Making money with smiles, leaving in tears: A 2025 Meme Coin year-end review.

Additional notes:
Based on market capitalization, as of the end of 2025, the top five Meme Coins were:
1) Dogecoin (approximately $24 billion)
2) Shiba Inu (approximately US$5 billion)
3) MemeCore (approximately $2.15 billion)
4) Pepe (approximately US$2.05 billion)
5) Official Trump (approximately $1.36 billion)

The above data highlights the long-standing dominance of DOGE and SHIB in the meme coin space, while also reflecting the rapid rise of a new generation of projects. Furthermore, tokens such as BRETT, BONK, WIF, FLOKI, and PENGU have market capitalizations mostly in the range of $1 billion to several hundred million, ranking generally within the top 10–15.

The most volatile Meme Coin in 2025

Extreme price volatility has always been a core characteristic of Meme Coins, and 2025 saw particularly dramatic price swings. Many Meme Coins experienced explosive price increases within days or even minutes of listing, only to quickly plummet afterward. Below are some of the most representative high-volatility Meme Coins and related events of 2025:

• Official Trump (TRUMP):
As mentioned earlier, the Trump token on the Solana chain surged by tens of thousands of percentage points on its first day of listing, only to plummet rapidly afterward. Some early participants reaped enormous paper profits in a very short period, while later entrants suffered quick losses as the price reverted to its previous level. This "short-cycle surge-crash" pattern has become a typical speculative paradigm for Meme Coin.

• Binance Life:
The BNB Chain meme project "Binance Life" launched in October 2025, and its price surged by over 3000% after listing. Its market capitalization climbed from near zero to approximately $345 million in less than a week. Reportedly, one trader invested $3,500 in the token and turned it into $7.9 million in three days, a return of 2260 times. This extreme case highlights the ability of the BNB Chain meme craze to create wealth miracles in a short period, while also exposing the significant risks after a market correction. As the hype subsided, the token subsequently experienced a significant pullback.

• BNBHolder:
Also from the BNB Chain, BNBHolder created an extreme example of the "rapid price surge" of Meme Coin. Launched in October 2025 with the theme "Hold BNB," the token's market capitalization surpassed $129 million within minutes of listing, peaking at nearly $140 million. One trader invested $5,245 and turned it into $2.16 million within 40 minutes, achieving a 410-fold return. This surge occurred during the overall high sentiment of the BSC Meme Season, but as early investors took profits, the price subsequently entered a highly volatile state.

• Gorbagana (Gobagana) and Useless Coin:
In mid-2025, even against the backdrop of a weak overall crypto market, some low-market-cap meme coins experienced unusually strong price movements. Research institutions pointed out that Gorbagana on the Solana chain rose by about 50% in a single day, and Useless Coin rose by about 40% in 24 hours. These tokens had extremely low liquidity and were almost entirely driven by viral speculation. Their counter-trend rise in a depressed market reflected the ability of meme narratives to "outperform" large-cap assets in the short term, but such rallies often ended with sharp pullbacks.

• High-frequency Launchpad tokens:
With the proliferation of Meme Launchpads (such as Solana's Pump.fun and BNB Chain's Four.Meme), dozens of new Meme tokens were launched every week in 2025. A significant portion of these experienced price pullbacks of over 90% after the initial hype. For example, some Meme projects on Pump.fun went from a surge to a crash in just a few hours. Traders without proper risk management often suffered substantial losses in such market conditions. Overall, public attention to Meme Coins continued to decline throughout 2025, with online attention (Google search trends, page views, etc.) down approximately 81% from the beginning of the year, reflecting significant market fatigue with high-frequency volatility.

In summary, the "winners" of Meme Coin in 2025 were often extremely short-lived. Early participants might reap life-changing rewards, but only with precise timing and swift execution. Frequent Rug Pulls, "soft Rugs" (development teams pumping up prices and then gradually exiting), and liquidity crises in smaller tokens further confirm the highly speculative nature of the Meme Coin market. Although some Meme projects significantly outperformed the market in certain phases, overall, they relied on high-frequency trading, sentiment-driven speculation, and a considerable amount of luck.

BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) Meme Coin Ranking (2025)

In 2025, BNB Chain became a major hub for Meme Coins, especially in the second half of the year. Thanks to low transaction costs and a highly active community (especially among Asian users), BNB Chain even surpassed Solana at times to become the most actively traded public chain on the Meme DEX.

Driving factors included Binance founder CZ's repeated mentions of "#BNBMemeSeason" and the launch of the no-code meme creation platform Four.Meme in early 2025. This combination quickly ignited a meme craze on the BNB Chain. Below are some of the most representative meme projects on the BNB Chain in 2025:

• quq (QUQ):
BNB Chain's native meme coin, QUQ, performed exceptionally well during meme seasons. By October 2025, QUQ ranked first on BNB Chain with a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $354 million. Launched in mid-2025, the project maintained an extremely high turnover rate despite a relatively low market capitalization (FDV of approximately $2.7 million), becoming a key target for early BSC meme traders to "rotate" their funds, fully demonstrating the speculative fervor on BNB Chain.

• Ark of Panda (AOP):
The meme project, which incorporates AI storytelling, quickly gained popularity after its launch in late 2025. Its peak 24-hour trading volume exceeded $250 million, with a fully diluted valuation of approximately $160 million. AOP's daily price fluctuated frequently, reaching ±5%–10%, but it consistently ranked among the most actively traded memes on the BNB Chain, demonstrating the appeal of combining AI concepts with meme storytelling.

• Binance Life:
Meme Coin, driven primarily by the Chinese community, directly targets the Binance ecosystem. Within days of its launch, its market capitalization surged to approximately $345 million, and thanks to a gain exceeding 3000% and widespread dissemination in the Chinese market, it became one of the top three meme projects on the BNB Chain by trading volume. Its brief but highly representative explosive growth highlights the influence of Asian traders and the Binance narrative within the BSC meme ecosystem.

• 4 (FOUR):
The Meme token, simply known as "4," is referred to in the market as the "BNB version of DOGE." The project is deeply integrated with the Four.Meme Launchpad and has cultivated an internal meme culture through CZ's numerous tweets related to the number "4." After its launch in 2025, FOUR quickly accumulated approximately 100,000 holders and a market capitalization of about $180 million. By October 2025, the Four.Meme platform had accumulated a trading volume of $2.6 billion and daily revenue of approximately $1.4 million, surpassing Solana's Pump.fun in some metrics. The platform successfully boosted the value of the FOUR token.

• BNBHolder:
This token, with "holding BNB" as its core narrative, briefly entered the top five of the BNB Chain during the October 2025 Meme season. Within minutes of its launch, its market capitalization exceeded $100 million, attracting significant whale funding, with some addresses making single profits exceeding $1 million. Despite its extremely short lifespan, its 410-fold increase within minutes became a typical example of the high volatility of BSC Memes.

Other mentions:
Established meme projects like Baby Doge Coin still saw trading activity in 2025, but were largely overshadowed by newer memes. Tokens like MUBARAK and GMGN mostly appeared as short-term rotation targets. Overall, BNB Chain successfully established itself as a meme coin hub in 2025, but its projects generally exhibited the characteristics of "high growth followed by rapid decline."

Solana Ecosystem Meme Coin (2025)

Solana was also a hub for Meme Coin activity from late 2024 to 2025. Its high throughput and low fees provided a "faster, cheaper, and smoother" environment for Meme trading. The emergence of platforms such as Pump.fun led to the creation of tens of thousands of Meme tokens on Solana starting in 2024.

Despite some market attention being diverted to BNB Chain in 2025, Solana still fostered several heavyweight meme projects and unique trends:

• Official Trump (TRUMP):
Trump, launched on the Solana blockchain in January 2025, just before Trump's inauguration. With his public promotion, it surged by tens of thousands of percent on its first day, before quickly crashing. The token's peak market capitalization was approximately $2.28 billion, briefly placing it among the top memes and becoming the first meme project in crypto history to be directly promoted by a sitting president. Although most of the gains were subsequently given back, this case vividly demonstrates the viral spread and high volatility of political narrative memes.

• Bonk (BONK):
As a flagship meme coin within the Solana ecosystem, BONK maintained its influence throughout 2025. The project not only embodies meme culture but also incorporates functional modules such as decentralized trading, lending, and wallets, establishing a broad holding base through large-scale airdrops. By 2025, its market capitalization reached approximately $900 million, making it one of the most influential meme projects on Solana in the long run, demonstrating the enduring vitality of meme tokens that combine entertainment with a degree of practicality.

