Jesse Pollak, developer of Base, the second layer (L2) network that powers the COINBASE exchange, talks about memecoins, highlighting how they are helping to “incorporate thousands and thousands of people” into the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
"I think every day, of all the conversations I have about the ecosystem, what becomes clearer is that memes are one of the big drivers in attracting new people. And obviously speculation plays a role in this,” Pollak said in a he shared on X.
His comments refer to the boom that meme cryptocurrencies are having on the Base network. However, it is not only in that ecosystem that memecoins are booming, as these types of assets have spread throughout the world of digital assets.
The latest ecosystem in which memecoins are flourishing is Bitcoin, where there are already almost 10,000 rune projects. This after the launch of the Runes protocol with which it is possible to create fungible tokens in the network of the most popular cryptocurrency on the market.
A puppy memecoin, the queen of runes
As a sign of the fever unleashed by runes, the DOG project (a little dog in an orange jacket with a hat and a Bitcoin logo) launched an airdrop that made it the most widely held Runes token to date.
DOG holders exceeded 72,000, according to from the Luminex minting and engraving platform.
This new dog memecoin is by far the Runes token with the largest number of holders since the protocol launched last Friday, that is, just a week ago.
Another project with a large volume of holders is Bitcoin Pepe Matrix, which has, so far, more than 16,000. But beyond these projects themselves, today there are more than 7,000 different memecoins, as seen through the SatScreener
It is evident that the Runes protocol is attracting users to the Bitcoin network, although not all of them arrive with the idea of ??preserving value to escape inflation by separating money from the State, in line with the ideas of Satoshi Nakamoto , the creator of Bitcoin. On the contrary, runes are focused on fun and speculation, as Runes protocol developer Casey Rodarmor
In short, as the current panorama paints, rune memecoins will really be able to challenge the wide acceptance that Ethereum and Solana have in terms of memecoin projects.
However, for Runes to become a strong competitor, it must not only match, but surpass in areas critical to user satisfaction, namely usability, cost-effectiveness, and inclusive financial services.
Indications show that Runes can grow as a robust developer ecosystem that supports diverse applications, similar to what fueled Ethereum's initial popularity. This is because the creation of Rodarmor will be used by anyone who has the ability to create projects, as happened in the past with the ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards, each of which has different purposes and opens the door to new possibilities in Ethereum.
“Runes is a legitimate competitor to Taproot Assets and RGB and the Ordinals library provides everything needed to encode and decode runestones, so integration should be simple,” Rodarmor said in a clear invitation for project development, memecoins, games and more in Bitcoin.
At the same time, by keeping transaction fees low, as is the case at the time of writing ($4 in high priority), and providing scalable solutions. This is because Runes also takes a step forward by making transactions even cheaper and faster, based on UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) to generate sets of new packaged transactions. This way Runes could appeal to a broader audience, further instigating a possible shift in the memecoin market.
