The comeback of $SOL has been the story of this cycle so far, with the network rising on the back of technological improvements, lucrative airdrops and, most notably, a memecoin.
Memecoin has gone from a non-serious, short-lived asset class to a forward-looking alternative to low-circulation, high-FDV tokens that don’t leave enough upside for retail investors.
Today, most memecoin activity is happening on Solana, though activity continues to migrate to ETH L2s like Arbitrum and Base. Base has been particularly busy lately. While the Coinbase-incubated L2 is certainly on track to become a memecoin hub, activity on Solana continues to dominate and stay within its ecosystem. Can Base compete with Solana in the memecoin space?
In this article, we’ll examine the current state of these platforms, their capital flows, and leading projects to assess why Solana is the memecoin to beat and how Base compares.
Solana’s Memecoin Use Case
A key factor in Solana becoming the darling of this cycle is its memecoin activity.
Driven by a surge in internal funding from airdrops such as Jito, Jupiter, Kamino, Parcl, and Tensor, memecoin’s market cap reached $1 billion in a week, an amazing achievement and a brilliant marketing campaign, and the chain’s TVL now exceeds $4.8 billion.
Solana’s narrative momentum is largely due to the memecoin craze, as evidenced by activity on the popular memecoin launcher Pump.fun, which on some days accounted for 83% of all issued tokens, even surpassing Solana in 24-hour revenue. However, this success would not have been possible if the network did not already have such a strong memecoin arena, featuring major character tokens such as WIF, BONK, and BODEN.
* Dogwifhat (Token: $WIF ; Market Cap: $3.3 billion), a lovable Shiba Inu wearing a knitted hat, became Solana’s mascot due to its memorability, widespread promotion by Crypto Twitter celebrities, and user loyalty generated by its climb from a $10,000 market cap to multi-billion dollar status.
* Jeo Boden (Token: Boden; Market Cap: $194 million), featuring US President Joe Biden, has stirred up a political storm. In its first week, it brought a 1,000x return, a performance that is undoubtedly tied in with the SOL memecoin scene.
* Bonk (Token: $BONK ; Market Cap: $2.65B) is Solana’s OG emoji coin. It’s a Shiba Inu from December 2022 that saw incredible price action last fall.
Overall, Solana not only has the most famous memecoin of the cycle, but also a range of themed tokens, from dogs and cats to politicians.
Memecoin scenario of Base
Base has quickly risen to become one of Ethereum’s top L2s, and its memecoin ecosystem has helped it gain a reputation as consumer-friendly.
Projects like DEGEN and friend.tech have brought consistent activity to the network and established a culture of Base as a social hub. Still, while the network’s TVL saw an epic rally in March, it seems to have stabilized in recent weeks. While Base’s TVL is still a long way from Solana’s, its daily trading volume is impressive. Last week, the network saw a record $854 million in daily trading volume.
