More than one million new tokens have been created since the start of April, with over 370,000 new tokens cropping up on Ethereum, while over 640,000 new tokens — mostly memecoins — were launched on Solana. 

Since April 1, 372,642 new tokens have been launched on the Ethereum network, with 88% launched on Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base. The layer-2 network has witnessed an explosion in activity, brought about by degens flocking to the low-cost network to whip up new memecoins.

Coinbase director Conor Grogan cited a similar figure in a May 14 post to X, noting that this was twice the number of tokens created on Ethereum between 2015 and 2023.

The total value locked (TVL) on Base has surged around 630% since the beginning of 2024, according to L2beat, primarily driven by a wider frenzy for memecoins. 

Meanwhile, 643,227 new tokens were created on Solana in the same timeframe, according to data from analytics platform Step Finance. 

Of the total 643,000 new tokens launched on Solana, 466,914 were memecoins, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard that tracks the number of new tokens launched on the Solana-based memecoin platform pump.fun.

CoinMarketCap lists the 500 newest tokens it has added to its platform in the last 30 days, with most being memecoins.

Crypto analytics platform CoinGecko now has a memecoin category, which lists more than 600 coins with a total market capitalization of $52.7 billion — almost half of Tether’s market cap.

Grogan’s X post sparked a swathe of negative responses from the crypto community, with many claiming that memecoins had been a scourge on the values of crypto.

One commenter called it a “net negative” because of the proliferation of scams and rug pulls. That is real money that could have gone into bigger “legit” projects, they said before adding, “Instead, it’s now in the hands of the scammer, who will cash it into fiat.”

Others labeled the spike in the number of new memecoins as “spam to farm sniper bots” that are designed to automatically scoop up new memecoins in the hope of a breakout.

In April, a Cointelegraph investigation revealed that one in six new Base memecoins was a scam, and more than 90% had vulnerabilities.

Despite the outrage directed their way, memecoins were the most profitable crypto narrative in the first quarter, as reported by Cointelegraph in April.

Source : Cointelegraph / May 15, 2024