Solana Leads 2024 Token Launches, Grabbing 87%—Will This Propel SOL?

• Of the 110,000 new tokens issued in the first nine months of this year, 87% were issued on Solana, cementing the network’s position as the new-age king of tokens.
• Meme coins have been the most significant contributors to Solana’s token dominance, even though many have gone off the cliff shortly after launch.

Not too long ago, every other new token was issued on Ethereum as the biggest altcoin dominated the market. Things have changed significantly since then, and Ethereum’s high fees and low throughput have led token issuers to explore alternatives. Solana has been the biggest beneficiary, and this year, it has had no peer in token launches.

Data shows that in the first nine months of the year, over 110,000 new tokens were issued across all chains. Of this, over 96,000 were issued on Solana, representing nearly 88% dominance over the other networks. Base, the Ethereum layer 2 network tied to Coinbase was a distant second and was the only network that offered any competition to Solana, even dethroning it in April for about a week. BNB Chain and Ethereum had single-digit shares, with the likes of Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, and Arbitrum fighting for crumbs.

As shown in the graph below, it wasn’t always like this. Solana once accounted for around 1.5% of the share of new tokens issued a year ago. However, around November last year, it all changed. By the end of last year, it had jumped to 65% of all new tokens. The dominance continued for four months until April when Base had a sharp uptick. Solana soon recovered and by May, it hit an all-time high at 85%. By the end of September, its share stood at 83%.

For Solana, the biggest tailwind has been the meme coin frenzy of the past year. Today, Solana meme coins have a combined market cap of $9.34 billion, with a trading volume of $3 billion in the past day. Dogwifhat leads the pack with a $2.472 billion market cap despite a 5.2% dip in the past day. WIF launched on November 20 last year, which marks the period when the Solana token domination started, lending credence to the observation that Solana’s token domination has been almost exclusively down to new-age memecoins.

BONK and POPCAT are second and third, but unlike the dog-themed leader WIF, the two launched in 2022, way before Solana dominated tokens.

The latest sensation in the Solana meme coin frenzy was MOODENG, a meme coin based on the global sensation Moo Deng baby pygmy hippo from Bangkok, Thailand. The meme coin surged to $80 million in market cap in just two weeks and peaked at $322 million in market cap a week ago. It even got Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin involved, although he has disposed of his MOODENG holdings to fund disease research, as we reported today.

Meanwhile, SOL trades at $144.12, dipping by 1.4% in the past day. In the past week, it has dipped from an intra-week high of $157, with a rally over the weekend losing its momentum as the new week kicked in.