The popularity of meme tokens on the Solana blockchain has turned out to be a boon for the network, allowing for stress testing and improving its resilience. Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko shared this during the Emergence conference in Prague, as reported by The Block.
In his speech, he humorously remarked:
“Blessed are the meme coin traders, for those who can withstand their spam shall inherit the metaverse.”
Yakovenko noted that the meme token boom helped Solana’s developers address various technical challenges, ultimately making the network more stable.
Challenges and Solutions
In February 2023, the Solana blockchain experienced a disruption shortly after the launch of the Pump.fun platform. Over the year, the network had only one major halt, but in 2022, similar incidents occurred multiple times.
According to Yakovenko, scaling performance in multi-core systems presents multidimensional challenges where even a single bottleneck can cause a cascade of issues.
While the Solana team is accustomed to tackling complex technical problems, some obstacles were unpredictable and couldn’t be preemptively solved with measures like localized fee markets.
“These challenges… I’ve never seen anyone predict them in research, let alone have ready solutions,” Yakovenko admitted.
Solana’s Unique Approach
Yakovenko believes that Solana’s unified state architecture provides faster, cheaper, and simpler solutions compared to second-layer (L2) networks. As an example, he highlighted Raydium, a decentralized exchange (DEX) used by every meme coin to launch pools. Despite its widespread adoption, the platform required no additional adjustments to accommodate the surge in activity.
“Could this be replicated within L2 systems or others that partition state? Theoretically, yes, but developers are lazy and will follow the path of least resistance,” he explained.
Meme Coins in the Digital Economy
The rise of meme tokens was a surprise to Yakovenko, though he finds it easy to understand:
“In virtually every digital economy, entertainment is the largest sector for generating revenue. Looking back, it all makes sense.”
Earlier, experts pointed out that one of the main reasons behind Solana’s periodic outages is the network’s inability to handle the growing volume of transactions.
