Creators launched nearly half a million tokens on the Solana SOL +9.46% blockchain in May, as lower barriers to entry and the desire to create a hit memecoin caught hold. 

In May, 455,000 tokens were created on Solana, according to data compiled by The Block Pro. This compares to 177,000 tokens on Ethereum Layer 2 Base and 39,000 tokens on BNB Chain. The Ethereum mainnet and Layer 2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism each saw fewer than 20,000 tokens created.

The number of new tokens launched per month across six blockchain networks. Image: The Block Pro.

"Solana is built to be a general purpose layer 1, with fast finality and high throughput with extremely low transaction fees," said Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation. "The rise of mass token creation on Solana is downstream of these characteristics, bringing the cost of experimentation and new idea creation to near zero. Tokens on Solana should be as easy to create as content on the internet."

The majority of the Solana tokens are memecoins, as these have captured the attention of the crypto crowd. This trend comes in the wake of certain Solana-based memecoins — such as Dogwifhat, Bonk and Book of Meme — rising rapidly up the crypto market ranks. 

Part of the success has to be attributed to Pump.fun, a website for creating tokens with just a few clicks. By making it much easier for anyone to launch a token, it spurred the creation of many more tokens over the past few months, with Solana having seen the launch of 1.1 million new tokens so far this year.

The token creation website was the launchpad for political memecoins like Jeo Boden and Doland Tremp, which have found success ahead of the upcoming U.S. election. Political memecoins surged last week after Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

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“The memecoin mania plus the success of Pump.Fun has made Solana the current leading blockchain to launch new tokens,” said Steven Zheng, director of research at The Block Pro. “It is still to be seen whether Solana can capture the mindshare of token launches beyond memecoins.”

Recently, celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner and Iggy Azalea have launched Solana-based tokens, capitalizing on the ease with which these tokens rise in value due to their large audiences.

From BNB Chain to Base and Solana

For Solana to take the lead in the number of newly created tokens in May, it first had to overtake Base network, which has also seen high activity in recent months. In April, Base saw 240,000 new tokens, while Solana only saw 229,000.

Both networks have taken the mantle from BNB Chain, which was previously the network of choice for launching new tokens. For 2021 and 2022, BNB Chain saw an average of 95,000 tokens created per month. However, these numbers have been on a gradual decline since its peak in May 2021.

Overall, 7 million tokens have been launched on the six blockchain networks since 2017. BNB Chain remains in the lead with 3.7 million tokens, Solana follows with 1.4 million tokens, and Ethereum mainnet is behind it with just shy of a million tokens.

The number of newly created tokens is just one metric used to observe crypto ecosystems. It is more reflective of chains that are cheaper and have a higher throughput. It doesn't account for the value amassed for each token. It's also somewhat of a vanity metric, as most tokens will be illiquid and soon forgotten.

That said, it does indicate where activity is taking place across blockchains. With blockchain networks continually competing to become faster and cheaper, there's no reason to think this will slow down anytime soon.