The prosperity of Solana once made people think that the era of Meme coin belonged only to it. However, recent data shows the rise of a new force: the Base chain. On May 5th, 2,821 new DEX trading pairs were added to the Base chain, compared to 1,508 trading pairs on the Solana chain. The data surpassing is not accidental. In the past month, almost all daily new trading pairs on the Base chain have surpassed Solana. Does this mean that Base has taken the throne of the Meme king?
The popularity of Meme coin comes from the spread of Meme culture. The term Meme usually refers to a cultural information fragment spread through the Internet, such as pictures, videos, text, or concepts. They often contain humorous elements and can quickly gain wide dissemination online. Therefore, although Meme is different from other types of projects, it still needs certain Meme cultural materials as the core of communication. Therefore, the more well-known and widely accessible Meme materials are, the easier they are to be spread.
The Meme coin on Solana did not receive much attention in the market before. Its Meme culture began when co-founder Anatoly dressed up as a green dinosaur and called himself a silly dragon at the Solana 2023 Breakpoint conference. Later, Anatoly posted on social media platform "year of the silly dragon" and called for the emergence of a silly dragon Meme in the community. The SILLY token was deployed in anticipation of the community and was airdropped on social media by leaving a wallet address.
The process of publishing this time also represents the origin of the Meme culture on the Solana chain. It was initiated by the founder, and the official and community interacted multiple times. After the spread effect broke out, the contract was deployed, and the wealth creation effect attracted more people to enter.
In contrast, the Meme culture of the Base chain is more US-style and strongly associated with Coinbase. Its Meme coin is more closely related to American culture and the history of Coinbase, such as Degen, Jogeco Dog, Ollie Dog, etc. The two completely different Meme cultural attributes provide users with different Meme experiences.
In the MEME coin ecosystem, Solana and Base have shown their unique characteristics and advantages, with significant differences in aspects such as wallets, DEXs, trading robots, market panels, and contract deployment costs.
User habits:
- Wallet: Solana's wallet is written in Rust or C language, such as Phantom, which is different from the traditional Ethereum ecosystem. The Base chain is fully compatible with Ethereum, and users can use common wallet products such as Metamask for transactions. At the same time, Coinbase's AA wallet has attracted more ordinary users to Base.
- DEX: Solana's DEX product has advantages in speed and ease of operation, while most of Base's trading pairs are built on DEXs such as Uniswap on Ethereum, which is in line with the usage habits of Ethereum users.
- Trading Robots: There are relatively more trading robots in the Solana ecosystem, while there are fewer trading robots on the Base chain, and the market has not yet been fully developed.
- Market panel: Market panel products such as Birdeye and Dexscreener can be compatible with multiple public chains, providing users with diversified token information.
Code vulnerability: - Solana uses a programming language and architecture different from Ethereum, which relatively avoids contract vulnerabilities, although there are still certain risks.
- Base: Although fully compatible with Ethereum, it inherits Ethereum's vulnerability system. Most Meme coins on the Base chain have security bugs and need to be treated with caution.
Contract deployment cost: - Solana: The cost of deploying a contract is relatively high, about 1 SOL (around $150).
- Base: The cost of deploying a contract is low, about a dozen dollars. This is also one of the reasons why the number of new transaction pairs added to the Base chain increases every day.
Overall, Solana and Base have their own strengths in the MEME coin ecosystem. Solana features an independent system, speed advantages, and wallet innovation, attracting a large number of users; while Base relies on the Ethereum ecosystem and Coinbase background, with lower construction costs and a wider user base.
In addition, according to the current on-chain data observation, the TVL volume on the Solana chain is about 3.90 billion US dollars, and the TVL volume on the Base chain is about 1.50 billion US dollars. 24-hour on-chain transaction volume: Solana is about 1 billion US dollars, and Base is about 400 million US dollars. It can be seen that the gap between Base and Solana is no longer an order of magnitude gap, and perhaps this gap will be narrowed after some phenomenal products appear.
More importantly, the official attitude towards MeMe has also undergone a completely different change. After actively welcoming and creating MeMe fever, Solana seems to have begun to fade away from its original enthusiasm under the huge impact of traffic.
In April this year, Solana co-founder Raj tweeted that the meme coin was scaring away serious builders. But he reminded these serious builders, "If you are fragile enough to be afraid of young people choosing to use permissionless systems for pleasure, then you simply cannot succeed." Previously, after experiencing the "money-making" craze, Solana co-founder Toly also called on the community to stop the money-making pre-sale model.
However, Base's attitude towards Meme seems to be different. Also in April, Jesse Pollak, the head of the Base ecosystem protocol, said, "Meme coins are an important part of the on-chain economy. I am pleased to see more diffusion based on Meme coins, helping the world enter the chain. The vitality on Base is very strong, and we note that these Meme coins are now bringing thousands of people into this new economy. We see an exceptionally active meme economy shining brightly in the Base ecosystem."
As a beneficiary of Meme coin in this bull market, Solana has also felt the backlash of Meme on other projects in the ecosystem to some extent. Therefore, it hopes to moderately reduce the temperature of Meme to balance the development of the ecosystem. Base, on the other hand, hopes to use Meme as a window to expand the active level of the ecosystem and continue to climb to the top of Meme. When Solana, who retreats in the heat, meets Base, who bravely pursues, who will become the best stage for MeMe to show new value? Let's stay tuned.