Members of the Solana community and the crypto ecosystem denounced the recent outbreak of incendiary memecoins on March 22.
Unknown parties recently took advantage of Solana's tokenization feature to introduce thousands of memecoins containing racist and anti-Semitic terminologies in their names. Some tokens also contained anti-China descriptions and other widely offensive material.
Solana founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko spoke out against the trend on by simply declaring:
“F’ these racist anti-Semitic incels.”
DEX Screener responds
DEX Screener, a popular third-party service that monitors tokens on various blockchains including Solana, said it is reportedly reviewing its policies following the high rate of offensive memecoin launches in recent days.
The company said:
“We won't be the gatekeepers of what happens on the channel, but we're certainly not here to spread hate.”
The platform Documentation indicates that all data is currently processed in real time “without any moderation or human intervention”.
As of press time, the trend has eased slightly. However, it is unclear whether DEX Screener has taken any action against him.
Molly White from web3isgoinggreat suggested that offensive tokens initially filled DEX Screener, few of these tokens are currently trending on the main page of the platform. Additionally, memecoins representing a backlash against harmful content are trending, including “Stop Racism on Solana” and “F-DEX Screener.”
Memecoin frenzy
The crypto industry has been in the grip of a memecoin frenzy for months now, mainly due to the meteoric rise in value seen by BONK and WIF, among others.
Solana's cheap costs and fast transactions have positioned it as the primary benefactor of the memecoin trading boom, with a significant percentage of trading volume occurring on the network.
SolanaFM recently reported that more than 20,000 new tokens are created daily on the network. Solana's growing number of tokens is explained by its relatively low transaction fees, which make creating new tokens more affordable than on other blockchains.
For example, while the average Ethereum transaction fees is above $9.00, Solana transactions typically cost a fraction of a cent – although actual transaction costs on each chain may vary.
Over the past 24 hours, all but 5 of the top 50 trending cryptos on DEX Screener have been circulating, at least in part, on Solana.