Solana memecoins have surged in 2024, outperforming Ethereum memecoins by 800% YTD.
Memecoins have also become the most popular asset class, representing 22% of the market.
Dogwifhat and Billy ($BILLY) are top performers, with Billy recently reaching a $100 million market cap.
Celebrity endorsements and scams present massive challenges alongside the high gains of Solana memecoins.
However, the two hottest Solana memecoins are Michi and Billy at present.
Solana has been on fire this year in particular, with the rise of its memecoin sector as far back as October 2023.
Between Q4 2023 and the time of writing, several classes of memecoins emerged, and millions of new ones were created monthly.
According to a recent report from CoinMarketCap, this trend has allowed Solana to beat Ethereum soundly in terms of YTD growth.
Here are some of the highlights of CoinMarketCap’s 2024 H1 report.
According to CoinMarketCap, in the first half of the year, Solana-based memecoins outperformed Ethereum memecoins by an impressive 800% year-to-date (YTD) growth.
Moreover, this report also states that the memecoins have become the most popular asset class among investors, representing a staggering 22% of the market.
The most popular categories
Moreover, the report mentions that while the Solana ecosystem has led the charge with a 9.64% market share, followed by Ethereum and AI tokens, the last eight months have seen the Solana-based memecoins exhibit remarkable growth and stability.
Among the top performers so far are DogWifHat and the relatively new Billy, a new Solana-based memecoin launched on Pump.fun.
Billy recently broke past the $100 million market cap and is currently the second-largest project on the platform.
Within 20 minutes of launch, the developer sold all of their holdings in a single transaction for around $1,116, according to SolScan, in a transaction that would now hold around $6 million if they had held.
The developer's early exit has contributed to the growth of $BILLY, leading to investors calling it the new $WIF.
So far, Billy’s market cap has fluctuated around the $72 million mark, dipped to $60 million, and is now sitting at around $117 million at the time of writing.
CoinMarketCap's report mentions that this surge in Solana-based memecoins might have been due to the timing.
Most of these Solana memecoins were launched in late 2023 or 2024, allowing them to outperform the Ethereum memecoins, which had their day in the sun around early 2023 (as we saw with PEPE and Shiba Inu).
Specifically, CoinMarketCap’s report highlights that SOL-based memecoins posted an average return of around 8,469%, compared to 962% for ETH-based memecoins.
Celebrity influence also played a huge part in the rise of Solana-based memecoins, as we saw with the likes of Caitlyn Jenner, Andrew Tate, and Iggy Azalea. Never mind the June hack of 50-cent's Twitter account and the shilling of the fake $GUNIT Crypto.
More recently, we also had a hack on Sydney Sweeney’s official X account, which was used to promote another fake Solana-based memecoin.
The hack on Sydney Sweeny’s X account
So far, despite the hacks and scams, the rising star, $BILLY, has overtaken Andrew Tate's $DADDY, which has crashed to a market cap of around $71 million.
This makes $BILLY and $MICHI (a memecoin endorsed by Ariana Grande) the two largest rising memecoins with market caps of $117 million and $130 million, respectively.
Overall, the relative success of Solana-based memecoins over Ethereum-based ones in 2024 is quickly becoming a massive trend.
Investors, however, should note that while memecoins (particularly SOlana-based ones at present) are highly volatile cryptocurrencies that can make investors double or even triple their investment in a matter of hours, they are also highly risky and should be approached with caution.
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