Author: David C, Bankless; Translated by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
Solana’s comeback has been the story of this cycle so far, with the network rising on the back of technological improvements, lucrative airdrops, and most notably, a memecoin.
Memecoin has gone from being a non-serious, short-lived asset class to a forward-thinking alternative to low-circulation, high-FDV tokens that don’t leave enough upside for retail investors.
Today, most memecoin activity is happening on Solana, though activity continues to migrate to ETH L2s like Arbitrum and Base. Base has been particularly busy lately. While the Coinbase-incubated L2 is certainly on track to become a memecoin hub, activity on Solana continues to dominate and stay within its ecosystem. Can Base compete with Solana in the memecoin space?
In this article, we’ll examine the current state of these platforms, their capital flows, and leading projects to assess why Solana is the memecoin of the moment and how Base compares.
Solana’s Memecoin Scenario
A key factor in Solana becoming the darling of this cycle is its memecoin activity.
Driven by a surge in internal funding from airdrops such as Jito, Jupiter, Kamino, Parcl, and Tensor, memecoin’s market cap reached $1 billion in a week, an amazing achievement and a brilliant marketing campaign, and the chain’s TVL now exceeds $4.8 billion.
Solana’s narrative momentum is largely due to the memecoin craze, as evidenced by activity on the popular memecoin launcher Pump.fun, which on some days accounted for 83% of all issued tokens, even surpassing Solana in 24-hour revenue. However, this success would not have been possible if the network did not already have such a strong memecoin arena, featuring major character tokens such as WIF, BONK, and BODEN.
Dogwifhat (Token: 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 user loyalty generated by its climb from a $10,000 market cap to multi-billion dollar status.
Jeo Boden (Token: Boden; Market Cap: $194 million), featuring US President Joe Biden, has stirred up a political storm. In its first week, it brought a 1,000x return, a performance that has undoubtedly tied in with the SOL memecoin scene.
Bonk (Token: Bonk; Market Cap: $2.65 billion) is Solana’s OG emoji coin. It’s a Shiba Inu from December 2022 that saw incredible price action last fall.
Overall, Solana not only has the most famous memecoin of the cycle, but also a range of themed tokens, from dogs and cats to politicians.
Memecoin scenario of Base
Base has quickly risen to become one of Ethereum’s top L2s, and its memecoin ecosystem has helped it gain a reputation as a consumer-friendly platform.
Projects like DEGEN and friend.tech have brought consistent activity to the network and established a culture of Base as a social hub. Still, while the network's TVL saw an epic rally in March, it appears to have stabilized in recent weeks. While Base's TVL is still a long way from Solana's, its daily trading volume is impressive. Last week, the network's single-day trading volume reached a record $854 million.
While the 2023 BALD rug may have left an initial bad impression on memecoin gamblers, the ecosystem has developed more momentum in recent memecoin cycles and it’s still the Wild West.
Brett (Token: BRETT; Market Cap: $440M) is a token inspired by a character from the comic strip Boys Club by Pepe creator Matt Furie, and while the niche may be great, it will also reduce the audience and thus demand for the token.
Named after Brian Armstrong’s cat and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Toshi the Cat (Token: TOSHI; Market Cap: $146M) is Base’s leading pet-inspired memecoin.
Traders show loyalty to the blockchain that helped them build wealth. While SOL traders were able to purchase the token at a fraction of its current market cap, Base still has no native token due to regulatory scrutiny. Unlike the Solana community, Base has had few landmark ecosystem airdrops.
While Base has a unique memecoin community, they do not have as broad appeal as tokens in other ecosystems like Solana; instead, they cater to a more crypto-native audience. This uniqueness makes the chain stand out, but the narrow subject matter range may limit the success of this blockchain as a major memecoin hub.
While Base has been able to leverage its cheaper and faster transactions to build early memes, the strongest memecoin 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 liveliest L2 ecosystems, there is still a lot of room for Base to do better in the memecoin space.
Summarize
As far as memecoins go, Solana and Base exist on different planes.
Backed by a massive airdrop and a strong community, Solana has solidified its position with a diverse and thriving memecoin ecosystem. 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.
Solana’s continued growth, evident in its increased TVL and daily transaction volume, highlights its center stage position in this cycle. As the memecoin landscape develops, it will be interesting to see if Base can foster a standout memecoin that makes Base stand out within and beyond the Ethereum ecosystem.
