New memecoin craze propels Solana daily volume to $2bn eclipsing major rivals

Memecoin trading on Solana is buzzing once again.

Solana’s decentralised exchange trading — or DEX for short — volume in the last 24 hours reached $2 billion, DefiLlama data shows.

That figure is more than the DEX trading volume recorded within the same period on Ethereum and all of its many layer 2 networks, and BNB Chain combined ― a first for Solana.

The bulk of Solana’s frenzied trading on Sunday was because of Neiro, a buzzy new memecoin token that went viral among those plugged into Crypto Twitter.

Neiro is a dog-themed memecoin similar to the popular Dogecoin. It’s related to Dogecoin insofar as the real-life Shiba Inus that inspired the memecoins are owned by the same person.

The popularity of the Neiro meme led to several copycat tokens launching on Solana.

Trading activity on these Neiro coins has crossed $1 billion as of reporting time, data from Dexscreener shows.

Will the real Neiro please stand up?

When a memecoin becomes popular, many others with the same name quickly mushroom. Neiro is therefore the name of several tokens trading on Solana, with the biggest one commanding a market value of $58 million, followed by another worth $13 million.

The question of which one is the real Neiro token generated much controversy, if such an epithet is even possible in a market where tokens can be created without asking anyone for permission. The dog, or its owner, has not endorsed any of the memecoins after all.

Keen-eyed investors noticed that the contract address of one of the variants ended with the suffix “pump” which means it was created on Pump.fun, the popular Solana memecoin generator.

sooooo which one is the real one?

— pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) July 28, 2024

As such, the other variant was dismissed as a copycat by investors who sided with the Pump.fun-created token but its supporters call it “Lab Neiro.”

Both are listed on CoinGecko but Lab Neiro has a market size four times bigger than the so-called True Neiro created on Pump.fun.

The Neiro meme also spread to Ethereum but that came with a common scam known as honeypots, where tokens can be bought but cannot be sold except by the developers. The token built on honeypot mechanism, as verified by DL News, reached a market value of $50 million.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.