Memecoin hype received another boost last week with the return of “Roaring Kitty,” the popular Reddit user on r/WallStreetBets who helped trigger the meme stock frenzy back in 2021. 

Keith Gill, the owner of the account, came back to X, posting on his once-dormant account for the first time since June 2021. No text was posted, just the popular meme of a video game player leaning forward in his chair, sometimes used to signal that things are about to get serious.

The tweet alone had an outsized impact on the meme stock community. Both GameStop and AMC stock were halted several times last week due to high volatility. GME spiked more than 100% after the tweet dropped before it had to go on the trading pause.

While Gill was the face of a rally primarily focused on the stock market, his comeback also translated into the on-chain meme community. For instance, on Solana SOL +0.68% , the GME memecoin (which has no affiliation with the company, it just has the same ticker) shot up 460% on Tuesday. It also didn’t have to deal with any pesky trading halts either.

As we’ve written over the past few months, the network with one of the most flourishing memecoin communities is Solana. Its cheap fees make it an attractive option for people looking to trade, allowing it to amass a vast amount of users and token listings.

Part of what has helped Solana is the launch of pump.fun, which aims to simplify the token deployment process. Pump.fun’s revenue peaked on May 14 at $1.23 million, the day after Roaring Kitty’s post, as many people tried to create the next new popular token in the light of the recent memecoin draw.

Pump.fun was also exploited for $1.9 million last week by a former employee, who used both a flash loan and illegitimate access to withdraw authority to pull off the heist. While pump.fun had to pause trading temporarily, they have resumed operations and offer free trading in the week post-mortem.

Despite the memecoin resurgence, the total amount of fees paid on Solana is still lower than in mid-to-late March, which was when Solana-based memecoins were really at their zenith of popularity. But fees are still quite high for the network, as typically $1 million is spent to transact on Solana each day, a far cry from the $50,000 that was being paid in early 2023.

But while Solana has held on to its high usage regime, Ethereum ETH +0.51% has seen a sharp drop in block demand, resulting in some of the lowest total fees paid on the network we’ve seen in a long time. It has now become uncommon for $4 million of fees to be paid on Ethereum, whereas it used to be the standard for that to be the minimum.

This has allowed the ratio of the fees paid on Solana relative to Ethereum to reach a new high. Solana’s revenue was over 60% of Ethereum’s some days last week, a significant portion, especially compared to the fractions of a percent the ratio was up until the end of last year.

It just goes to show that Solana’s newfound dominance as it continues to rebound its reputation in a post-FTX world as a fast and cheap alternative to what came before it.

This is an excerpt from The Block's Data & Insights newsletter. Dig into the numbers making up the industry’s most thought-provoking trends.