Solana's Reputation Plunges Amidst Memecoin Manipulation

The crypto market is grappling with a challenge similar to separating art from artist, as seen in the case of Kanye West, J.K. Rowling, and Woody Allen. The market is struggling to differentiate Solana from highly manipulated memecoins, despite the chain having various use cases unrelated to these coins.

Solana's native token, SOL, has been punished for the LIBRA debacle, which occurred on the Solana chain. Since insiders pumped and dumped LIBRA on Friday evening, SOL has plummeted by as much as 18%. Although it has since rebounded slightly, the damage is evident, especially considering that BTC and ETH have remained relatively stable over the same period. SOL's market cap now stands at $83.4 billion, just over half that of XRP.

Meteora, tied to both Jupiter and LIBRA, has also suffered. JUP, the native token for Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter, has shed as much as 24%. The chart above plots the price action for six coins throughout the LIBRA launch, showing that TRUMP, JUP, and MELANIA rallied hard leading up to LIBRA's sudden appearance. However, their trajectories changed one or two hours before LIBRA hit the chain and have been trending downward since the scandal broke out.

Jupiter, in a statement, described plans to launch LIBRA as an "open secret in memecoin circles." The team claims to have conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence of insider trading. While it's uncertain whether the pre-LIBRA pumps were coincidences, the market has bundled them together under the Solana memecoin complex, leading to a significant decrease in its value over the short term.