Hello readers,

I’m pleased to share that The DeFi Report has started building its own onchain datasets. Our goal is simple:

1. Provide you with unique onchain data that you cannot get anywhere else.

2. Bring meaning to it with our analysis.

3. Make it actionable.

To that end, we’re kicking off our proprietary data reports with a deep dive into the top memecoins in the space.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are the author’s personal views and should not be relied upon as investment, legal, tax, business, or any other advice.

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Let’s go.

Intro

Before we hop in, some brief housekeeping.

• If you’re curious why we’re covering memecoins, we shared our more qualitative views (and why we changed our mind) here.

• Our analysis here indicates that memecoins have a high beta to L1 assets (and a greater chance of outperforming the L1).

• We view memecoins as leveraged bets on various themes/narratives and ecosystems.

• We are only interested in memecoins that have already achieved some degree of escape velocity. This removes 99% of the market — with our focus on the blue-chip memes with plenty of liquidity.

As an aside, I remember watching an interview with Paul Tudor Jones back in 2020. He was talking about Bitcoin. And he mentioned that Stanley Druckenmiller told him that 80% of Bitcoin holders held onto the asset from $20k all the way down to $3k (after the ‘17 cycle). That’s interesting data. And it gave Paul Tudor Jones the conviction to invest in BTC. We’re looking for similar standout data as we analyze memecoins and wallet cohorts.

With that said, please keep in mind that memecoins are incredibly risky and volatile.

Please only put in what you are comfortable losing and always do your own research.

Onto the data…

TokenHolder Growth

Key Takeaways:

1. SPX6900 stands out as the only meme that grew its $1k holders at a greater clip than its overall holders.

2. Note that many assets were down in price over the last 30 days — which can skew the data. Fartcoin (yep, just wrote that. +94%), AI16z (+81%), and SPX6900 (+52%) were the best-performing assets over the last month.

3. GIGA was an anomaly in the data as its price was flat over the last 30 days, but was still able to grow its $1k holders.

Tokenholder Conviction

Average & Median Holdings

Key Takeaways:

1. SPX6900 stands out again as its median holdings across all Ethereum addresses are 369% higher than Pepe, the #2 meme in terms of median holdings per wallet. It also has the highest average balance.

2. SPX6900 on Solana tells a different story — as median holdings are just 25% of what we see on Ethereum. This aligns with the market perception of the two networks: Ethereum tends to attract more TVL and higher-value transactions than Solana.

3. Based Brett on the Base L2 stands out as the most “gamed” meme. We are looking into what happened, but below we can see that there were three massive increases in tokenholders. It looks like insiders airdropped/dusted hundreds of thousands of wallets as marketing/community building. This is a similar playbook that the Bonk team has run in the past (including airdrops for purchasers of the Solana mobile phone).

Generally speaking, we can see that most memecoin “investors” are simply gambling a few hundred dollars — likely on multiple projects.

Again, SPX6900 stands out on Ethereum as it appears that its community has more conviction in that asset than any other meme.

Holders > $1k

Key Takeaways:

1. Again. SPX6900 stands out. 36% of its holder base has over $1k while the average across the remaining top memes is just 14.2%.

2. Pepe stands out as the top “large cap meme” — with 18% of its wallets holding greater than $1k.

3. Fartcoin, AI16z, and MOG round out the top 5.

Holders > $100k

Key Takeaways:

1. Once again, SPX6900 is at the top of the leaderboard with the highest % of wallets with over $100k. Some people think this is bad as it indicates that large holders could “dump” on retail. I think it’s the opposite. A higher % of holders with over $100k indicates to me that more people have high conviction in the asset. In some ways, it looks like SPX6900 could be forming BTC-like properties amongst memecoins.

2. Fartcoin and AI16z (both on Solana) are showing up with a surprisingly large number of > $100k wallets.

% of Wallets with less than $100

Key Takeaways:

1. SPX6900 has more wallets with over $1k (12,914) on Ethereum than it does wallets with less than $100 (9,920). Again, this is an outlier in the data. There is no other meme that comes close on this metric. In fact, only 29% of SPX wallets on Ethereum have less than $100 (the # above is blended with Solana). Pepe was #2 at 43%.

2. As a point of reference: Pepe (#2 asset in this category) has 76k wallets with over $1k and $179k wallets with less than $100.

3. You’ll see that the bottom 4 assets have a very high concentration of sub $100 wallets. We believe these memecoins are more centralized, with insiders running marketing campaigns and airdrops — which skews the data to the downside in this category.

