Structural Shift in the Meme Market: Solana Retreat and BSC on-chain Capital Restructuring

Author: BitMart Research

1. Chinese meme explosion: Binance ignites the phenomenon of “Binance Life”

In early October 2025, a comment by He Yi, co-founder of Binance, on social media saying “Wishing you a Binance life” unexpectedly ignited the creative enthusiasm of the Chinese crypto community, leading to the creation of a meme coin called “Binance Life.” This concept quickly fermented under community dissemination and KOL promotion, with its market value skyrocketing to $500 million in just a few days, an increase of up to 6000 times, creating a phenomenal hotspot. According to DeFiLlama statistics, the daily trading volume of BNB chain DEX surged to $6.05 billion, attracting over 100,000 new traders. Starting from the initial surge of Binance-related memes, it has further fueled the breakout of later Chinese memes, leading to the emergence of several popular memes on BSC, such as:

• PALU: Binance intern ip, which has been retweeted multiple times by Binance officials and CZ, is now live on Binance alpha.
• 4: CZ classic image secondary creation meme, which is now live on Binance alpha.
• Cultivation: Originating from an article about cultivation published by He Yi, the co-founder of Binance, at Binance Square, which elaborates on his entrepreneurial cultivation philosophy of Dao, Fa, Shu, and Qi.
• Hakimi: Originating from one of the hottest memes on the internet right now, combining cats with songs in a secondary creation, it has no direct relation to Binance. Currently, Hakimi has been launched on Binance Alpha.
• Customer Service Xiao He: Creating a secondary work based on the image of He Yi, which has now been launched on Binance Alpha.

Binance has launched the meme Rush platform in a timely manner, creating a closed-loop mechanism of “internal incubation - standard migration - external volume” through collaboration with Fourmeme, further amplifying the siphoning effect of the BSC ecosystem. Since then, the activity on the BSC chain has seen significant growth, with both the number of newly created contracts in a single day and the number of on-chain transfer transactions reaching a peak for the year. On October 21, the recently launched prediction project Limitless on the Base chain also took advantage of this momentum by setting up a prediction market on whether Binance Life would launch Binance spot trading, with 76% of participants in agreement. Subsequently, CZ responded to related discussions on X, stating that community discussions help projects grow. Later that evening, Binance Life launched Binance contracts, and Binance officially established a new Chinese meme section, indicating that the popularity of Chinese memes continues to grow.

2. The Meme Retreat Amid Market Volatility: Extreme Deleveraging Triggers Structural Cooling

On October 11, 2025, the three major U.S. stock indexes and risk assets such as Bitcoin experienced a sharp decline, triggering a sell-off and a wave of liquidations in the crypto market — reports indicate that about 1.6 million people were liquidated across the network that day, with a liquidation scale of approximately $19.3 billion, setting a historical record. In this extreme deleveraging environment, the altcoin sector saw a waterfall-like drop, with most coins plummeting by as much as 80-90% in a single day. On-chain liquidity tightened at one point, leading to liquidity gaps, trading congestion, and concentrated selling pressure. According to CMC data, on October 11, the market capitalization of meme coins dropped to $44 billion, down nearly 40% from the previous day's $72 billion. On October 12, the meme coin market rebounded slightly to $53 billion, marking the first time this level was reached since July, prior to the Solana ecosystem's meme coin craze that sparked a summer rebound in the sector. Over the past four months, the total market capitalization of the meme coin market has remained above $60 billion, driven by Solana and BNB Chain, with meme-based tokens continuously attracting retail interest. However, the recent sharp decline marks a turning point in market sentiment. As of the time of publication, the total market capitalization of the meme coin sector stands at $57 billion, still well below recent levels.

On October 11, 2025, the three major US stock indices plummeted in sync with Bitcoin and other risky assets, triggering a chain reaction of liquidations and massive forced sell-offs in the crypto market. According to statistics, about 1.6 million people were liquidated across the network that day, with a total liquidation amount reaching $19.3 billion, setting a new historical high. In the face of this round of extreme deleveraging, the altcoin sector experienced a cliff-like decline, with most tokens seeing a daily drop of 80% to 90%. Market liquidity tightened rapidly, on-chain fund transfers were obstructed, and selling pressure and liquidations surged.

According to CMC data, on October 11, the total market capitalization of the meme sector plummeted from $72 billion the previous day to $44 billion, marking a nearly 40% drop in a single day, the largest retracement of the year. Subsequently, on October 12, the market saw a slight recovery, with the total market capitalization of the meme sector rebounding to $53 billion, a level that had not been reached since July. Over the past four months, driven by Solana and BSC, the total market capitalization of the meme market had remained above $60 billion, attracting a large number of retail investors to continue participating. However, this round of plummet undoubtedly became a watershed moment for market sentiment.

3. Solana Ecosystem Under Pressure: The Retreat of Pump.fun and the Diversion of Funds from BSC

Since August, the number of new tokens on the Solana chain has seen a significant decline. Solscan data shows that from August to mid-October, the number of new tokens on Solana dropped from an average of 35,000–40,000 to 15,000–20,000, which is partly influenced by the downturn in the crypto market. Additionally, as shown in the figure below, since October, the market share comparison between fourmeme and Pump.fun shows that fourmeme's market share reached a peak of 83.9%, with the highest return rate reaching 87.8%. This indicates that the explosion of the Chinese meme craze on BSC since October has diverted a large amount of funds. On-chain data shows that on October 8, the DEX trading volume on the BNB chain soared to approximately $6.05 billion, marking the second highest this year, indicating a significant increase in speculative activity within the Binance ecosystem, with much of the liquidity that was originally active on the Solana chain being attracted over.

4. Summary

Overall, the issuance scale of meme tokens on the Solana chain remains considerable, but market activity has significantly cooled down. Compared to the previous quarter, both the funding and social heat of the entire meme sector have shown a noticeable decline, while BSC, benefiting from the Binance ecological effect and the explosion of Chinese cultural topics, is rapidly becoming a new growth center. Currently, the focus of funding and traffic is shifting from Solana to the BNB chain, with investors' attention on emerging meme projects on BSC noticeably increasing, while the Solana ecosystem is still waiting for new narratives and hotspots to reignite community vitality.

It is worth noting that the public chains Solana and Base, which are the main hubs for memes, have recently seen a rise in popular Chinese memes. The official Solana Twitter announced that its Chinese name is 索拉拉, which has led to the emergence of related Chinese memes called 索拉拉. The market cap of Base's Base人生 has also surpassed ten million, and several small-cap Chinese memes have appeared on Base. Currently, it seems that the consecutive popularity of projects like 币安人生, 修仙, and 客服小何 has allowed Chinese memes to occupy a certain position in the crypto market. With the continued expansion of the BSC ecosystem and the participation of more creators, it is expected that more new Meme projects inspired by Chinese topics, character images, or internet hot memes will emerge.