Author: Frank, PANews

Following Solana, Base Chain has become a hotbed for MEME coins. On May 5th, there were 2821 new DEX trading pairs on Base Chain within 24 hours, compared to Solana's 1508 pairs. This data trend has been consistent, with Base Chain adding more trading pairs daily than Solana for almost a month. Can it be considered that Base has taken over the scepter of Meme coins from Solana and become the new king of Meme on public chains?

In this article, PANews will conduct a comprehensive comparison of Base and Solana in the Meme race, analyzing the differences and similarities from the perspectives of user habits, code vulnerabilities, transaction speed, fund preferences, cultural characteristics, deployment costs, and exploring the secrets of the flow of Meme popularity.

Characteristics and Origins of Meme Culture in Both

MEME coins themselves originate from a Meme culture, where "Meme" typically refers to a cultural fragment spread through the internet, such as images, videos, text, or concepts, often containing humorous elements and quickly gaining widespread circulation online. Therefore, although Meme is different from other types of projects, it still requires certain Meme cultural materials as the core of dissemination. The more well-known and widely received the Meme material is, the easier it is to spread.

Meme coins on Solana did not receive much attention in the previous market, but the rise of Meme culture in this bull market can be traced back to September 6, 2023, when Anatoly, co-founder of Solana, appeared at the annual Solana Breakpoint conference in a green dinosaur costume and referred to himself as a silly dragon. On November 8th, Anatoly posted "year of the silly dragon" on social media, calling for a silly dragon Meme to appear in the community. Subsequently, the SILLY token was deployed in the community's anticipation and airdropped through social media by leaving wallet addresses.

In fact, this issuance process also represents the origin of Meme culture on Solana, initiated by the founder, with multiple interactions between the official and the community. After the explosive dissemination effect, contracts were deployed, and the wealth effect attracted even more people.

During the recent frenzy of airdrops, Solana experienced a wave of Meme frenzy, mainly due to the large user base of the Solana community, which spontaneously formed a pattern in the search for high-quality Meme targets. It can be said that the Meme culture characteristic of Solana is that, under the vision of wealth effect, users seek materials from Meme culture.

In contrast, Base, backed by Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has Meme coin cultural attributes with a more distinct American style and a strong association with Coinbase. Some of the top Meme coins in terms of holders on Base include Degen, Jogeco Dog (Coinbase founder's dog), Ollie Dog (Coinbase's lead independent director's dog), ROCKY (founder of MetaWin's dog), Bento (a space dog), BASED USA (making America great again), and Young Peezy (another character from the "Boys Club" comic series).

User Habits: Solana Creating a New Ecosystem, Base Relying on the Shade of Ethereum

In terms of user habits, several factors need to be considered, such as wallets, DEX (decentralized exchanges), trading bots, market panels, and project information. The ease of use of these products directly affects the threshold for users to participate in Meme coin speculation.

Wallets:

The wallet on Solana was the first major barrier to attracting users to participate in Meme. Unlike the Ethereum ecosystem, Solana is written in Rust or C language, so the architecture of the wallet is completely different. The mainstream crypto wallet Metamask is not compatible with Solana tokens. Therefore, Meme tokens on Solana also benefited from the rapid rise of SOL tokens in the early stages of this bull market, making more people accustomed to new wallet forms like Phantom.

Base is essentially an L2 network of Ethereum, so it is perfectly compatible with Ethereum users in terms of EVM compatibility, allowing users to use familiar wallet products such as Metamask for transactions. In addition, Coinbase has introduced the AA wallet, eliminating the need for cumbersome operations for ordinary users, allowing them to directly generate accounts using mobile or computer devices, touch ID, Google accounts, and even connect directly to Coinbase accounts, laying the foundation for attracting a large number of users and funds to the Base chain.

DEX:

The operation of DEX products on Solana is not significantly different from the Ethereum system. However, it has many advantages in terms of speed and operational convenience.

Most of the trading pairs on Base are still built on DEXs like Uniswap, perfectly compatible with the usage habits of Ethereum users.

Trading Bots:

Trading bots in the Solana ecosystem were developed by several sensitive bot developers at the beginning of the Meme frenzy, with no significant difference in usage compared to Ethereum trading bots.

There are currently not many trading bots on the Base chain, with products like Sigma and Shuriken filling the market gap.

Market Panels:

Products like Birdeye and Dexscreener can currently support market panels and token information for multiple public chains.

