Solana's Meme Comeback: Two Coins Break $100M Over Weekend

Original title: "Solana Gets Anxious: Official Support Pushes Golden Dog Past $100M Market Cap, Toly Wants to Woo Robinhood"

Original author: Golem, Odaily News

Over the weekend, two golden dogs with market caps exceeding $100 million emerged on-chain, and this time the action happened on Solana.

On the morning of Sept. 6, the Solana stock-coin paired meme coin STONK was violently pumped, surging over 110% in a short period and breaking a $100 million market cap, becoming the first stock-coin paired meme coin on Solana to surpass $100 million. As of press time, STONK's market cap remains stable at around $100 million. Meanwhile, meme coin ZCAT also touched $100 million in market cap at noon, currently pulling back to around $80 million.

This phenomenon also signals that, facing the ongoing meme bull market on Robinhood Chain and BSC, Solana has officially sounded the counterattack.

Solana Officially Backs Stock-Coin Paired Meme Launchpad StonkFun

StonkFun is a stock-coin paired meme launchpad in the Solana ecosystem, similar to the currently hot Long platform on Robinhood Chain. STONK is StonkFun's official token, paired with the SPY stock token on Solana.

Compared to mature meme launchpads on Robinhood, StonkFun is still in its early stages. The platform launched on Aug. 3 and only officially connected to Raydium LaunchLab on Sept. 6, solving the token sniping issue. As of press time, StonkFun has issued over 8,220 meme coins, with only two exceeding a $10 million market cap: the platform token STONK and ZCAT, a meme coin paired with privacy coin ZEC, whose market cap also peaked at $100 million.

StonkFun

Clearly, StonkFun is committed to a "top-tier strategy," supporting and empowering STONK and ZCAT to attract meme players' attention through wealth effects, walking on two legs in both stock-coin paired memes and native meme tracks. According to official announcements, StonkFun has repurchased over $1 million worth of STONK and airdropped over $1 million worth of ZEC to ZCAT holders. As of Sept. 6, StonkFun has airdropped over $7.5 million in token rewards to ecosystem token holders.

According to DefiLlama data, StonkFun's fees over the past 24 hours reached $110,000, while fees over the past 30 days were only $1.23 million, less than Pons' daily fees. Therefore, it is clear that STONK's surge is not because StonkFun has done exceptionally well, but rather due to deliberate official support from Solana combined with collective market FOMO.

On Sept. 4, StonkFun posted a tweet on X supporting stock tokens, which subsequently received a "retweet, comment, and like" triple interaction from Raydium, Solana official, and Solana co-founder Toly. In the meme community, players are highly sensitive to any moves by "big shots," and Solana's official action undoubtedly signaled to the community that StonkFun has received official endorsement and support, naturally boosting its status.

Solana official and Toly interacting with StonkFun

Additionally, the community is betting on continued interaction or actual support from Solana official or Toly with StonkFun. In the community's interpretation, in this meme cycle, some are playing Robinhood Chain, others BSC, but seemingly no one is playing Solana. To avoid falling behind, Solana official will surely shill memes within its ecosystem. Although Toly may not substantively endorse due to legal risks, he will still stir market sentiment through social media interactions—a subtle "understood but not spoken" nudge unique to big shots.

The Meme Battle for Chain Ecosystems Enters the Second Half

The community's speculation is not unfounded. In the past, Solana has been the go-to chain for overseas meme communities, largely thanks to Pump.fun. However, in this cycle dominated by stock-coin paired memes, Pump.fun's focus has shifted away from meme launch business toward mobile and building a social trading platform. It has yet to launch stock-coin paired meme features. Even on Pump.fun's homepage, "Create Token" is no longer prominently placed, replaced by a trading feed.

This has caused the Solana ecosystem to collectively fall behind in this meme cycle, with overseas meme players migrating en masse to the Robinhood Chain ecosystem. Over the past 30 days, Solana's fees were only $22 million, dropping to 18th place among blockchains. Therefore, STONK's rise is an "ideological" rise, akin to defense stocks during the Cold War, Baidu during the internet bubble, or CXMT in the AI era—StonkFun is Solana's darling in the meme battle.

Moreover, Solana cannot afford to lose this stock-coin paired meme cycle, because the significance of stock-coin paired meme coins to the chain ecosystem lies in driving stock token trading. While both are trading, the implications are entirely different: hot meme trading typically carries negative connotations of speculation, scams, and lack of real-world utility, whereas hot stock token trading represents innovation, RWA, and crypto's real-world significance to traditional finance.

For Solana, which rose to prominence on meme trading, it desperately needs this cycle to boost RWA development—so much so that Toly is anxious to woo Robinhood.

On Sept. 5, Toly posted on X hinting that Robinhood Chain's 10% revenue share to Arbitrum is not worth it, stating that these fees could cover roughly four times Solana's transaction fees over the same period. If that revenue were used to subsidize user transactions, Robinhood Chain could even offer users a completely gas-free experience. His words expressed hope that Robinhood Chain would choose Solana's technology.

Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder quickly responded to Toly, saying Robinhood chose Arbitrum to be a "landlord" rather than a "tenant." Under Arbitrum's architecture, Robinhood can retain 90% of gas fees; whereas if it chose Solana, Robinhood would earn no revenue from gas fees, let alone use that revenue to subsidize user transactions.

Robinhood has not yet responded to this debate. For now, if Solana wants to turn the tide in this meme cycle, it can only rely on itself.