Author: flowie , ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
After Trump was assassinated, for many meme players, the more regrettable thing than not rushing to the FIGHT, FEAR NOT and other memes earlier might be that they rushed to the wrong chain.
Solana is recognized as the meme king among public chains this year. However, in this round of popular election concept memes, Solana was overtaken at one point despite having a first-mover advantage over the meme of the same name on the Ethereum chain.
FIGHT and FEAR NOT were launched between July 14 and July 16. The memes of the same name on Solana were launched about 3 hours ahead of those on Ethereum. However, after three days of fermentation, Fight and FEAR NOT on Solana were once inferior to those on Ethereum in terms of market value and maximum increase.
Data on July 17 showed that the market value of FIGHT and FEAR NOT on the Ethereum chain once reached US$68 million and US$20.5 million, while the market value of the same-name memes on Solana was US$12.5 million and US$1.6 million, respectively.
At present, the election concept coins are still fermenting, and the winner is hard to determine. If a similar rare narrative meme coin is born, whether to rush to Solana or Ethereum may still be a difficult problem for meme players.
The competition between the meme coins on the two chains has also been elevated by many crypto users to a battle between Solana and Ethereum, the two most watched public chains.
Why did Ethereum once gain the upper hand in the “election coin” competition?
There are many accidental factors behind the success of every meme. Even if the theme is the same and even the team and the dealer are the same, completely different effects may occur, which makes it difficult to simply attribute them.
But some crypto KOLs gave their opinions on why Fight and FEAR NOT, two popular election coins with the same narrative and similar starting points, both performed better on Ethereum at one point.
First of all, in terms of interactive experience, shaqima (@Daji_357), the creator of the BitPuppet Chinese Community, believes that the current interactive mode on Ethereum basically covers most people in the crypto community. In addition to various SWAPs, the tools that can be used include wallet flash exchange and CEX exchange (on the premise of listing). Solana is not so comprehensive in infrastructure, which has discouraged most of the traffic.
The second is the difference between the attributes of meme players on Solana and Ethereum. Trader @Kurolvi feels that Solana, which carries most of the memes this year, has cultivated a group of fixed players with small casino attributes, who are accustomed to the fast-in-fast-out PVP mutual-cutting mode.
The memes on the Ethereum chain have a greater sense of security with secondary funds taking over, and the probability of a golden dog appearing after a hot topic emerges is also greater.
@Wilsonchen1101 has a similar view. There are many buyers of memes on the Ethereum mainnet who are not just degen (high-risk gamblers) in the crypto. "If you often participate in overseas spaces, you will find that there are many more players on Ethereum who care about politics and major real-world events than on Solana."
In addition, political inclinations may also be one of the reasons why coins are more active on Ethereum in this round of elections, and public chains may also have to take sides.
Crypto KOL @0x_Todd speculates that in the last US election, one of Biden’s largest political donors was SBF, which is Solana’s most critical investor and supporter. SOL can barely be considered a so-called “Democratic Party asset.” The Republican Party’s election coins related to Trump are naturally not suitable to appear on Solana.
In fact, in addition to Fight and FEAR NOT, previously popular Trump-themed concept memes such as Trump and MAGA are also more active on Ethereum. Biden-themed meme coin BODEN is active on Solana.
Before the final result of the US election is determined, meme coins related to the election concept are expected to set off waves of craze.
Although the recent popular election concept meme has a greater participation on Ethereum in terms of market value and maximum increase, meme players still have different choices as to whether to go for Ethereum or Solana for the election meme coin with the same name.
The short-term wealth effect that Solana has brought in the past still attracts players to bet.
@neso said that the market value of the meme on the Solana chain is several times lower than that of the meme of the same name on Ethereum in just one day, which is abnormal, but it is also an opportunity. He chose to continue to increase his position in FIGHT on the Solana chain, "As long as FIGHT can become the next real gold meta, its value will not be low whether on Ethereum or Solana."
Regarding the next rare narrative similar to Trump’s assassination, @Daji_357 mentioned that when faced with ETH, SOL, RUNE or other options, it may be preferred to invest in tracks with better ecological infrastructure.
Nathan (@26x14eth), co-founder of 7updao, suggested that if you think a on-chain meme has the qualities of a blue chip, then please give priority to the Ethereum chain. If you think this meme is just a on-chain meme, then please give priority to the Solana chain.
