WEN, a new Solana meme coin, has gained significant traction after being airdropped to over a million wallets.
The airdrop, which took place on Friday morning, was facilitated through the decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter, as part of a large-scale test of its new launchpad.
Jupiter will continue its airdrop spree next week with its own token, JUP, which is eagerly anticipated by nearly a million eligible wallets.
However, the WEN airdrop had an even wider reach, extending eligibility to over a million Solana wallets.
This included active Jupiter users from the past six months, holders of various popular NFT projects on the platform, and even owners of the Solana Saga smartphone.
Each wallet that met the eligibility criteria could claim an airdrop of 643,652 WEN tokens.
At the current price of $0.00009095, this translates to a value of over $58, according to CoinGecko. Since the airdrop, WEN has experienced a price increase of approximately 483%.
Different data sources reported temporary price spikes, with CoinMarketCap noting a peak at $2,915 and Birdeye recording a peak at $4,836.
However, both platforms currently show a significant drop in value from those peaks, with WEN now trading at a fraction of a penny.
While these price fluctuations may have caught some traders off guard, it is important to remember that token prices can be highly volatile, particularly during and immediately after an airdrop.
Meme coins, in particular, are known for their wild price swings.
Solana Meme Coins Continue to Make Waves
Despite the initial chaos, there is a history of Solana meme coins experiencing significant price surges, leading some WEN recipients to hold onto their tokens in the hope of a similar jump.
Specifically, some have speculated that the meme coin may follow in the footsteps of popular Solana tokens like BONK and Dogwifhat (WIF), which have seen their price skyrocket.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, BONK has gained more than 1,000% over the past year while WIF has surged by more than 110% over the past month alone.
Meanwhile, the Solana network managed to handle the immense demand during the airdrop, with approximately 118,000 wallets attempting to connect simultaneously, according to data from Solana Floor.
However, there were some technical issues reported during the early stages of the drop, particularly by the Phantom wallet, which experienced performance issues.
The Phantom team assured users that they would address these problems to ensure a smoother experience during next week’s JUP airdrop.
Solana continues to make waves in the crypto community as it achieves several significant milestones.
Earlier this month, the network surpassed Ethereum (ETH) in 7-day stablecoin trading volume for the first time ever.
As reported, the value of stablecoin transfers on Solana reached a staggering $103 billion last week, outperforming all other networks.
Ethereum secured the second position with $90.9 billion, followed by Tron with $82.3 billion and BNB Chain with $14.6 billion.
In addition to stablecoin trading volume, Solana also surpassed Ethereum in NFT trade volume for the month of December.
