Breaking update, block finalised at 14:07 UTC: If you blinked you probably missed another green candle. Solana’s meme-coin alley is on fire again, and honestly, I’m getting 2021 flashbacks — only this time it smells like burnt popcorn and penguin feathers.
Here’s What Actually Happened
Over the last seven days $USELESS flew +85%, and if you zoom out to the monthly it’s an eye-watering +209%. Two other trouble-makers — $PENGU and the ever-barky $WIF — followed suit, notching double-digit gains and clogging up my X (Twitter) feed with “wen one-hundred-x?” threads.
On-chain, volume on Raydium pools for these tokens spiked past $48 M in 24 h, according to DEX Screener. That’s more than the entire TVL of some OG DeFi projects we used to worship back in 2020. Crazy? Yes. Unexpected? Not really — Solana gas fees are still pocket change, so meme traders are basically speed-running what took ETH degens weeks (and 200 gwei) to pull off.
Why People Are Losing Their Minds Over $USELESS
$USELESS is literally a satire coin. The devs slapped a whitepaper together that reads like a stand-up routine (“Our utility is having no utility”), yet the token became a top 10 Solana gas guzzler on Sunday. One pseudonymous whale — 0xFlipper — dropped 42 SOL in a single market buy and tweeted:
“Utility is overrated fam, I’m here for the memes and the memes alone.”
I’ll admit, part of me is face-palming. The other part — the degenerate part — totally gets it. We’ve watched $BONK go from dog-park joke to Coinbase listing. Why wouldn’t the market reward something that leans even harder into the absurd?
Quick Tangent: The Culture Vibe Right Now
Maybe it’s the post-ETF blues, but I’ve noticed influencers pivoting from serious macro takes back to silly JPEGs and meme coins. Even Raoul Pal tossed out a half-joking tweet: “If Solana keeps memeing this hard, TradFi is gonna need a comedy desk.” The bear-turned-sideways market created boredom; boredom breeds speculation, and speculation loves a good punchline. Voilà — $USELESS season.
Community Pulse Check
I tossed the question into our Discord:
@JaneOnChain: “I faded $BONK and now my cat eats better than me. Not missing this Solana round.”
@AlgoDaddio: “Lmao everyone chasing green candles again. I’m farming Jito points instead, tyvm.”
Me: “Honestly torn. I like money, but I also like sleeping at night.”
Consensus? There is none, which is exactly why it’s fun.
$PENGU and $WIF Refuse to Be Side Characters
Quick stats before they change again:
- $PENGU: +62 % weekly, now flirting with a $45 M market cap. Community is memeing a “flip $SAMO” narrative.
- $WIF: +38 % weekly, riding the coattails of last month’s Coinbase listing rumors (still unconfirmed — DYOR).
Both saw liquidity jump after whales rotated profits out of NOT (the Telegram-bot coin) and KEK. If you’ve tried sniping on Birdeye lately you know the front-running bots are basically Thanos-snapping entries under 0.5 SOL, so moving to higher-cap memes actually makes sense for breathers.
So… Snorter Token?
The next speculative darling might be Snorter (ticker rumored to be $SNOT, which is peak Solana comedy). No chart yet, no liquidity yet — just a viral video of an animated pig snorting dollar bills. I’m 50% convinced it’s a prank, 50% convinced we’ll see it on Jupiter by tomorrow morning. That ratio alone explains this market.
Why This Matters for Your Portfolio — If It Does at All
I’m not here to be your financial therapist, but ignoring these meme pumps can skew your perception of “real” market health. When low-float tokens 3× overnight, everything else feels sluggish. I’ve caught myself over-allocating just to keep up with my DegenScore leaderboard (shoutout to anyone else chasing XP for literally no reward… yet).
Here’s a small sanity checklist I wrote on a sticky note next to my monitor:
- Position size = what I’m okay turning into NFTs of rocks.
- Set sell orders before tweeting “gm”.
- Remember taxes are real even if the coins are jokes.
But Wait, Is Solana Itself Getting Stronger?
Underneath the LOLs, daily active addresses on Solana crossed 1.2 M last week (source: Hello Moon). TPS has been stable above 3 k, and network fees still hover near fractions of a cent. That combo makes fertile ground for fast-moving memetics. Compare it to ETH mainnet where I paid $28 to cancel a stuck NFT listing yesterday. Yeah… I’m rooting for the under-dogchain.
Open Questions Nobody Has Answered Yet
- Does a “joke-on-utility” coin break the thesis that crypto needs use cases to moon?
- Will big CEXes list any of these? KuCoin maybe, but Coinbase? I’m skeptical.
- How long until regulators point at $USELESS and say, “See, this is why we need stricter rules”?
If you have answers, drop them in our Telegram — I’m genuinely curious.
Final Thoughts Before I Go Back to Farming Points
I’m half-excited, half-terrified. We’ve been here before: euphoria, copy-paste contracts, rug-pulls, repeat. Still, the energy brings fresh eyes to Solana, and fresh eyes often stick around to discover real builders afterward. Maybe that’s the hidden utility of “no utility.”
I’ll probably nibble a micro-bag of $USELESS after I finish this article, set stupidly aggressive limit sells, and then forget the wallet exists. If it moons, awesome. If it rugs, lesson relearned.
Stay safe, stay silly.