Dogewifhat (WIF)

As mentioned earlier, Dogewifhat (WIF) on the Solana chain grew into one of the leading meme coins in 2025, with a market capitalization of approximately $495 million. Its standout feature was its highly engaging community behavior—most notably, a community-led fundraising effort to display the "hat-wearing Shiba Inu" mascot on the Sphere in Las Vegas (the world's largest LED spherical screen). Although the advertisement ultimately failed to materialize, the attempt itself successfully generated significant attention and substantially increased WIF's market awareness.

Furthermore, WIF's listing on major exchanges such as Coinbase has broadened its influence beyond Solana's native user base, gaining wider market recognition. For most of 2025, WIF consistently ranked as Solana's third-largest meme coin by market capitalization (after Trump and BONK), fully demonstrating the amplifying effect of community humor and viral marketing within the Solana meme ecosystem.

Pudgy Penguins (PENGU)

PENGU is a prime example of the crossover between NFTs and Meme Coins. The token originates from the well-known Ethereum NFT project Pudgy Penguins, but its Ontology token was issued on Solana. With its iconic and adorable penguin design, PENGU quickly attracted the attention of traders.

The project fully leverages its NFT DNA, such as airdropping NFTs to holders, and expands into physical goods and payment scenarios (e.g., partnering with Shopify Pay to support shopping using PENGU). These initiatives propelled PENGU's market capitalization to approximately $440 million in 2025, placing it among the top tokens in the Solana ecosystem.

Pudgy Penguins' successful token issuance demonstrates a replicable path: established NFT brands can extend into fungible tokens and achieve significant market success. By the end of 2025, PENGU still enjoys support from both NFT collectors and Meme Coin traders, forming a relatively rare "dual audience structure."

Fartcoin (FARTCOIN)

Fartcoin truly embraced the "pure humor" approach. Launched in late 2024, the Solana Meme Coin used toilet humor as its core selling point, such as triggering a unique "digital fart" sound effect for each transaction, which became the project's signature gimmick.

Despite (or perhaps precisely because of) its absurd style, FARTCOIN has successfully amassed a loyal user base and allows token holders to participate in voting to determine the content of jokes and community affairs. By 2025, its market capitalization had reached nearly $370 million, placing it among the top tier of Solana Meme Coins.

FARTCOIN has almost no serious functionality, but it clearly illustrates one point: as long as a meme is "out of the loop," the subject matter can be anything—even farts. This case once again highlights the playful, entertaining, and even absurd cultural undertones behind the meme coin craze.

Other representative Solana meme coins

In addition to the projects mentioned above, Solana also saw the emergence of a number of meme coins with diverse styles in 2025:

• Popcat (POPCAT): Originating from a viral cat meme, with a market value of approximately $184 million.

• Cat in a Dog's World (MEW): A meme series with the narrative of "cats surviving in a dog-dominated world," with a market capitalization of approximately $176 million.

• Gigachad (GIGA): A hardcore internet meme centered around "high testosterone," with a market capitalization of approximately $142 million.

Solana has even seen political meme interactions beyond Trump, such as Official Melania (MELANIA), a token reportedly driven by narratives related to Melania Trump, which at one point had a market capitalization of approximately $113 million.

These cases collectively demonstrate the diverse meme culture ecosystem that Solana developed in 2025, whose activity benefited from a high-speed, low-cost trading environment and a community atmosphere highly sensitive to new narratives. However, consistent with the overall market, the popularity of Solana Meme Coin cooled significantly at the end of the year, with some speculative funds gradually rotating to other sectors or flowing back into mainstream assets.

Base network head Meme Coin (2025)

Coinbase's Ethereum Layer-2 network, Base, quickly became a new hub for meme coins in 2024 and continued its growth momentum in 2025. Thanks to millions of users crossing chains to Base and extremely low transaction fees (approximately $0.10), the network became an ideal environment for high-frequency meme trading.

By the end of 2024, the total market capitalization of Meme tokens on Base had exceeded $1.4 billion, and it expanded further in 2025, forming one of the fastest-growing Meme ecosystems.

