Solana is a highly functional open source project that banks on blockchain technology’s permissionless nature to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions. While the idea and initial work on the project began in 2017, Solana was officially launched in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Solana. The Solana protocol is designed to facilitate decentralized app (DApp) creation. It aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with the underlying proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus of the blockchain. Because of the innovative hybrid consensus model, Solana enjoys interest from small-time traders and institutional traders alike. A significant focus for the Solana Foundation is to make decentralized finance accessible on a larger scale.

Anatoly Yakovenko is the most important person behind Solana. His professional career started at Qualcomm, where he quickly moved up the ranks and became senior staff engineer manager in 2015. Later on, his professional path shifted, and Yakovenko entered a new position as a software engineer at Dropbox. In 2017, Yakovenko started working on a project which would later materialize as Solana. He teamed up with his Qualcomm colleague Greg Fitzgerald, and they founded a project called Solana Labs. Attracting several more former Qualcomm colleagues in the process, the Solana protocol and SOL token were released to the public in 2020.

One of the essential innovations Solana brings to the table is the proof-of-history (PoH) consensus developed by Anatoly Yakovenko. This concept allows for greater scalability of the protocol, which in turn boosts usability. Solana is known in the cryptocurrency space because of the incredibly short processing times the blockchain offers. Solana’s hybrid protocol allows for significantly decreased validation times for both transaction and smart contract execution. With lightning-fast processing times, Solana has attracted a lot of institutional interest as well. The Solana protocol is intended to serve both small-time users and enterprise customers alike. One of Solana’s main promises to customers is that they will not be surprised by increased fees and taxes. The protocol is designed in such a way as to have low transaction costs while still guaranteeing scalability and fast processing. Combined with the longstanding professional expertise creators Anatoly Yakovenko and Greg Fitzgerald bring to the project, Solana is ranked number 7 in the CoinMarketCap ranking as of September 2021. This came on the back of an impressive bull run, where Solana price gained over 700% since mid-July 2021. The launch of the Degenerate Ape NFT collection sent SOL price to an all-time high (ATH) above $60, and it has been climbing since, largely due to higher developer activity on the Solana ecosystem, greater institutional interest, growing DeFi ecosystem, and the rise of the NFTs and gaming vertical on Solana. Solana price rose to an ATH of $216 on Sept. 9, 2021. Solana has received much praise for its speed and performance, and has even been tipped as a rival that can compare to Ethereum and challenge the dominant smart contract platform. However, the network has been plagued by repeated outages that have impaired its price and aspirations to be the "Visa of crypto." Furthermore, its ecosystem is accused of favoring venture capital investors with unfair tokenomics.

The Solana Foundation has announced that a total of 489 million SOL tokens will be released in circulation. At the moment, about 260 million of these have already entered the market. The SOL token distribution is as follows: 16.23% went towards an initial seed sale, 12.92% of tokens were dedicated to a founding sale, 12.79% of SOL coins were distributed among team members and 10.46% of tokens were given to the Solana Foundation. The remaining tokens were already released for public and private sales or are still to be released to the market. Solana price during the initial seed sale, held on April 5, 2018, was $0.04. Given the recent ATH, that represents an impressive 5400X return on investment (ROI)

Solana relies on a unique combination of proof-of-history (PoH) and proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms. Proof-of-history is the main component of the Solana protocol, as it is responsible for the bulk of transaction processing. PoH records successful operations and the time that has passed between them, thus ensuring the trustless nature of the blockchain. The proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus is used as a monitoring tool for the PoH processes, and it validates each sequence of blocks produced by it. The combination of two consensus mechanisms makes Solana a unique phenomenon in the blockchain industry.

SOL tokens can be purchased on most exchanges. One choice to trade Solana is on Binance, as it has the highest SOL/USDT trading volume, $753,103,225 as of September 2021. Next is Coinbase, with a trading volume of $343,872,841. Other options to trade Solana include Bilaxy and Huobi Global. Of course, it is important to note that investing in cryptocurrency comes with a risk, just like any other investment opportunity. To check Solana price live in the fiat currency of your choice, you can use CoinMarketCap’s converter feature directly on the Solana currency page, or the dedicated exchange rate converter page. Popular Solana price pairs include: SOL/USD, SOL/GBP, SOL/AUD, SOL/JPY and SOL/EUR.

