Nearly half a million tokens were launched on the Solana blockchain last month, which was more than double the number of tokens launched on Ethereum layer 2 network Base.
Data from The Block shows that 455,000 tokens were launched on Solana during the month of May, while 177,000 tokens were launched on Base. Ethereum and popular layer 2 networks such as Optimism and Arbitrum saw under 20,000 new tokens created.
Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation, told The Block that Solana’s fast finality, high throughput and low transaction fees made the blockchain an ideal place to cultivate creating these tokens in large quantities.
“The rise of mass token creation on Solana is downstream of these characteristics, bringing the cost of experimentation and new idea creation to near zero. Tokens on Solana should be as easy to create as content on the internet,” Federa said.
It is fair to say that many of these new tokens were memecoins, which are known for being wildly volatile, fairly illiquid and, in most cases, lacking intrinsic value. Last month, celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner, Iggy Azalea and Rich The Kid all launched tokens on Solana — each of these tokens saw an initial surge in price before sharply dropping in value. Pump.fun, a recently launched Solana-based memecoin deployer, makes it easy to create tokens within a few clicks.
The ease of creating these tokens was the subject of debate within the crypto community earlier this year, when an influx of offensive tokens crossed the lines into what constitutes hate speech.
Some members of the crypto community also commented that Solana’s memecoin boom was reminiscent of Ethereum’s 2017 ICO mania.
