Since the beginning of April, there has been an impressive surge in the creation of new tokens, surpassing one million in total. Specifically, on the Ethereum network, over 370,000 new tokens have emerged, while Solana has witnessed the launch of more than 640,000 new tokens, mostly memecoins.
Out of the 372,642 new tokens launched on the Ethereum network, a staggering 88% were launched on Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base. This layer-2 network has experienced a significant increase in activity, fueled by degens who are taking advantage of the low-cost network to create new memecoins.
The total value locked (TVL) on Base has skyrocketed by approximately 630% since the beginning of 2024, primarily driven by the frenzy surrounding memecoins. This surge in TVL was reported by L2beat.
Similarly, Solana has seen the creation of 643,227 new tokens within the same period, according to data from analytics platform Step Finance. Out of these tokens, 466,914 were memecoins, as tracked by the Dune Analytics dashboard for the Solana-based memecoin platform pump.fun.
CoinMarketCap currently lists the 500 newest tokens added to its platform in the past 30 days, with the majority of them being memecoins. CoinGecko, another crypto analytics platform, has even introduced a memecoin category, which includes over 600 coins with a combined market capitalization of $52.7 billion, nearly half of Tether’s market cap.
Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, shared a similar figure in a post to X on May 14, highlighting that the number of tokens created on Ethereum between 2015 and 2023 was only half of what has been created since April 1.
Grogan’s post sparked negative reactions from the crypto community, with many criticizing memecoins for diminishing the values of the crypto industry. Some commenters referred to them as a “net negative” due to the prevalence of scams and rug pulls, suggesting that the money invested in memecoins could have been allocated to more legitimate projects. Others labeled the increase in memecoins as “spam to farm sniper bots,” designed to automatically acquire new memecoins in hopes of making significant profits.
In an investigation conducted by Cointelegraph in April, it was revealed that one in six new Base memecoins was a scam, and over 90% had vulnerabilities. Despite the criticism, memecoins proved to be the most profitable crypto narrative in the first quarter, as reported by Cointelegraph.
The rise of memecoins raises the question of whether they betray the ideals of the crypto industry or if they serve a true purpose.