Read more about Steem. Check out Marlin. Learn more about Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Curious about the crypto space? Read our educational section — Alexandria.

SHIB is the main token of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, bringing the power of a decentralized, community-led currency to millions across the globe. Since its inception in late 2020, the Ethereum-based SHIB token has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon, and is now accepted as a form of payment at hundreds of locations, either directly or through third-party intermediaries. Shiba Inu coin was created anonymously in August 2020 under the pseudonym "Ryoshi." Ryoshi says about himself that he is a nobody and not important and that the efforts to unmask his identity, even if successful, would be underwhelming. This meme coin quickly gained speed and value as a community of investors was drawn in by the cute charm of the coin paired with headlines and tweets from personalities like Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin. Vitalik Buterin was long believed to be the originator of Shiba Inu, but denied such rumors on the Lex Fridman podcast on June 5, 2021. Since release SHIB now trades on the ecosystem's proprietary DEX, ShibaSwap. On Sept. 17, 2021, Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, listed Shiba Inu on their platform. This news caused Shiba Inu price to rise by over 40% in the following two days, bringing the meme dog token into the spotlight again.

The SHIBA INU WoofPaper has three reasons why their team created SHIB: "We started from zero, with zero." "The brilliant minds behind Shib had never collaborated before." "We love Shiba Inu Dogs." The anonymous creator of the Shiba Inu coin is known as "Ryoshi." However, very little is known of the mystery founder of the dog-themed cryptocurrency, much like the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. In his blog RYOSHI RESEARCH, he characterizes himself as "just some guy of no consequence tapping at a keyboard." Ryoshi said that usually in projects there are different roles like a CEO, a "tech guy," and a roadmap, resulting in "someone plebs can bitch at." He stresses that with Shiba, no one person is accountable or responsible and underlines that he owns 0 SHIB to this day. For this reason, Ryoshi can be "pure and unbiased," getting satisfaction from Shiba "in other ways." It has been speculated that Vitalik Buterin was behind the initial liquidity that helped set up Shiba Inu's liquidity on Uniswap. According to Ryoshi, he had "a fren" he met at Devcon in Osaka that sent him 10 ETH to set up the liquidity pair on Uniswap. Ryoshi also stated that Shiba Inu was an experiment in decentralized community building, and he thus declined all the influencer requests and pitches from different exchanges he received. His "job" is to defend the brand and give suggestions, although he does so very sparingly, as his last blog entry dates back to May 2021.

