Published: August 21st, 2024
Even in a trading environment marked by price declines, demand for novelty crypto assets is resilient enough to see new ones sprout up on a wider array of blockchains.
Since its launch on August 15th, Tron's flagship Sundog (SUNDOG) meme coin has been flying high, with crypto enthusiasts taking to Twitter/X to talk up the network’s first successful attempt to create a meme coin.
At time of writing, Sundog’s market cap had spiked to USD 125 million, settling down after a peak of USD 325 million. In one heated buying period, a single whale dropped USD 450,000 on the asset, pushing its price to new heights.
The week after Sundog’s launch, Tron’s colorful creator Justin Sun also unveiled SunPump, a token generator he labelled ‘the first meme fair launch platform.’ In its choice of branding, SunPump seems designed to compete with Solana’s Pump.Fun platform head on.
Sundog’s rapid rise has seen some market observers liken it to Solana’s Dogwifhat (WIF) meme coin, thanks to its sudden popularity and built-in memeability.
Liquidity has flowed into Tron’s blockchain as a result, though how long the frenzy will last remains to be seen. Meme coins are known for sudden event-driven spikes that are soon followed by rapid declines. One reason for crypto traders to remain bullish is the USD 10 million Sun has allocated to the platform through Tron’s Meme Ecosystem Boost Incentive Program (MEBIP), which lends support to new meme coins and helps investors avoid market rug pulls.
Tron’s development group tweeted on Tuesday that only tokens launched on SunPump will be eligible for the MEBIP program, which is ‘designed to supercharge new meme coin projects and give them resources to hit new heights.’
At the start of 2023, a number of meme and other altcoins saw their prices spike. Looking at the top 20 coins by market cap, Solana posted the biggest gains. Data from CoinGecko showed a jump of over seven per cent from Monday 30th October to Tuesday 31st, trading at USD 34.77.
Over the previous seven days, Solana, which had been tarnished this year by its association with the FTX scandal and saw price dips each time it was mentioned at FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's trial, shot back up by 20 per cent.
XRP also saw impressive gains. Its price was up nearly five per cent and was trading at USD 0.55. Avalanche, sitting at 20th on the top digital asset by market cap list, was up over three per cent. Like Solana it had posted steady gains over the previous seven days, rising by 17 per cent.
Meme coin Pepe was also on the rise. The (then) newest addition to the top altcoin performers list was now fetching USD 0.00000120, representing a nearly five per cent rise. Looking at the previous seven days it actually topped the list with a price jump exceeding 60 per cent.
Most cryptocurrencies had seen price gains in that timescale as traders and investors opened new positions on optimism that SEC approval for a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) was imminent.
Some of the biggest names on Wall Street had submitted applications to the financial watchdog for a BTC ETF product. After dragging its feet and losing a series of legal challenges, it became a foregone conclusion that SEC regulators would green light the first ETF, and did.
In November 2022, Solana was on the defensive when figures from Alameda Research showed plunging prices for SOL, which lost more than half of its value in the aftermath of the FTX liquidity debacle.
Most major coins saw their value drop significantly in the week following the closure of popular exchange FTX. Its sudden collapse cratered confidence in the wider crypto market. Solana was hit particularly hard due to its close ties to FTX and embattled founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
On Tuesday 15th November 2022, the Solana Foundation revealed the extent of its financial links to both, saying that it had roughly USD one million in cash or other assets on the exchange before FTX stopped processing customer withdrawals on 6th November 2022. Pending the results of FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings those assets were held in legal limbo for an extended period. The Foundation noted, however, that the sum amounted to less than one per cent of its funds.
More worrying was the revelation that the Solana Foundation held more than 3.2 million shares of FTX, next to more than 3.4 million FTT tokens and 133 million SRM tokens from the Project Serum decentralized exchange (DEX), another one of Bankman-Fried's businesses.
At time, the FTT tokens were valued at about USD 4.34 million, while the SRM tokens were valued at around USD 29.2 million. Both tokens saw their prices plunge in the initial FTX furore. On Monday, November 7, Solana’s hoard of FTT tokens were worth about USD 75.4 million, while SRM tokens were worth over USD 100 million.
A blog on the Solana website explained that FTX and its affiliated crypto trading firm Alameda Research, owned more than 50 million SOL, which were valued at roughly USD 707 million at time of writing. A sizeable proportion of that SOL is held in a monthly unlock schedule that extends to the year 2028.
Many analysts believed Solana could be permanently tarnished by its FTX and Bankman-Fried associations. The high-flying coin has already seen its value impacted by controversy related to crypto personalities.
In March 2022, SOL was caught up in a rout of Layer 1 network coins that took down market leaders like Terra and Cosmos, which all suffered drops of five per cent or more.
The sudden drop was triggered by an announcement by Fantom Network that key developer Andre Cronje would be leaving the DeFi leader. Fantom saw its value sink by 12 per cent on news of his departure.
