Since April 1, a total of 372,642 new tokens have launched on the Ethereum network, 88% of which, or 327,553, were launched on Coinbase's Layer 2 blockchain. The Layer 2 network has seen a surge in activity driven by rebirths flocking to the low-cost network to create new memcoins.
ew tokens are launched on Ethereum and related blockchains. Source: Dune Analytics
A similar figure was cited in a May 14 post in X by Coinbase CEO Conor Grogan, who noted that this is double the number of tokens ever created on Ethereum over an eight-year period spanning 2015 to 2023.
The total value locked (TVL) on Base is up about 630% since the start of this year, according to L2beat, primarily due to the broader memcoin frenzy.
Meanwhile, over the same period of time, 643,227 new tokens were created on Solana, according to analytics platform Step Finance.
Grogan's X-post sparked a flurry of backlash from the crypto community, with many claiming that memcoins were a disaster for cryptocurrency values.
One commentator called it “pure negativity” due to the prevalence of fraud and fraud. This is real money that could go towards larger “legitimate” projects, they said, before adding: “Instead, it is now in the hands of a fraudster who will cash it out for fiat money.”
Others have called the surge in new memecoins “spam for farming sniper bots,” which are designed to automatically harvest new memecoins in hopes of a breakthrough.
In April, a Cointelegraph investigation found that one in six new underlying memcoins were fraudulent, and more than 90% of them had vulnerabilities.
Despite the outrage directed at them, memcoins were the best-performing cryptocurrency in the first quarter.#Bitcoin