The SHIBA INU website invites dog-inspired artists from all over the world to foster the "artistic Shiba movement" as they bring their SHIBA INU community into the NFT market. SHIBA INU has also created a campaign using Amazon Smile in order to collect donations to escue real, live Shiba Inu dogs with the Shiba Inu Rescue Association. After initially being only one meme coin of many, Shiba Inu skyrocketed to popularity after Vitalik Buterin famously burned his share of the SHIB supply. Ryoshi had given Buterin 50% of the SHIB supply, announcing that "as long as Vitalik doesn't rug us," Shiba Inu would be fine. However, Buterin decided to burn 90% of his share, which later would have been worth billions thanks to the soaring value of SHIB. The remaining 10% were sent to a charity, as were about 50 trillion SHIB more that Vitalik had donated to a COVID-19 relief fund. He stated that he did not want "to be a locus of power" and thus gave the tokens away. This resulted in a temporary loss of value for SHIB, which the token later recovered from after the community agreed on an arrangement with the charity in question. Ryoshi's goal for Shiba Inu has been to see if a perpetual decentralized organization could work with no central leadership. In a blog post, Royshi noted that the rift caused by Buterin's token donation made the community stronger and would enable it to distribute further and decentralize the movement. His vision for the core ecosystem is to perform its utility while the Shiba Inu-own stablecoin becomes the globalized exchange of value. In October 2021, SHIB surged on the news of a possible Robinhood listing and briefly flipped Dogecoin to become the most-valued meme coin by market capitalization. Thus far, Robinhood has not listed SHIB, despite a petition with over 500,000 signatures calling for it. Robinhood executive Christine Brown has lauded the efforts of the Shiba Inu community, saying that one of her favorite things was seeing it engage with the community to make its wishes heard. However, Robinhood would prioritize safety over the "short-term gain" of a new token listing and has left Shiba Inu fans waiting since. The October 2021 price surge famously minted a billionaire, as one wallet was uncovered that had bought $8,000 worth of SHIB in summer 2020, which was worth over $5.7 billion at SHIB's all-time high valuation. The wallet owner has not been determined, although the person appears to have sent parts of their fortune to other wallets several weeks after the price explosion. The price surge also led to increased adoption across token holders. WhaleStats compiled data of the largest ETH wallets and found that SHIB represents over 20% of the combined market shares of all ERC-20 tokens held by Ethereum whales. CRO was a distant second with only 5%. SHIB also surpassed the one-million holder mark following its all-time high. Moreover, retailers increasingly started adopting SHIB as a means of payment following its popularity among small-time investors. American electronics retailer Newegg added SHIB at the start of December 2021, partnering with crypto payments platform BitPay to unlock payments in SHIB. This followed the adoption of SHIB by over 500 merchants, according to payments firm CoinGate, with even Samsung-backed digital wallet provider ZenGo adding SHIB to its options and a restaurant in Paris accepting it as a payment option. At one point, the Shiba Inu community called for McDonald's to accept Shiba Inu, although the social media effort eventually fell short. A major reason for the surging price of SHIB was a continued effort by the SHIB community to build a utility for the Shiba Inu token and the subsequent emergence of an entire Shiba Inu ecosystem. ShibaSwap is the coin's designated DEX that started as a fork of Sushiswap that has, in the words of Ryoshi, its "own little twists and elements." Furthermore, Shiba Inu also plans to develop SHI, which will be the "global exchange of value for plebs," an algorithmic stablecoin pegged to one cent instead of one dollar as most other stablecoins. Its launch is planned after the Shiba layer-two solution called Shibarium, and Ryoshi envisions SHI to work in a similar way to DAI. That way, SHI would have collateral as a backstop that would push it back to one cent if the peg was lost. According to Ryoshi, the end goal is that SHI becomes a global stable currency "that plebs across all countries are able to use as both a store of value and method of payment." In addition to SHI, a financial ecosystem is planned, and SHI would be added as a weighted pool pair on Curve. In that case, Ryoshi expects forks of the major DeFi protocols to appear in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, which would require an immutable bridge to function. Shiba would also start hosting localized meetups and a once-a-year ShibaCon convention that would be hosted at an easily accessible location in a country without oppressive visa restrictions "for the sake of inclusiveness for global plebs." One immediate change Shiba Inu has implemented is increasing token burns, which have sparked renewed interest in the token at the beginning of 2022. Bigger Entertainment, a crypto record label selling merch, NFTs and concert tickets, organized a SHIB burn party that burned over 239 million SHIB over Christmas. In total, the team has burned almost one billion SHIB since the end of October.

