The Other Side of the Solana Meme Frenzy: Most Will Experience 70% Pullbacks, Liquidity Bottlenecks Now the Norm
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
The Other Side of the Solana Meme Frenzy: Most Will Experience 70% Pullbacks, Liquidity Bottlenecks Now the Norm
A considerable number of memes have reached ATHs exceeding $100 million, but very few can sustain it.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Smolresearcharc (summer period)
Translation: TechFlow
A few days ago, @cryptowhail posed an existential question to me at 5 a.m.: "Are we currently in an active phase of the SOL market?" This got me thinking about how Solana-based memes have performed since last quarter.
We looked at the data. This comes from SOL memes published over recent months by @CryptoKoryo via their Dune dashboard. It's a manual process of selecting memes and gathering data, but I believe we did a fairly good job.
We charted current market cap (blue) against all-time high (ATH) market cap (orange + blue) over the past few months:
November 2023: PEEP, WIF
December 2023: VONSPEED to POPCAT
January 2024: BLOCK to SOLAMA
February 2024: SNP to CHAT
March 2024: ACAT to BOME
April 2024: POOWEL to MANEKI
May 2024: BUNI to CRODIE
Some observations:
-
Hitting certain market caps is extremely difficult, let alone exceeding $1 billion. Only WIF, MYRO, POPCAT, SC, BODEN, SLERF, BODEN, MEW, and BOME managed to break through.
-
Currently, only WIF, POPCAT, and MEW (barely) have market caps above $300 million. This shows just how hard it is to maintain high valuations in this meme-saturated environment.
-
Quite a few memes reached ATHs above $100 million, but very few actually sustained them. Besides those mentioned, we also had MYRO, SC (barely), BODEN, SLERF, and MICHI.
-
Most memes experienced massive drawdowns (see orange-to-blue ratio). Unfortunately, due to skewing from WIF and BOME, but on average, all memes saw a 72% pullback from their ATH. This suggests you must either chase winners aggressively or focus on highly liquid coins (like WIF with CEX liquidity, or new tokens that haven't pulled back much).
Notable corrections include:
-
PEEP: Down 95% from ATH ($24M) – November 2023
-
VONSPEED: Down 92% from ATH ($8.2M) – December 2023
-
SILLY: Down 91% from ATH ($161.4M) – December 2023
-
KPOP: Down 91% from ATH ($24.3M) – January 2024
-
WYNN: Down 96% from ATH ($84.2M) – January 2024
-
AMC: Down 91% from ATH ($10.6M) – February 2024
-
ACAT: Down 91% from ATH ($8.3M) – February 2024
-
AABL: Down 93% from ATH ($54.7M) – March 2024
-
PENG: Down 93% from ATH ($213.8M) – March 2024
-
MIMANY: Down 92% from ATH ($44.2M) – April 2024
-
HAROLD: Down 93% from ATH ($58.9M) – April 2024
-
HOBBES: Down 97% from ATH ($132.6M) – April 2024
-
DEVIN: Down 98% from ATH ($14.9M) – May 2024
Interestingly, I expected the data to show a pattern like the one below (a downward spiral), but there seem to be some bright spots (BOME had strong liquidity, and insiders knew it would list on Binance). Notably, apart from BOME and WIF, no other meme coin has been listed on Binance.
What does the data tell us?
-
Breaking through certain market cap thresholds is very difficult: $30M / $100M / $300M, not to mention sustaining it after a crash. It still appears to be a trader’s market.
-
Drawdowns from ATH are brutal. With an average 72% decline and average liquidity around 3% (relative to current market cap), it's extremely hard to recover your initial investment if you bought at the top.
-
@cryptowhail's comment about us entering an active phase for SOL memes may not be as accurate as people think. For that to be true, we’d need to see more winners in April/May outperforming POPCAT or MYRO.
-
But for now, SOL is where the action is. On-chain trading volume is rising. Pump.fun plus multiple new memes launching daily on SOL means everyone is glued to their bots and wallet trackers, trying to catch the next winner (though honestly, big wins seem rarer unless you're happy with 2-3x gains). Still, we’re in the trenches, grinding for that miraculous 100x.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
@smolresearcharc
