In the middle of a bullish crypto market, the memecoin space has grabbed center stage, exceeding even the most popular AI tokens.
It was anticipated that industry areas like Layer 2s—which are essential for scaling blockchain for general use—and the nexus between cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence would set the standard for performance.
Potential contenders included technological frontiers like restaking, modular blockchains, and DePIN initiatives.
But in contrast to predictions, memes, fractionalized NFTs, coins with cat and dog themes, and other related content are spearheading the movement.
Meme Coins Report Significant Increases
Coins with cat themes, such as Pop Cat, Banana Cat, and Taylor Swift’s Cat, have seen tremendous increases; in only the last seven days, the value of Swift’s Cat token has increased by a factor of 25.
With a market valuation of $730 million, the cat coin industry may seem insignificant, but the meme category has grown to be a formidable force.
Memes have eclipsed Layer 2s, gaming tokens, and the liquid staking sector in terms of valuation with an astounding $55 billion market cap.
In the meme space, coins with dog themes predominate; Doge, the first meme coin, is the most valuable with a market capitalization of over $20 billion.
The last week has seen an 84% increase in the industry as a whole. Prominent performers in the market include SHIB, PEPE, BONK, WIF, FLOKI, and POPCAT, whose market capitalization have increased by billions of dollars and more than doubled in value.
The other big winners are MYRO and MOG.
The Favorite Blockchain for Meme Coins Is Solana
Memes can now be traded on Solana, a blockchain network with minimal transaction fees that has been popular.
There has been a surge in new coinage on the platform with parodies of politicians such as Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
The invention of coins like “Doland Tremp” and “Olen Mosk” was spurred by the widely shared tale of a dealer named “Jeo Boden” who turned $260 into over half a million dollars.
According to DeFiLlama, trading volumes on Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) surpassed $2 billion on March 5. Solana’s percentage of DEX volumes has been gradually rising, from less than 2% to about 15%, over the past six months.
After Ethereum (ETH) and Arbitrum, Solana is now the third-largest blockchain network in terms of DEX volume.
The biggest DeFi ecosystem, Ethereum, saw trade volume of almost $4.7 billion in the last day, with a 54% weekly change that was positive.
The daily trading volume on Arbitrum DEXes, on the other hand, increased by 85% in the last week to $2.1 billion.
As per the Solana Foundation, the Solana ecosystem currently has around 2,500 active developers per month.
The network has consistently had between 2,500 and 3,000 active developers each month for the past year, according to the foundation, which is evidence of the ecosystem’s capacity to draw and keep talent.
The surge in developer activity coincides with Solana’s ongoing success in the cryptocurrency space, having hit some noteworthy benchmarks.
For the first time ever, the network’s 7-day stablecoin trade volume has topped Ethereum’s.