the Dogecoin mainnet went live.<\/p>\n \n\u201cCreating a meme token with the Meme Coin Creator<\/a> tool on Solana will cost about 12\u201315 SOL<\/a> ($2,000\u20132,500 at the time of writing). That is a relatively small sum, given that in May the total market capitalisation of meme tokens on this blockchain reached $9 billion<\/a>,\u201d CoinEx representatives comment.<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Solana offers a favourable environment for meme tokens thanks to several features:<\/p>\n Among the more notable meme tokens on this network are dogwifhat<\/a>, Bonk<\/a>, BOOK OF MEME<\/a>, Popcat<\/a>, cat in a dogs world<\/a> and Myro<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before Solana, Ethereum led the segment. It is home to meme tokens such as Pepe<\/a>, FLOKI<\/a>, Memecoin<\/a> and Shiba Inu (SHIB), which ranks 11th by market capitalisation on CoinMarketCap. The latter rose to prominence when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sent 50trn SHIB to charity and later burned 410trn SHIB worth more than $6.5bn.<\/p>\n JUST IN: #Ethereum<\/a> founder Vitalik Buterin was seen wearing Shiba Inu pajama pants at the #ETH<\/a> conference in Denver. pic.twitter.com\/kOmKVewuiZ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) February 19, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Coin or token?<\/h2>\n
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Faster, simpler, cheaper<\/h2>\n
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