Brett (BRETT)

BRETT is the flagship meme coin of the Base network, often referred to as "Pepe's best partner on Base". Launched in February 2024, the token is inspired by the comic book character Matt Furie.

Its growth rate has been remarkably rapid: by the fourth quarter of 2025, BRETT's market capitalization reached approximately $1.1 billion, making it the largest meme project on Base. Although it experienced volatility after reaching a price high of approximately $0.19 in mid-2024, the overall drawdown was relatively manageable. An active community and some industry collaborations (relatively rare among meme coins) were key factors in its success.

BRETT plays a role in the Base ecosystem similar to that of Dogecoin on the Ethereum mainnet, serving as an important indicator of market sentiment for Base memes and validating that Layer-2 networks also have the ability to nurture billion-dollar meme coins.

Toshi（TOSHI）

TOSHI, named after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's pet cat "Toshi" (and also paying homage to Satoshi), was launched in August 2023 and quickly became one of Base's "symbolic tokens".

The project innovated in terms of security and tools, such as relinquishing contract ownership, providing multi-address distribution tools, and token locking functionality, attracting developer attention. TOSHI's market capitalization reached $250 million in early 2024, but as its popularity waned, it fell back to approximately $78 million by the end of 2025. Nevertheless, it remains one of the more well-known meme projects within the Base ecosystem.

Degen (DEGEN)

DEGEN was initially launched in January 2024 as the incentive token for the "Degen" community within the Farcaster decentralized social network, where users earned token rewards through posting, interaction, and other activities. This social aspect helped it achieve a rapid cold start.

By 2025, DEGEN will gradually transform into a broader Base Meme Coin, combining meme attributes with social use cases. Although its market capitalization is smaller than BRETT or TOSHI (which are typically in the tens of millions of US dollars range), its significance in the Base ecosystem lies in exploring the possibility of integrating memes with social incentives.

Doginme (DOGINME)

DOGINME is Base's original dog-themed meme coin, named after the pet dog of Farcaster's founder, making it a typical "meme-based" project. Its core slogan, "Embrace the dog within," resonates strongly within the community.

Despite its market capitalization remaining in the $20-30 million range in 2025, DOGINME has successfully garnered tens of thousands of supporters, reflecting the strong grassroots nature of the Base Meme culture and the role of Farcaster social relationships in promoting the spread of the meme.

Other projects

The Base ecosystem also features active meme coins such as Bamboo and Mochi, forming stable communities. Furthermore, **Keyboard Cat (KEYCAT),** the official IP version of the classic 2007 meme, gained authorization from its original creator after its launch on Base and boasts a market capitalization exceeding $30 million. **Mr. Miggles (MIGGLES)** originated from a viral cat video released by Coinbase and has evolved into a fully community-driven meme project.

As of October 2025, the total market capitalization of Base Network Meme Coin exceeded $1.4 billion, making it one of the most important meme ecosystems after Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana.

Conclusions and Observations

The meme coin market in 2025 was characterized by "extreme prosperity and sharp drawdowns." While established projects such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu maintained their dominance, a new generation of meme projects took turns appearing on multiple public chains—from Trump and Bonk on Solana, to Brett and Toshi on Base, and then to quq and Binance Life on BNB Chain.

The key conclusions include:

• Market influence: Meme Coin's market capitalization exceeded $150 billion at its peak in 2024, and even after the correction in 2025, it still maintained a scale of tens of billions of dollars, indicating that it has become a long-term sub-sector of the crypto market.

• Volatility and Risk: Meme trading in 2025 is essentially a high-risk gamble, with both explosive growth and potential for complete collapse, requiring participants to have extremely high execution capabilities and risk tolerance.

• Community and Narrative: The value of Meme Coin is highly dependent on community consensus and cultural narrative; its price is essentially a reflection of group psychology and internet culture.

• Cross-chain diffusion: The 2025 meme craze showed a clear trend towards multi-chain integration, which extended the overall lifecycle and also promoted innovation in Launchpad and issuance tools.

• Outlook: As we enter 2026, it remains uncertain whether Meme Coin can maintain its popularity. However, the cultural impact and lessons learned in 2024–2025 have profoundly influenced the evolution of the crypto industry.

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