Memecoins Drive Activity on Solana As 33 Projects Raise Almost $150 Million in Presales
Memecoin presales cause surge in Solana trading volume as users pump money into unknown. But the presale fever might be over now
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Solana's memecoin frenzy has sent trading volumes on the network through the roof, enabling it to overtake Ethereum.
In the last seven days, decentralized exchanges on Solana recorded over $21 billion in trading activity. This was mostly due to the thousands of memecoins launched during that period.
At the center of the memecoin frenzy is the presale trend. Despite the obvious risks, degens on Solana aped into presales, hoping to be an early investor in the next big thing.
BOME Success Sparks Presale Fever
Presale is not a new practice in the crypto space. It involves selling tokens to investors when they are still in the development stage. While it is considered risky, the upside of being early to a good project can be attractive.
Over the past few days, presales have become the next big thing on Solana. According to on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, 33 memecoins presales raised 796,000 SOL worth $149.2 million in less than one week.
The presale hype caught fire after the successful launch of Book of Meme (BOME). The relatively new memecoin raised $4 million in its presale and launched with massive profits for early investors.
Within three days of launch, its market cap reached $1.5 billion after it rose by more than 50,000% and got a listing on Binance. Its success quickly inspired influencers and anyone with enough followers on Crypto Twitter to announce their presales.
More Losses Than Wins For Presale Investors
Despite the apparent risks and lack of transparency, users are throwing money into these presales. The result has been a mixed bag for investors.
One of the memecoins SLERF caught attention after the developer mistakenly burnt the $10 million raised from the presale and the 500 million tokens set aside for presale participants.
After its botched launch, the memecoin recovered, with its market cap surpassing $500 million at its peak. Although it is now down to $383 million, it represents one of the success stories.
Many other presale memecoins have had worse offering or even had no launch at all. ZacbXBT recently chronicled some of these projects where the developers misappropriated the presale fund or racked the project.
Sartoshi0x allegedly failed to distribute tokens to some presale participants while keeping 62% of the 7000 SOL raised in the presale for himself. At least two other developers also rugged their presales after raising thousands in SOL from investors.
Meanwhile, Dexter_cap moved some of the funds raised from a presale to Binance and traded them for stablecoins. The dev claimed it was done to limit the impact of SOL price decline, but the action attracted criticisms from the crypto developers.
Beyond developers and influencers acting in bad faith, scam accounts also took advantage of the presale fever. A fake Jared MEV bot account on X raised over 2100 SOL in a one presale.
However, the presale hype looks to be over on Solana. The general price corrections, large-scale scams and poor performance of most presale memecoins might have contributed to ending that hype. Many active Solana users are glad to see the end of it.
