Solana rules the meme coin space… for now.
Solana’s comeback has been the story of the cycle so far, with the network rising on the back of technological advancements, lucrative airdrops, and most notably, meme coin status.
Meme coins have gone from being a non-serious, short-lived asset class to a forward-thinking alternative to low-liquidity, high-FDV tokens that don’t have enough retail upside.
Today, most meme coin activity occurs on Solana, although activity is continuing to migrate to ETH L2s like Arbitrum and Base. Base has been particularly busy lately. While the Coinbase-incubated L2 does have promise as a meme hub, Solana activity continues to dominate and stay within its ecosystem. Can Base compete with Solana in the meme coin arena?
In this article, we’ll examine the current state of these platforms, their capital flows, and leading projects to assess why Solana is the meme coin of choice, and how Base compares to it.
Solana Meme Coin Scenarios
A key factor in Solana becoming the darling of this cycle is its meme coin activity.
Driven by a surge in internal funding from airdrops such as Jito, Jupiter, Kamino, Parcl, and Tensor, Meme Coin’s market cap reached $1 billion in a week, an amazing achievement and a brilliant marketing campaign, and the chain’s TVL has now exceeded $4.8 billion.
Solana’s narrative momentum is largely due to the meme coin craze, which is evident in the activity on the popular meme coin launcher pump.fun, which on some days has accounted for 83% of all issued tokens and even surpassed Solana in 24-hour revenue. However, this success would not be possible if the network did not have such a strong meme coin arena, which includes major role tokens such as WIF, BONK, and BODEN.
• Dogwifhat (ticker: WIF; market cap: $3.3 billion), a lovable Shiba Inu wearing a knitted hat, became Solana’s mascot due to its memorability, widespread promotion by Crypto Twitter celebrities, and the loyalty generated by your token’s climb from a $10,000 market cap to multi-billion dollar status.
• Jeo Boden (ticker: BODEN; market cap: $194 million), which sparked a political storm by featuring U.S. President Joe Biden, also calls Solana home. In its first week, it delivered a 1,000x return, a performance that has undoubtedly tied in with the SOL meme coin scene.
• Bonk (ticker: Bonk; market cap: $2.65 billion) is Solana’s OG Meme Coin. A Shiba Inu from December 2022, it saw incredible price action last fall and kicked off the meme craze for the chain.
Overall, Solana not only has the most famous meme coin of this cycle, but also has a range of themed tokens ranging from dogs and cats to politicians.
Base Meme Coin Scenario
Base has quickly risen to become one of Ethereum’s top L2s, and its meme coin ecosystem has helped it gain a reputation as a consumer-friendly platform.
Projects like DEGEN and friend.tech have brought constant activity to the network and established a culture for Base as a social hub. That said, while the network's TVL saw an epic rally in March, it seems to have stagnated in recent weeks. While Base's TVL is a far cry from Solana's, its daily trading volume is impressive. Last week, the network saw a record $854 million in daily trading.
Blue is TVL, green is transaction volume
While the 2023 BALD rug may have left an initial sour taste for memecoin gamblers, the ecosystem has developed more momentum during recent memecoin cycles, even though it’s still the Wild West.
• Brett (ticker: BRETT; market cap: $440 million) is a token inspired by a character from the comic book “Boy’s Club” by Pepe creator Matt Furie. While a niche can be good, it can also reduce the audience and, therefore, demand for the token.
• Toshi the Cat (ticker: TOSHI; market cap: $146 million), named after Brian Armstrong’s cat and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is Base’s leading pet-inspired meme coin.
https://x.com/BasedBrett/status/1785151748358979891
Traders show loyalty to the chain that helped them build wealth. While SOL traders were able to purchase tokens at a fraction of their current market cap, Base still has no native token due to regulatory scrutiny, and if/when it does, it can be assumed that the upside available to retail traders will be relatively small. All this while, Base has had few landmark ecosystem airdrops, unlike the Solana community.
While Base has a unique meme coin community, they do not have the broader appeal seen in other ecosystems like Solana; instead, they cater to more crypto-native users. This uniqueness makes Base stand out, but the narrow range of topics may limit Base’s success as a major meme hub.
While Base has been able to leverage its cheaper and faster transactions to build early memes, the strongest meme communities on Ethereum still exist primarily on mainnet. Solana has momentum and a more visible narrative this cycle, and while Base remains one of the more active L2 ecosystems, Base still has a lot of ground to make up in the meme coin space.
Conclusion
When it comes to meme coins, Solana and Base exist on different planes.
Solana has solidified its position with a diverse and thriving meme ecosystem supported by a large airdrop and strong community support. In contrast, despite Base’s impressive growth and support from Coinbase, it has yet to achieve the same level of mainstream appeal and capital creation as the degen environment required by meme coins.
Solana’s continued growth, as seen in its TVL growth and daily transaction volume, highlights its place at center stage in this cycle. As the meme coin space grows, it will be interesting to see if Base can foster a standout meme coin that makes Base stand out within and beyond the Ethereum ecosystem.
