The creators released nearly 500,000 tokens. Solana brush
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In May, the advent of blockchain lowered the barrier to entry and solidified the desire to create hit memecoins.
According to data compiled by The Block Pro, 455,000 tokens were created on Solana in May. This compares to 177,000 tokens on Ethereum Layer 2 Base and 39,000 tokens on the BNB chain. The Ethereum mainnet and layer 2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism each produced less than 20,000 tokens.
Number of new tokens launched each month across six blockchain networks. Image: Block Pro.
“Solana is built as a general-purpose layer 1 with fast finality, high throughput, and extremely low transaction fees,” said Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation. “The rise of mass token creation on Solana is downstream of these characteristics, making the cost of experimentation and creation of new ideas virtually zero. Solana’s tokens should be as easy to create as content on the Internet.”
Most of Solana’s tokens are memecoins that have caught the attention of the cryptocurrency community. This trend follows the rapid rise of certain Solana-based memecoins such as Dogwifhat, Bonk, and Book of Meme in the cryptocurrency market rankings.
Part of its success is thanks to Pump.fun, a website that lets you generate tokens with just a few clicks. Making it much easier for anyone to launch a token has spurred the creation of more tokens over the past few months, with Solana having launched 1.1 million new tokens so far this year.
The token creation website has been a launching pad for political memecoins like Jeo Boden and Doland Tremp, who have found success ahead of the upcoming US election. Political meme coins surged last week after Trump was discovered. He was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records..
“The memecoin craze and the success of Pump.Fun make Solana the best blockchain currently launching new tokens,” said Steven Zheng, head of research at The Block Pro. “It remains to be seen whether Solana can gain awareness for its token launch beyond memecoin.”
Recently, celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Iggy Azalea have launched Solana-based tokens, taking advantage of the fact that these tokens easily rise in value due to their large audiences.
From BNB Chain to Base and Solana
For Solana to take the lead in the number of newly minted tokens in May, it would first have to overtake the Base network, which has seen high activity in recent months. In April, Base saw 240,000 new tokens, while Solana only saw 229,000.
Both networks assumed the role of the BNB chain, which had previously been the network of choice for new token launches. In 2021 and 2022, the BNB chain averaged 95,000 tokens per month. However, these numbers have been gradually decreasing since peaking in May 2021.
In total, 7 million tokens have been released across six blockchain networks since 2017. The BNB chain remains in the lead with 3.7 million tokens, Solana follows with 1.4 million tokens, and the Ethereum mainnet follows with 1 million tokens.
The number of newly created tokens is just one indicator used to observe the cryptocurrency ecosystem. This better reflects a cheaper, higher throughput chain. The accumulated value for each token is not taken into account. This is also a somewhat vanity metric since most tokens are illiquid and quickly forgotten.
In other words, it indicates where activity occurs across the blockchain. With blockchain networks constantly competing to become faster and cheaper, there is no reason to think this will slow down any time soon.
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