Whale Growth

30-Day Growth Rates - Whales

Key Takeaways:

1. Fartcoin and AI16z at the top of the leaderboard is a bit of a surprise here. Both assets were launched in October and have seen massive growth over the last 30 days. Given that the price is up 94% and 81% respectively over the period, it makes sense to see growth in $100k + wallets. With that said, both assets have been quite volatile, so it’s interesting to see that there appears to be a decent number of holders showing conviction.

2. Bonk was down 14% over the last month, but its $100k wallets dropped 69% — indicating that many large holders may have taken profit recently. This is potentially setting a nice floor for Bonk in the $.000026-$.000028 range.

Whale Retainage

Our goal with this metric was to look at all wallets that have ever held over $100k across the life of the asset. We then compared that figure to the number of wallets still holding greater than $100k. We believe this metric gives us some insight into the long-term conviction of large holders.

*Please note that we are currently missing some of the large Ethereum memes in this dataset. We’ll share that data as soon as we have it.

Key Takeaways:

1. SPX6900 is off the charts on this one. 86% of its holders that have ever had $100k + worth of the token still hold at least that amount, even with its price currently 34% off its all-time highs. That’s cult-like behavior.

Insider Transactions

Our focus here is on identifying coins that have obvious “cabal” like features. To do so, we looked at the total number of wallets that received the token in the first week after launch. We then filtered out the number of “insider wallets” based on wallets that received the token but had less than 5 transactions previously.

The logic is that it’s very unlikely that a crypto user with less than 5 transactions who received the token in the first week would not be an insider wallet.

Key Takeaways:

1. Of the 5 assets we were able to get data for, SPX once again tops the charts.

2. Pepe had a massive number of receivers of its token (45k) in the first week — and a high % of “insiders.”

3. Based Brett showing up with 55% insider wallets does not surprise us. Of all the memes we analyzed, this one appears to be the most centrally managed.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

I want to be really clear that we are still in the early stages of gleaning insights from the data. Please note that some of the data can be noisy (noting that asset prices can skew some of the metrics.)

With that said, we believe there is a lot we can learn simply by analyzing wallet cohorts.

What did we learn?

• SPX6900 was #1 in 6 out of 9 datasets. It was #2 in 1 dataset. And #3 in 30-day growth rates for whales. This gives it a combined score of 9.

• The #2 asset in terms of combined score is AI16z at 21.

• Fartcoin was #3 with a combined score of 28.

A few notes to end on:

1. Keep in mind that there are different ways to view and interpret the data. You could argue that a large % of holders still holding their tokens is a bad thing. You could argue that it’s better to have a higher % of holders under $100. I disagree as I think a higher % of holders holding substantial amounts shows more conviction. But it’s fair to question how I’m interpreting the data and put your own spin on it.

2. Our data is only looking onchain and does not include centralized exchanges. WIF, Bonk, Shiba Inu, Pepe, GIGA are all traded on Binance, Coinbase, etc.

3. Consider that we did not include SPX6900 token on Base in the datasets. As far as we can tell, it looks like there was some sort of airdrop event (possibly multiple) that skewed the data so we just left it out. The token has 72,012 wallets but only 1,929 with over $1k (2.6%). The median balance was $.000001. The real activity for SPX6900 is happening on Ethereum and Solana.

3. The conclusion we came to does not mean these are the assets that are going to outperform moving forward. In fact, if BTC underwhelms in the coming months, I would expect none of these assets to perform well.

But if you think BTC will do well in the coming months, it might be prudent to develop a data-driven thesis for “blue-chip” memes for ‘25. These datasets should help you do so.

We’ll be back with an update on the Ethereum ecosystem next week.

Take a Report.

And Stay Curious.

Disclaimer: Individuals have unique circumstances, goals, and risk tolerances, so you should consult a certified investment professional and/or do your own diligence before making investment decisions. The author is not an investment advisor and may hold positions in the assets covered. Certified professionals can provide individualized investment advice tailored to your unique situation. This research report is for general educational purposes only, is not individualized, and as such should not be construed as investment advice. The content contained in the report is derived from both publicly available information as well as proprietary data sources. All information presented and sources are believed to be reliable as of the date first published. Any opinions expressed in the report are based on the information cited herein as of the date of the publication. Although The DeFi Report and the author believe the information presented is substantially accurate in all material respects and does not omit to state material facts necessary to make the statements herein not misleading, all information and materials in the report are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis, without warranty or condition of any kind either expressed or implied.