Overall, in terms of user habits, Solana has successfully established an independent system and quickly gained acceptance among Meme players, while Base has saved a lot of construction costs in this regard due to the user base advantages of Ethereum and Coinbase.

Code Vulnerabilities: Solana's Innate Advantage and Base's Remedial Measures

As two outstanding Meme ecosystem chains, a high-quality contract environment is a factor that Meme players must consider. Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, as the main soil for Meme in the past, had a major issue with a large space for malicious contracts. According to PANews' previous statistics, about 98% of the Meme coins issued daily on the Ethereum chain have code issues.

Solana uses a completely different programming language and architecture, which can better avoid contract vulnerabilities. General token contract issues are only present in a few risks such as code issuance volume and ownership.

Base uses the same programming language and architecture as Ethereum, inheriting Ethereum's vulnerability system. Base's corresponding function is to create a label for verified contracts on the chain, helping users to avoid some contract code issues at the source. However, according to a research report by Cointelegraph, a sample security analysis of 1000 new Meme coins launched on the Base chain from March 19th to 25th found that the vast majority of Meme coins on this network have security vulnerabilities that could cause significant losses to users, with almost one-fifth of the meme coins being intentionally malicious.

Contract Deployment Costs: Base's Lower Issuance Cost May Attract More Developers

The cost of deploying a contract on Solana is about 1 SOL (approximately $150).

The cost of deploying a contract on Base is around a dozen dollars. This may be why the number of new trading pairs on Base has increased significantly every day.

Transaction Speed and Gas Fees: Differences Exist but Have Little Impact

The transaction speed on Base is about 35 TPS, with gas fees of about $0.11.

Solana's transaction speed is about 1300 TPS, with transaction fees of about $0.0029.

In this comparison, although Solana still has a significant advantage, Base's speed and fee levels are relatively user-friendly and almost do not become the main consideration for users.

Fund Situation and Active Users: Base Needs a Phenomenal Meme Frenzy to Narrow the Gap

TVL on the chain: Solana's TVL on the chain is about $3.9 billion, while Base's TVL on the chain is about $1.5 billion.

24-hour on-chain trading volume: Solana is about $1 billion, Base is about $400 million.

Base: As of May 4th, the total number of users on Base is approximately 8.4 million, with a daily active user count of about 350,000.

Solana has approximately 850,000 daily active users.

In terms of liquidity trends, there is a net outflow of $1.77 million from Solana to Base. Overall, the gap between Base and Solana is no longer at a significant level, and perhaps this gap will narrow further after the emergence of some phenomenal products.

Official Attitudes: Solana Hopes for Meme to Cool Down, Base Aims for Meme to Shine

In addition to the relatively objective factors mentioned above, the official promotion also plays an important role in the development of Meme coins. The Meme frenzy on Solana originated from the promotion by the co-founders and official organizations. Currently, it seems that the Solana official does not want to be solely associated with the impression of a Meme chain. In April of this year, Solana co-founder raj tweeted that Meme coins are scaring away serious builders. However, he reminded these serious builders that "if you are so fragile that you are afraid of young people choosing to have fun in an unlicensed system, then you simply cannot succeed." Previously, after experiencing the frenzy of "airdrops," Solana co-founder Toly also called on the community to stop the practice of airdrop pre-sales.

On the other hand, Base's attitude towards Meme seems different. Also in April, Jesse Pollak, the head of the Base ecosystem protocol, stated, "Meme coins are an important part of the on-chain economy, and it is great to see more diffusion based on Meme coins, helping the world enter the on-chain world; the vitality on Base is very strong, and we notice that these Meme coins are now bringing thousands of people into this new economy. We see an exceptionally active meme economy shining brightly in the Base ecosystem."

Overall, the Meme journey of Solana and Base seems to be like a meeting between a god descending from the mountain and someone climbing up the mountain, one full of memories of the past, and the other hoping to achieve its goals. Objectively, both have the soil for developing Meme culture in terms of product features and cultural background, with a large number of users and distinct community cultures forming the basis of their respective Meme cultures. Subjectively, as a beneficiary of Meme coins in this bull market, Solana also to some extent feels the backlash of Meme on other projects in the ecosystem, and therefore hopes to moderately reduce the temperature of Meme to balance ecosystem development. Meanwhile, Base hopes to continue climbing towards the peak of Meme as a window to expand ecosystem activity.

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