The SHIBA INU website notes that they locked 50% of the total token supply on Uniswap, and "threw away the keys!" The remaining 50% was "burned to Vitalik Buterin." In response to the "gift" from the Shiba Inu team, Vitalik Buterin sent 50 trillion SHIB tokens, worth $1 billion in Shiba Inu price at that time, to India's Covid Crypto Relief Fund. Buterin then burned 40% of the total supply to a dead wallet. There are several other tokens described on the SHIBA INU website — LEASH, which has "been unleashed and will not rebase," and BONE, the "Dogecoin Killer." LEASH has a fixed supply of only 107,646 tokens, and offers enticing rewards to liquidity providers, while BONE has 250,000,000 tokens, and is a governance token that allows holders to vote on the Shiba Inu's Doggy decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The WoofPaper notes that you will use SHIB to DIG for BONES or ShibaSwap, or even BURY your tokens. "Trainers" can teach their Shibas to SWAP tokens as well — all of these actions create "Returns" that are put into the Puppy Pools, where the #SHIBARMY has the option of BURYING or DIGGING for BONES. At the beginning of May 2021, dog-themed meme tokens like Shiba Inu saw transaction volumes in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Shiba Inu price hit an all-time high (ATH) of 0.00005 on May 10, 2021, before going on a downtrend since. As mentioned above, on May 13, Vitalik Buterin (who was given half of the token supply by the developers) announced that he was donating a large amount of these tokens to a fund helping India with COVID relief. The SHIBA developers had not anticipated Buterin selling his tokens, but eventually, the two parties came to a mutually satisfying agreement. Later, the fund actually lamented having sold its tokens too early, as its share would have been worth well over $1 billion at the token's all-time high. Despite rumors alleging the contrary, Elon Musk does not own any SHIB. He confirmed as much in a tweet, which caused a temporary price drop.

According to 22-page-long SHIB's WoofPaper, SHIB is an ERC-20 token based on Ethereum, a proof-of-work blockchain currently transitioning to proof-of-stake. Ryoshi announced in his final blog post to date that Shiba Inu would develop its own layer-two solution that would be more decentralized than Polygon or BSC, both of which Ryoshi regards as not truly decentralized. The Shiba L2 would be called "Shibarium" and is supposed to use BONE as its primary pair token, as written above. According to Ryoshi, Shibarium would be built by a "very competent blockchain team" with experience building such solutions. Developer Eric M has announced in the Shiba Inu Discord server that Shibarium would launch "soon," although he did not specify a date.

It is possible to buy Shiba Inu on Binance, Huobi, Coinbase, Gate.io, Uniswap (V2) and OKEx, among other exchanges. To check Shiba Inu price live in the fiat currency of your choice, you can use CoinMarketCap's converter feature directly on the Shiba Inu currency page. Alternatively, use the dedicated exchange rate converter page. Popular Shiba Inu price pairs include: SHIB/USD, SHIB/GBP, SHIB/AUD and SHIB/EUR. For more information about how to buy crypto with fiat, check out CoinMarketCap's education portal — Alexandria.

While looking to expand the utility of SHIB, the development team introduced a metaverse — a virtual reality project powered by non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Here, users can mint parcels of digital lands using ETH or its equivalent amount in SHIB tokens. Interestingly, other Shiba Inu-related tokens – BONE and LEASH – will also play various roles as different phases of the metaverse come to life. According to the team, the goal is to create a fun, immersive and interactive environment where users can explore, earn passive income and collect in-game resources. Importantly, the metaverse will allow users to develop and launch their own projects. In total, there are 100,595 plots of land on SHIB: The Metaverse. Of the total, 36,431 digital lands were unlocked on April 13, 2022 – the launch date of the introductory phase of the metaverse. Like most existing metaverses, the parcels of lands found on SHIB: The Metaverse are categorized based on the desirability of their locations. Naturally, lands in strategic areas are valued higher than the rest. The four tiers of lands on Shiba's metaverse are as follows: Tier 4: Silver Fur: 17,030 Lands Tier 3: Gold Tail: 7,356 Lands Tier 2: Platinum Paw: 5,714 Lands Tier 1: Diamond Teeth: 2,024 Lands Below were the launch prices of the tiers listed above: 0.2 $ETH for (Tier 4) Silver Fur 0.3 $ETH for (Tier 3) Gold Tail 0.5 $ETH for (Tier 2) Platinum Paw 1 $ETH for (Tier 1) Diamond Teeth Originally, the plan was to allow the use of ETH alone to mint unlocked lands. However, the team later decided to add the SHIB token as a minting currency, thereby expanding the utility of the token. Although users have begun to purchase SHIB lands, the SHIB metaverse will not officially launch until Shibarium, an upcoming layer 2 scaling network that will eventually house the entire Shiba ecosystem, is deployed. The plan is to have a layer 2 ecosystem built on top of Ethereum's layer 1 network to meet the computational and memory demands for running the fast-expanding Shiba ecosystem. Apart from hosting the SHIB metaverse on Shibarium, the team is also looking to deploy a stablecoin, called SHI, on the layer 2 solution. Another notable development that coincided with the introduction of SHIB: The Metaverse was the launch of a new website where future developments and expansions, including the launch of the metaverse, will take place.

