Ethereum, Solana and Their Meme Coins Bounce Back

Solana and Ethereum, homes to some of the biggest and most popular meme coins, have both posted gains in the past day.

At the time of writing, SOL has increased by 10% and ETH by 6% compared to this time yesterday. That puts Solana at $189.98 and ETH at $3,541 at the time of writing. 

The 7-day comparison tells a very different story, though. ETH is currently 10% lower than it was this time last week, when it was still basking in the afterglow of devs having rolled out the Dencun upgrade on mainnet. The upgrade was much-anticipated because the impact it will have on fees and transaction times on Ethereum Layer-2 networks. But the realization of those benefits has so far been gradual.

How Much Has the Ethereum Dencun Upgrade Cut Layer-2 Gas Fees?

Heralded by Ethereum developers as the technical milestone they’d been “dreaming of,” last week’s Dencun upgrade was supposed to forever alter the Ethereum ecosystem—by making transactions on its layer-2 networks exponentially cheaper and thus more accessible.  One week later, how do things stand?  On the whole, Dencun has delivered exactly as promised. Across layer-2 networks that have already integrated the software update, gas fees have plummeted to unprecedented lows, in most cases by over 9...

Over the same period, SOL has gained 10.2% since this time last Thursday. And as is usually the case, what's good for the underlying network has also been good for many of the tokens that trade on it. In this case, that means a bunch of meme coins are seeing a resurgence.

Floki Inu (FLOKI) is leading the pack, having posted a 27% gain since this time yesterday. But at $0.0002297, it's still trading 19% lower than it was last week. Last week's crypto market rally was enough to push the Ethereum-based meme coin towards its all-time high. But it fell just shy of surpassing $0.0003365, which the Shiba Inu-themed coin last saw in November 2021.

The latest for FLOKI is that it has again been named one of the official crypto partners for the World Table Tennis Championship in South Korea.

Floki is a play-to-earn cryptocurrency that originated as a meme coin based on Elon Musk’s dog. It has since evolved into a fully functioning Web3 ecosystem with NFTs, a metaverse, DeFi, and prepaid Floki Visa and Mastercard gift cards.

Meanwhile, Dogecoin (DOGE) and PepeCoin (PEPE), have picked up double-digit gains since yesterday. At the time of writing, the DOGE price has reached $0.154 up 15% over the past 24 hours. And PEPE, an Ethereum meme coin based on the Pepe the Frog meme, has seen its price increase by 12% since Wednesday.

Why Most Meme Coins Die Young

Meme coins are great. They’re fun and they onboard a ton of new users into the space—and every once in a while, they break through the on-chain noise and become new pillars of community for people to rally around, like Shiba Inu (SHIB), BONK, or Dogecoin (DOGE). They’re a great tool for onboarding and an even better tool for gambling. They also represent a problem that crypto has faced since the advent of Ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens, and arguably even before then. As long as there are gamblers will...

Both of the meme coins tend to follow Bitcoin and the rest of the broader market. But their meme status means that they're a lot more volatile than most assets. In fact, the vast majority of meme coins die young because it's incredibly difficult to find staying power in a category that relies so heavily on trader sentiment.

And on Solana, it's Dogwifhat (WIF) that now has its Shiba Inu-themed competitor, BONK, thoroughly beat. WIF, whose community last week succeeded in raising money to put its picture on The Sphere in Las Vegas, has gained 15.5% since yesterday. It's currently trading for $2.39, according to CoinGecko.