CoinGecko has compared crypto instruments based on growth rates, including the following groups:
- Meme coins or joke coins that do not carry any useful semantic load;
- RWA – crypto versions of real financial assets such as gold or bonds;
- AI – tokens of platforms working with artificial intelligence;
- DeFi – tokens of decentralized finance platforms;
- DePIN – tokens of platforms implementing physical infrastructure projects;
- GameFi – tokens of the gaming industry platforms;
- Layer1 – coins of first-level networks (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, etc.);
- Layer2 – coins of second-level networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.).
Among these groups, meme coins were the clear winners in the first quarter, growing by 1313%. Second place went to RWAs with 286%, and AI tokens closed the top three with 222%. Despite significant growth by Bitcoin Cash (131%) and Stacks (143%), coins of first and second-level networks ended up at the bottom, with their growth rates paling in comparison to meme coin leaders like Brett (7728%) and Dogwifhat (2721%).
However, according to Coinfactiva.com’s analysts, CoinGecko’s research has a significant caveat: only the top ten largest coins by market capitalization at the end of the quarter for each group were included in the analysis. In other words, hundreds of thousands of meme coins that emerged during the period under review were simply not included in the report.
For example, in the first quarter alone, about 500,000 quasi-tokens were minted on the Solana blockchain, the overwhelming majority of which turned out to be stillborn. If the analysis had been conducted for all coins in the represented groups, meme coins would have been at the opposite end of the list. The frenzy to mint profitable tokens reached such proportions that on February 6, Solana went down for 5 hours, and the network’s founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, explained this craze to Coindesk by saying that “some people apparently have nothing better to do.”
It is worth explaining to inexperienced users that the protocol Ordinals, which emerged in early 2023, allowed for minting NFTs and quasi-tokens on practically any network. In the Bitcoin network, this led to transaction fees exceeding $30, and users quickly lost interest. However, Solana, with costs of less than a cent, appealed to the “degen” horde (the nickname for enthusiasts of freshly minted meme coins on social media). Among all these meme coins, Dogecoin stands out as the white crow, having its own blockchain, supported by miners, being the most decentralized, and boasting the most significant and experienced army of fans. It also showed decent dynamics in the first quarter, more than doubling in strength.
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