PEPE is a deflationary memecoin launched on Ethereum. The cryptocurrency was created as a tribute to the Pepe the Frog internet meme, created by Matt Furie, which gained popularity in the early 2000s. The project aims to capitalize on the popularity of meme coins, like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, and strives to establish itself as one of the top meme-based cryptocurrencies. PEPE appeals to the cryptocurrency community by instituting a no-tax policy and being up-front about its lack of utility, keeping things pure and simple as a memecoin. In late April to May 2023, the explosive surge of PEPE caused its market cap to reach a high of $1.6 billion at one point, minting millionaires out of early holders and attracting a strong community of like-minded followers. It has induced what some may dub a "memecoin season," causing other memecoins — some launched within hours — to go on spectacular pumps and just as astounding dumps. It remains to be seen if PEPE and other memecoins will go on to new highs, although that is certainly the hope of many believers waiting for the coming BTC halving cycle praying for a Bull Run. The PEPE roadmap features three phases, where phase one includes listing on CoinMarketCap, and getting $PEPE trending on Twitter, while phase two includes listing on centralized exchanges (CEXs) and phase three includes “tier 1” exchange listings and what the team terms a “meme takeover.”

As of now, the founders of PEPE remain anonymous, which is not uncommon in the cryptocurrency world. Although information about the team behind the project is scarce, they have successfully garnered attention using social media platforms such as Twitter to promote their meme coin and foster a community around the memecoin.

PEPE presents a unique offering within the meme coin market by building upon the legacy of Pepe the Frog, a character with a longstanding and controversial history. The project's dedication to honoring this character distinguishes it from other cryptocurrencies and strengthens its appeal within the crypto community.

PEPE employs a redistribution system that rewards long-term stakers, offering them incentives to remain committed to the project. This approach encourages coin stability by rewarding users for holding the token rather than selling it quickly. Additionally, PEPE features a burning mechanism whereby a portion of the coins are permanently removed from circulation on a regular basis. This aims to maintain scarcity despite the coin's 420,690,000,000,000 maximum supply. Of the maximum supply, 93.1% were sent to the liquidity pool on Uniswap, where LP tokens were burnt, and the deployer contract was sent to a null address. The remaining 6.9% is held in a multi-sig wallet, for future CEX listings, bridges and liquidity pools. Users can track the PEPE/WETH pair on CMC DexScan.

PEPE is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, which is secured by the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Decentralized validators stake 32 ETH to process transactions and secure the network.

PEPE can be traded on Uniswap (V2), Uniswap (V3), Binance, KuCoin, Huobi, Gate.io, MEXC and more. Want to keep track of PEPE prices in real-time? Download the CMC mobile app to get live price updates.

Check out Dogecoin — the pioneering dog-themed memecoin. Find out more about Shiba Inu — another highly popular memecoin. Learn more about Uniswap — the decentralized exchange that PEPE is trading on. Refresh your knowledge on what memecoins are with CMC Glossary. Check out the funniest memecoin names with CMC Alexandria.

Dogecoin (DOGE) is based on the popular "doge" Internet meme and features a Shiba Inu on its logo. The open-source digital currency was created by Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia, and was forked from Litecoin in December 2013. Dogecoin's creators envisaged it as a fun, light-hearted cryptocurrency that would have greater appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience, since it was based on a dog meme. Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted several tweets on social media that Dogecoin is his favorite coin.

Dogecoin differs from Bitcoin's proof-of-work protocol in several ways, one of which is by using Scrypt technology. The altcoin has also a block time of 1 minute, and the total supply is uncapped, which means that there is no limit to the number of Dogecoin that can be mined. You can mine Dogecoin either solo, or by joining a mining pool. A Doge miner can mine the digital currency on Windows, Mac or Linux, and with a GPU. As of 2014, you can also mine Litecoin in the same process of mining Dogecoin, as the processes were merged.

