Memecoins are driving blockchain adoption and could serve to facilitate public goods funding.<\/p>\n
Influential figures within the web3 space are coming out to defend the potential of the bubbling memecoin sector, with Ethereum’s chief scientist, Vitalik Buterin, and Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX, offering their takes on why meme tokens shouldn\u2019t be so easily dismissed.<\/p>\n
In a March 30\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Raoul Pal, Hayes warned skeptics against disregarding the meme token segment as \u201cstupid and valueless.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can poo-poo these things as stupid and valueless, but if it brings attention and more engineers to the space, it\u2019s positive value for the chain itself,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cIt’s fun, it’s just humans experimenting and playing games with each other that have a monetary payout.\u201d<\/p>\n Hayes said that the memecoin sector is driving significant value for the networks hosting them. \u201cThe chains that can support this culture are going to be the chains that have value,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hayes added that Ethereum and Solana have been best positioned to benefit from the surge in memecoin trading.<\/p>\n Indeed, Hayes\u2019 comments come as the surging popularity of memecoins is driving a\u00a0spike in activity on Base<\/a>, a leading Ethereum Layer 2.<\/p>\n Transaction throughput on Base is up 475% in 30 days at 26.7 transactions per second (TPS) after tagging a record high of 27.1 TPS on March 30, according to L2beat. Uniswap also\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that daily volume for its Base deployment exceeded $1 billion for the first time on March 31, while Bases\u2019s total value locked is up 34% in the past seven days at $3.46 billion.<\/p>\n Solana also enjoyed a massive surge in activity amid a rocketing memecoin trading, with\u00a0Dogwifhat<\/a>,\u00a0Bonk<\/a>, and\u00a0Book of Meme<\/a>\u00a0adding billions to the market cap of Solana’s ecosystem.<\/p>\n On March 29, Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, also offered his two cents on the memecoin sector in a\u00a0blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Buterin acknowledged pushback against the sector from several circles within web3, noting that prominent commentators are \u201cuneasy<\/a>\u201d with meme tokens\u2019 tendency to \u201cgo up and down in price and contribute nothing of value in their wake.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n