Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Raises Concerns Over Growing Trend of Meme Coins

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, has raised concerns over the growing trend of meme coins, particularly those built on the Solana blockchain.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, expressed his concerns over the growing trend of meme coins, particularly those built on the Solana blockchain, in a recent discussion with market analyst Scott Melker.

Discussing the fleeting nature of most meme coins, Hoskinson compared their rise to the short-lived fame of a celebrity.

“A meme coin is just like the ascendancy of a celebrity who has 15 minutes of fame,” he explained. “It doesn’t necessarily mean the celebrity will disappear forever, but their popularity is temporary.”

According to Hoskinson, 99% of meme coins are destined to fail, while only a few will evolve into ecosystem-building projects. This concern is highlighted by the significant decline of Solana’s top five memecoins. TRUMP, BONK, FARTCOIN, WIF, and PENGU have lost over 85% of their market capitalization from a high of $81.83 billion.

Their downturn suggests that speculative hype alone is insufficient for long-term value retention, especially in an ecosystem actively generating new tokens.

However, Hoskinson maintained that real blockchain value derives from real-world assets, not speculation. He likened it to conservation laws in physics. For a blockchain ecosystem to thrive, it must attract external value and users, much like Bitcoin (BTC) and other real-world asset-backed systems.

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Solana’s Role in Memecoin Culture

Solana has become a dominant blockchain for meme coins, which may impact its survival, like a successful meme coin. Solana’s resilience after the FTX collapse in 2022 and the insider trading scandals.

“Solana has thrived on the other side, proving itself as the ultimate analogy for a network that managed to break free from the old paradigm. But we still need to have something there. You have to have something,” Charles stated.

Despite its momentum, concerns linger over Solana’s deep ties to speculative meme coins, which could threaten its long-term stability.

For instance, Pump.fun, a platform for launching Solana-based meme coins, is facing a class-action lawsuit, as reported by Crypto News Flash. The lawsuit alleges that the platform facilitated the unregistered sale of securities, specifically citing the PNUT token.

According to the filing, Pump.fun had launched over 6.12 million tokens, many of which rapidly lost value, fueling fears of unchecked speculation within the Solana ecosystem.

Unlike earlier market cycles, where centralized exchanges were necessary to trade meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, the rise of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) has made it easier than ever to create and trade meme coins.

“This time, because of decentralization and DEXs, people figured out Web3. You can go on Pump.fun and launch fifteen of these things an hour if you want, make a little bit of money, and move on with your life, without caring about the pain you’ve left behind. So this time, we get five million meme coins a month instead of 500 in a cycle.”

Meanwhile, ADA, the ninth-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $23 billion, has rebounded with a 6.6% gain in the last 24 hours. This comes after a 9.3% decline over the past week, bringing its current trading price to $0.6797.