Dogecoin has been used primarily as a tipping system on Reddit and Twitter to reward the creation or sharing of quality content. You can get tipped Dogecoin by participating in a community that uses the digital currency, or you can get your Dogecoin from a Dogecoin faucet. A Dogecoin faucet is a website that will give you a small amount of Dogecoin for free as an introduction to the currency, so that you can begin interacting in Dogecoin communities.

You can sell or buy Dogecoin at any exchange that offers the digital currency, store it on an exchange or in a Dogecoin wallet, and tip Dogecoin in any communities that accept Dogecoin. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our market pairs tab.

Weeks after the release of Dogecoin Core version 1.14.6, core developer Michi Lumin announced the launch of Libdogecoin, a C-library of the network’s building blocks. Libdogecoin would allow developers to build Dogecoin-compliant products “without needing to worry about the deeper specifics of the crypto functions.” This means that less technical members can easily design products that comply with Dogecoin standards. Since the update is a pure library, it will not provide a “runnable” node facility. However, Libdogecoin will support multiple languages, including Python, Node.js and Ruby.

The success of Dogecoin is closely intertwined with Elon Musk's passion for it. Musk began tweeting about Dogecoin in early 2021, sharing a Lion King DOGE meme. That kickstarted a furious DOGE rally — with temporary dips — that culminated in Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live. After the SNL appearance, DOGE crashed despite Musk's promises to moon its price. In the following months, Musk seemed to lose interest, and the price of DOGE has tumbled over 70% from its all-time high. However, Musk still wields power over Dogecoin, as occasional tweets indicate.

In 2014, a not-for-profit foundation was formed by members of the Dogecoin team to provide support, advocacy, trademark protection and governance for the cryptocurrency project. However, the foundation was dissolved over time. After several years of being inactive, the foundation was relaunched in 2021 with a “renewed focus on supporting the Dogecoin Ecosystem, community and promoting the future of the Dogecoin Blockchain.” In addition to some of the original core team, the project now has some seasoned industry players as part of its board of advisors. According to the foundation’s website, members of the board will meet monthly to discuss issues relating to Dogecoin. In regards to its advisors, the group is made up of Dogecoin founder Billy Markus, the project’s core developer Max Keller, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk as represented by the head of the Musk’s family office, Jared Birchall. Members of the Board of Advisors will function in various capacities. While Keller will serve as the project’s technical advisor, Markus will be in charge of the community and memes. Meanwhile, Buterin will function as the blockchain and crypto advisor for the foundation, and Birchall will represent Elon Musk as legal and financial advisor. As a first assignment, the Board of Advisors will be working to secure three-year funding that would allow it to employ a small, dedicated staff to work on Dogecoin full-time. Up until now, the work on the ecosystem has been done by volunteers.

Due to its low transaction fees and constant patronage from Elon Musk, a number of traditional companies have moved to make Dogecoin a payment option. Here’s a list of some companies that currently accept Dogecoin payments: Tesla AMC Theaters GameStop airBaltic Dallas Mavericks EasyDNS Newegg Twitch.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that aims to become sound global money with fast payments, micro fees, privacy and larger block size. As a permissionless, decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash requires no trusted third parties. Bitcoin Cash was created as an alternative to the first and most valuable cryptocurrency — Bitcoin (BTC). In 2017, BCH developers modified the BTC code, releasing their software version and a full-fledged competitive product, which split Bitcoin into two blockchains: Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash is a result of a hard fork in the blockchain due to differences in the community over Bitcoin scaling and the SegWit upgrade. Moreover, another hard fork, which divided Bitcoin Cash into two parts, Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV, took place in the fall of 2018. The scaling debate involved two sides: small block supporters opposed increasing block size as it could lead to blockchain centralization and vulnerability by making it harder to host full nodes. Large block supporters, however, advocated for a faster solution, concerned that rising transaction fees could hinder growth.