The public chain competition behind the meme war
The debate over which of Solana and Ethereum represents the future of the public chain has never stopped. The meme fever driven by this election has also been upgraded by some crypto users to a battle between Solana and Ethereum.
The core point of contention is whether meme can help Solana surpass Ethereum's market value?
In this whole bear-to-bull cycle, Solana, which experienced the FTX crash, has fully recovered. The price of the coin has risen from less than $10 to a maximum of $200, an increase of more than 20 times, while ETH has only increased by more than 3 times. Among them, meme may have contributed the most to Solana's revival.
The different performances of the popular meme coins related to this election on the two chains have also caused many crypto users to re-examine the future of the two public chains.
A portion of crypto users still believe that the meme will create a flywheel effect for Solana.
Although the popular memes of this election have performed well on Ethereum, crypto user @MichaelLars9 believes that most meme transactions still occur on Solana. Memes are bringing real users and real growth to Solana, and Solana is also carrying the banner of the third large-scale growth of crypto users.
Specifically, judging from the transaction volume on July 16, the transaction volume on Solana and Ethereum was the same, both around US$1.9 billion. However, judging from the transaction volume composition, Solana is basically all meme, while 90% of Ethereum occurs on Uniswap. The first screen of Uniswap basically shows the interaction of "mainstream" large coins or stable coins. The transaction volume of meme coins that are not listed on centralized exchanges is only in the tens of millions of dollars.
@MichaelLars9 believes that compared to mainstream coins, meme essentially brings about the growth of players on the chain, while mainstream coins actually just take a piece of the pie from the users of centralized exchanges.
On the other hand, "if you look back at the three large-scale growths in crypto users, they were basically driven by coin issuance financing." For example, the emergence of ICOs in 2017-2018 led to the rise of Ethereum, and the driving force of DeFi Summer in 2021 came from Uniswap V2, which made it easier to hype new coins on exchanges (DEX).
@MichaelLars9 believes that the third time was because Solana’s meme gameplay brought a huge demonstration effect. “If ETH and the entire EVM system cannot find a breakthrough in Mass Adoption outside of Momo, it may only be a matter of time before Solana’s coin price and even the entire MarketCap catch up with ETH. As users continue to gather here, the ecological construction will catch up sooner or later.”
Zen Family Office co-founder @ShanghaoJin also agrees with this view. He said that issuing coins is the essence of the crypto casino, and ETH also relied on ICO back then.
But crypto KOLs such as @xingkongsq refuted it.
First of all, memes do not necessarily bring real user growth. @xingkongsq believes that meme players are not loyal, have extremely high liquidity, are neither value investors nor ecosystem builders, but more like casino gamblers.
Although the meme coin issuance and transaction volume on Solana are large, due to the extremely high loss rate, this part of the gamblers also has a very high elimination rate.
@xingkongsq mentioned that if meme is the main theme, Solana needs to continuously acquire customers through marketing to maintain MEV and transaction volume in order to ensure that the public chain and project parties make money. In this process, users and their funds are consumables.
“To use an inappropriate analogy, purely meme-oriented, Solana is now a casino with the best services, providing gamblers with more ways to gamble, more convenient entry points, and lower commissions. If that were the case, Solana’s upper limit would be the casino’s annual revenue, and the ceiling would be visible.”
Crypto analyst @Phyrex_Ni also believes that whether it is Ethereum or Solana, if the value of the chain relies on Meme to support it, it may not last long.
In his opinion, a market that is only supported by Meme is not necessarily a healthy market. Just like Nasdaq, if more than 90% of the transactions are junk stocks, it will become a place where even dogs don’t play for a long time. After all, how many compliant market makers are willing or able to make markets for such projects?
@Phyrex_Ni said that memes can only be a tool to attract traffic, and it is unlikely to leverage the trillion-dollar market through memes. Crypto KOL @chengzi_95330 added that the huge crypto market must be driven by phenomenal applications, and some traditional fields need to actively embrace cryptocurrencies to improve efficiency.
Not only in terms of meme, the question of which one is the public chain, Ethereum or Solana, has always been the focus of the crypto market.
In June this year, Bankless initiated a large-scale debate between Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each other around technology and ecology, and attracted the debate and support of founders of well-known projects such as Uniswap and Eigenlayer. But the debate ended in a draw.
As the most popular content this year, meme has become one of the important strategies of major public chains. But for public chains, meme is not everything, and innovations beyond meme also need more attention.
