Solana Memecoins Abandoned: A $26 Million Rugpull?

Key Takeaways

• Twelve popular pre-sale memecoins on Solana have been abandoned losing investors some $26 million
• Solana’s memecoin frenzy was criticized for not driving enough utility to the network and causing congestion.
• This could signal a period of maturity for the Solana community after a controversial period for the network.

After outperforming the likes of Ethereum (ETH) in network activity, Solana’s (SOL) memecoin frenzy appears to be finally be winding down after months of solid, but controversial performance.

As was the case with Ethereum‘s booming altcoin market as it rose to prominence through the 2017/2018 initial coin offering (ICO) era, it appears that rugpulls and exit scams are finally landing on Solana.

Memecoins “Abandoned”

According to an April 21, 2024 post from crypto-detective ZachXBT, a dozen of Solana’s memecoins which raised a total of over $26 million in pre-sales, have seemingly gone dead in just over a month.

The “I like this coin” (LIKE) memecoin raised approximately $7.7 million (at current market prices) prior to its launch on March 17, 2024. After launching and hitting a market cap of over $500 million, the token plunged over 99% .

Other memecoins such as MOONKE are also seemingly dead. After raising millions of dollars, the MOONKE project launched on March 20, 2024 with a highly-inflated valuation of almost $500 million. This too fell off a cliff, dropping 99% from its launch price within hours. According to ZachXBT, some tokens didn’t even launch.

Solana’s Road Ahead

There is also the fact that a lot of the memecoins recently launched to Solana were also extremely racist, or contained some hint of malice using some rather disturbing ticker symbols. Seemingly, this was just a bid to gain attention and stand out, but it quickly became a trend, which hasn’t helped Solana’s reputation.

Solana has faced multiple network outages, downtime, and severe congestion in recent months, which is stirring up concern amongst the community.

Despite rising to be a major competitor to the likes of Ethereum, Binance Chain, and others, Solana’s ongoing and persistent downtime could shake confidence.

History Doesn’t Repeat, Though it Does Rhyme

If you were involved in crypto throughout Ethereum’s 2017/2018 ICO boom, you’d probably recall the hundreds of new coins entering the market. You may also recall many of these crypto projects promising a new era of innovation in whichever sector or industry they targeted.

Naturally, there were plenty of scams, frauds, rugpulls, and other malicious crypto creations that flooded the market. A long crypto winter followed in the wake of that red-hot market, and billions of dollars that poured into these coins were lost.

Some offered true utility, and some were just iterations of those that did. Though these were few and far between the useless and largely fraudulent coins that flooded the market those years ago.

Just as Ethereum did, the Solana network and the community will need to put more focus on promoting coins with true utility. Although a little skepticism toward memecoins wouldn’t hurt either.