Solana Co-founder Advocates for Fair Meme Coin Launches

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has taken to Twitter to air his thoughts on meme coins, likening them to “zero loss lotteries.” The high-profile cryptocurrency developer suggested that digital asset marketplaces could help mitigate the proliferation of fraudulent meme coins by coordinating completely fair launches with zero fees. This, according to Yakovenko, would prevent scam versions of meme coins from continuously draining user liquidity.

Yakovenko’s tweets also broached the subject of how to differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent meme coins. In response to a question about sorting out potentially deceptive coins, he proposed creating a “fair list” using specific heuristics to identify active users and distribute the coin without a premine. Yakovenko suggested that a group of researchers could analyze and publish the list for anyone to use for coin launches.

However, some highlighted potential issues with this approach, such as the risk of the list being compromised after the first use due to airdrop farming and other manipulative practices. There are also issues that could arise with contributor vesting, suggesting avoiding it altogether as part of the zero premine strategy.

The Solana founder further argued that despite the possible lack of direct incentives for coin creators, marketplaces themselves would benefit from integrating these fair-launch coins. When a user pointed out that the incentive for creating and marketing these coins might be diminished, Yakovenko responded by questioning whether the marketplaces themselves would not stand to gain. The implication seems to be that a more reliable and transparent coin launch process could, in turn, attract more users to these platforms.