An investigation carried out by blockchain sleuth Zackxbt has found that the trend where individuals ask for funds on social networks and promote their meme coin launches has grown in popularity. Almost $150 million has been raised on Solana after Book of Meme (BOME), the token that pioneered this trend, launched earlier this month.
Meme Coin Presale Trend Goes Popular on Solana
The meme coin presale trend, where users on X (formerly known as Twitter) invite other users to send them funds for a presale process before launching a token has become popular in the Solana community. Blockchain sleuth Zackxbt has found that these initiatives have been successful, raising almost $150 million in SOL.
This trend was pioneered by Darkfarms, a meme artist known for his Pepe creations who launched its Book of Meme (BOME) token to become a top meme coin in the cryptocurrency market in less than a week.
Nonetheless, this has incentivized the theft of the funds allocated for these presales as scammers and impersonators open similar processes for personal benefit. Zackxbt called out several X users who did not fulfill their promises of launching their advertised tokens and instead stole thousands of dollars worth of $SOL from trusting users.
Due to the size and scope of the phenomenon, it is still unclear how many of these presales have ended in this way. Zackxbt reports that over 28,000 SOL have been stolen from users participating in these “presales.”
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, advised against getting involved in these meme coin schemes. He stated:
Stop doing this.
The rise of these meme coin presale operations on top of Solana has originated a surge in activity that has taken the blockchain to the brink of its operative capacity, with many users complaining about the high number of dropped transactions. The Solana Foundation gave some recommendations for app developers to avoid facing these problems and is preparing an update to its transaction scheduler that would also increase the network’s capacity.
Source: Bitcoin
