In the first quarter of the year, Solana-based meme coins emerged as frontrunners, outpacing Ethereum’s meme coin ecosystem and artificial intelligence (AI) tokens, according to a recent report from market data platform CoinMarketCap.
This shift in popularity means a change in the dynamics of the cryptocurrency market, with meme coins gaining traction and challenging previously dominant narratives such as smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Solana Ecosystem Dominates Growth Chart
CoinMarketCap report highlights that the Solana ecosystem has consistently led the growth chart over the past eight months, with over 20 new tokens introduced in Q2 alone.
The Ethereum ecosystem followed closely behind with 14 new tokens, while Derivatives and Stablecoins witnessed relatively less growth with 5 and 4 new tokens, respectively. This increase in Solana-based token offerings indicates a growing interest in the network and its potential.
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The Solana meme coin ecosystem, in particular, has gained significant momentum in price performance and popularity since October 2023. While Ethereum remains the dominant blockchain, Solana’s rising prominence suggests a notable trend in the crypto space.
Interestingly, SOL memes significantly outperformed ETH memes, providing an average return of 8,469% compared to 962% for Ethereum, as can be seen in the chart below.
![Solana Meme Coins Outperform Ethereum 800% YTD – Top Gainers Revealed 1 Solana](https://thegurumedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot_251.jpg)
As “speculative capital” from other chains flooded into Solana, attracted by the explosive rallies From tokens like dogwifhat (WIF) and Bonk Inu (BONK), more meme coins have experienced price surges, attracting additional attention and capital.
The top gainers in the meme coin space include cat characters MEW, POPCAT, and Book of Meme (MEME). These tokens outperformed even the most popular ones like WIF, BONK, Ethereum’s Pepe coin (PEPE), and Shiba Inu (SHIB).
Notably, political memes have also emerged as a popular subcategory, with top meme coin MAGA (TRUMP) gaining over 5,100% year-to-date, largely due to former President Donald Trump’s vocal support for crypto and acceptance of crypto for campaign donations.
Ethereum Tops Fee Revenue Rankings
Despite Solana’s significant gains, Ethereum continues to dominate the Layer 1 (L1) smart contract market, accounting for 62.11% of the top L1s. The report notes that Ethereum’s recent milestone was driven by the SEC’s approval of Ethereum Spot ETFs.
However, Binance Smart Chain (BNB) and Solana have also gained traction, adding $42 billion and $18 billion to their market share among L1 networks. Solana currently leads with over 1.6 million daily active addresses, followed by BNB with 1 million active addresses.
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In Q2, Ethereum experienced record gas fees, reaching levels not seen since 2020 due to the growing adoption of Layer 2 Solutions and the market excitement around Solana-based meme coins.
Despite accounting for 62% of the market cap among the top L1s, Ethereum accounted for 70% of the daily revenue, generating approximately $2.7 million. Solana came in second, with around $900,000 in daily revenue.
According to For Lookonchain, Ethereum topped the rankings for fee revenue last year with $2.728 billion, followed by Bitcoin with $1.302 billion.
Other notable networks include Tron ($459.39 million), Solana ($241.29 million), Binance Smart Chain ($176.56 million), Avalanche ($68.83 million), zkSync Era ($59.77 million), Optimism ($40.4 million), and Polygon ($23.91 million).
Despite both platforms achieving success across various financial metrics and growth charts, Solana’s native token, SOL, has significantly outperformed Ethereum’s ETH token.
As of the current trading price, SOL is valued at $143.25, showing a year-to-date growth of 650%. ETH has seen a more modest increase of 68% during the same period, currently trading at $3,310.
Featured image of DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com