Meme coins are often tied to retail speculation and outsized return narratives, but they have also proven effective at pulling traffic and liquidity into newer blockchain ecosystems. In the report written by Victor Ramirez and translated by Saoirse for Foresight News, that pattern appears across several cycles: Solana’s recovery after the FTX collapse in late 2023 came with a meme coin trading boom, Base saw a similar wave in 2024, and more recently Robinhood Chain has produced a new variation that combines meme coins with tokenized stocks.
The same features that make meme coins spread quickly also make them short-lived, the report says. Launch platforms such as shturl.c and PONS have lowered issuance barriers even more, magnifying the pattern. Millions of meme coins have been minted, but only a small fraction ever reach centralized exchanges, and fewer still remain relevant over time.
How the report defines a meme coin life cycle
To measure a token’s full market cycle, the study sets out three milestones:
- Start: the token’s first trade on an exchange
- Peak: the meme coin’s all-time high, or ATH
- Crash: a 95% drawdown from that ATH
The analysis uses the Kaplan-Meier estimator, a statistical method commonly used in clinical trials to estimate median survival time. Here, it is applied to the typical life span of meme coins in the market. The sample comes from the Talos market database and covers 150 meme tokens issued after BONK listed in December 2023, the point the report uses to mark the start of the Solana meme coin wave.
The report makes two major caveats. First, the sample leans toward relatively successful tokens because inclusion required market data from at least one centralized exchange. Many meme coins launched directly on platforms such as shturl.c were left out, which means the results likely overstate how long ordinary low-quality meme coins survive. Second, the 95% drawdown threshold is an artificial choice, and a different threshold would materially change the median life-span result.
It also notes that comparing current prices with all-time highs naturally produces a pessimistic picture. Even so, the ATH remains a useful reference point. Using local highs instead would add more uncertainty to the price path. The report frames the exercise as a demonstration of an analytical model rather than a definitive statistical conclusion.
Prices peak early, but the final washout takes longer
The core finding is that meme coins tend to reach their highest price quickly after they begin trading. The median time from first trade to ATH is just 17.2 days, and one quarter of the sample peaks within 1.6 days.
The move from peak to deep collapse is slower. After hitting an all-time high, the median time for a meme coin to fall 95% from that level is 370 days. The report also explains how to read the Kaplan-Meier curve: as time moves from left to right, each crash event is calculated against the share of tokens that had not yet crashed at that point, and the conditional survival rates are multiplied together. As long as a token remains inside the observation window, it stays in the risk set denominator. Once observation ends, it exits the sample without being marked as crashed. The curve starts at 100% and falls in a stepwise pattern, with the median given by the point where it crosses 50%.
Only 5 of 151 sampled tokens still trade above day-one levels
The report then turns from timing to returns. More than half of the meme coins in the sample are now down 95% from their own all-time highs.
For tokens launched during the Solana meme coin era, most posted relatively clustered gains early on and then shifted into a prolonged decline. Out of 151 sampled tokens, only 5 are still trading above their first-day price. After 300 days, most have retained only 10% of their initial value. Across market-cap ranges, the study says, negative returns are the norm rather than the exception.
Among the five largest tokens by market value from the Solana meme coin era, three names singled out in the report — TRUMP, PUMP and PENGUIN — are now below their issuance price.
Half of the sample completed the full cycle in about 456 days
When the full life cycle is defined as launch, all-time high and then a 95% decline from the peak, 50% of meme coins launched during the Solana-era wave completed that sequence within an average of 456 days. By day 1000, about 90% of tokens had fallen 95% from their peak.
A Sankey chart in the report traces where meme coins ultimately end up. Only 19% avoid a 90% drawdown from their all-time high. Among the 81% that did fall 90% from peak, only 3% later managed to climb back to their ATH.
Most tokens get one real shot at a top
The report also asks a practical market question: when prices are racing higher, how can traders tell whether they are looking at a local top or the final top? Its answer is blunt — they cannot know in real time. But the historical record still points one way: meme coins rarely produce more than one meaningful high.
Roughly two-thirds of meme coins from the Solana era never staged a second rebound. They rose once, topped out within days, and never returned close to that level. The remaining one-third took months on average to print their all-time highs.
On-chain activity follows a similar arc
The analysis extends the same framework to on-chain behavior. The metric used is the number of active Solana addresses holding balances of at least $1, comparing each token’s peak address count with its current level.
According to the report, the shape looks much like the price cycle. Before activity peaks, there are almost no repeated local surges. Once the first top is in, activity rarely recovers to former highs. For the leading meme coins at present, the share of active addresses retained after the peak in activity is below 7%. The data source cited for this section is Talos CM Network Data Pro.
The report does not say the meme coin era is over
The broader data paints a weak picture for long-term meme coin performance. Still, the report stops short of saying speculative trading in the sector has ended.
Its reasoning points the other way. Meme coin trading is spreading across more platforms, and the report says that trend itself argues against a clean end to the cycle. It adds that there is little evidence to suggest these asymmetric payoffs are rewarding people for chasing tiny-probability wealth outcomes. At the same time, it says it would be a category mistake to frame meme coin speculation as the result of cautious, rational investment decisions. Market participants broadly understand that long-term investment value is poor, yet new cohorts keep entering the game.
The report closes by arguing that speculation is rooted in market culture rather than in any specific trading infrastructure. It is not unique to blockchains, but blockchains allow such markets to scale efficiently and with almost no access barriers. As more assets become financialized and tokenized on-chain, new forms of speculation are likely to keep emerging in unexpected ways.