TON blockchain faces multiple outages as DOGS meme coin overwhelms the network, while political meme tokens gain traction.
TL;DR
- TON blockchain faced multiple outages due to DOGS meme coin launch
- Meme coin market cap drops to $38.67B, showing a bearish trend
- Political meme tokens pump after RFK’s support for Trump and Telegram CEO’s arrest
- SUNDOG and Popcat show significant gains amid overall downturn
Biggest Meme Coin Stories This Week
- TON blockchain faces multiple outages due to DOGS meme coin launch
- Political meme tokens gain traction, led by ConstitutionDAO's PEOPLE
- SUNDOG continues its rise on Tron, gaining 27.91% in 7 days
- Popcat climbs up 49.48% on Solana
- Overall meme coin market shows high volatility but remains in a bearish trend
The Big Story: Ton In The Dogs-house
https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1828033839022924179
As the summer nears its end, things went from bad to worse for The Open Network (TON) after Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s shocking arrest this week caused a crash in its ecosystem prices and doubts about its future.
The blockchain also faced a major crisis this week as the launch of the DOGS meme coin caused multiple network outages.
The initial launch overwhelmed validators, causing a consensus loss and halting the network for over six hours. Major exchanges like Bybit and Binance suspended TON-related transactions due to the instability.
Just when things seemed to be improving, the network went down again, highlighting the challenges TON faces in handling high-volume meme coin activity. This incident has sparked discussions about TON's scalability and its ability to compete with other chains in the meme coin space.
Despite the technical issues, the DOGS token has made it into the top 10 meme coins by market cap, due largely in part to the massive airdrop to Telegram wallets, and of course, a show of solidarity for Pavel by TON users.
Meme Coin Market
7-Day Market Snapshot
For the 7-day period ending August 29, 2024, the total meme coin market cap stands at $38.67 billion, showing a slight recovery from recent lows and up about $1 billion the last week, but still indicating a bearish trend. The 30-day chart shows significant volatility, with the market cap ranging from around $35 billion to peaks above $45 billion.
Meme Coins vs Other Crypto Sectors
According to DeFiLlama's Narrative tracker though, the meme coin sector is showing signs of life. It ranks 5th out of 22 tracked narratives in the 7-day performance, outperforming many other crypto sectors, thanks largely to political memes, the biggest narrative in crypto this week, as well as the Tron SunPump and TON Dogs airdrop narrative. It’s still down 20% for the last month though, compared to other categories.
Top 20 Meme Coins
Here's how the top 20 meme coins performed last week:
Biggest gainers (7d):
- Popcat (POPCAT): +49.48% (Solana)
- SUNDOG (SUNDOG): +27.91% (Tron)
- FLOKI (FLOKI): +21.66% (Eth/BNB)
Biggest losers (7d):
- BOOK OF MEME (BOME): -15.05%
- Brett (Based) (BRETT): -10.39%
- Ponke (PONKE): -10.92%
Quick Takes
- Dogecoin ($14.5B) and Shiba Inu ($8.1B) maintain their dominance, dwarfing other meme coins.
- DOGS enters the top 10 with a $756M market cap despite TON's network issues.
- Solana’s Popcat is the biggest climber this week, while last week’s winner SunDog continues to go up.
- Most top meme coins show negative 90-day performance, indicating a prolonged downturn.
Dogs vs Cats: Who You Got?
While the frogs and the bulls are trying their best to move into Memehattan, its neighborhoods are still controlled with an iron claw by dog and cat meme tokens. They still account for 60% of the top 20 meme coins.
Political Meme Tokens
After some political intrigue which saw RFK drop the Democrats for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris tap Tim Walz as her vice-president pick for the US Elections, PolitiFi cryptocurrencies pumped again during the last week.
Several $MAGA and Trump tokens predictably jumped in value, while even Kamala Horris (KAMA) climbed 25%. ConstitutionDAO (PEOPLE) remains the biggest political coin with $327M in market cap, while the largest $MAGA token has a $149M market cap. $KAMA is still relatively small at $9m fully diluted.
While these tokens add a new dimension to meme coins, investors should approach them with extreme caution, especially when dealing with political meme tokens.
Just look at the Pepe Trump coin which is down 99% the last 7 days. None of these tokens are officially endorsed for obvious reasons by the POTUS candidates, for obvious regulatory and ethical reasons.
Beware the Cabal!
Yikes! The $CABAL meme coin airdropped $10,000 worth of tokens to 10 crypto influencers, aiming to create a "cabal" promoting the project. However, most influencers quickly sold their tokens, causing the price to crash. Only three influencers haven’t sold yet, one of them being Ansem though, and the project's market cap plummeted from $848,000 to $164,000.
What You Can Do Now
The meme coin market currently remains the easiest way to lose your money in crypto.
Yet, as the PolitiFi rally this week showed, there’s plenty of life in this space, if you pick your battles and preserve your ammo.
And remember, while TON might have crashed a couple of times, so has Solana on several occasions and even Ethereum (remember CryptoKitties? ) back in the day.
A few rules of thumb to live by (Not financial advice):
- It’s a good idea to diversify across different chains to mitigate risk.
- Be aware that trends like political memes and Tron/Ton memes are all about hype and community. Once that goes down, so do their prices normally.
- Always DYOR and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
- For now (NFA), it’s best to stay away from low-cap tokens until the scammers find a new crypto sector to ruin.
- Cabals generally move meme coin prices, not cute doggy pics.
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