Solana users were experiencing network difficulties following the recent memecoin launches by US President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, ahead of the official presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.
Trump’s advisory team launched the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin on Jan. 18 and the Official Melania (MELANIA) token on Jan. 19 on the Solana network, ahead of Trump’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.
The memecoin launches brought significant trading volume to Solana, reportedly causing congestion on the network.
Solana’s blockchain explorer had not reported any new transactions in the 30 minutes leading up to 9:43 pm UTC on Jan. 19, wrote pseudonymous crypto trader Dave in an X post.
Solscan, no transactions for 30 minutes. Source: Dave
Other users have also reported congestion issues, including “500 Internal Server Errors” when transacting on Solscan.
Solscan 500 internal server error report. Source: MGpai
The Solana blockchain’s resilience, along with the argument between monolithic and modular blockchain scalability, was reignited by a major Solana outage in February 2024, which forced validators to restart the network after block production ground to a halt.
Despite the reported congestion errors and some transactions failing, Solana has boasted 100% uptime in the past 90 days, with no outage since Feb. 6, 2024, according to data from Status.Solana.
Solana uptime. Source: Status.Solana
Related: Trump’s first week in office: Will crypto regulation take a back seat?
TRUMP, MELANIA memecoin distribution flashes red flags for investors
The Trump family’s memecoins have garnered mainstream attention, but their token allocations have raised red flags among investors.
The website for the MELANIA token, shared by Mrs. Trump, claimed that 35% of the tokens had been distributed to the token’s team, while 20% were allocated to both the treasury and the community, with 15% offered to the public and 10% set aside for liquidity.
However, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps said in a Jan. 19 X post that nearly 90% of the token supply was in a single wallet and didn’t match the claimed token distribution.
MELANIA token distribution. Source: Bubblemaps
Intellectual property rights to the website “melaniameme.com,” which supported the launch of MELANIA, are held by MKT World — a company set up by Mrs. Trump in 2021 that shares a business address with the Trump International Golf Club, according to the Florida Department of State records.
Related: FTX to begin distributing $1.2B to creditors after Trump inauguration
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s self-titled TRUMP token saw $5 billion wiped off its market cap in the 40 minutes after MELANIA launched, with its price falling 38% from $74.6 to $45.9, CoinMarketCap data shows.
TRUMP/USDT, 1-day chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
As of 9:08 am UTC, the TRUMP token was trading at $57.50, down 3.3% in the past 24 hours.
Magazine: BTC’s ‘reasonable’ $180K target, NFTs plunge in 2024, and more: Hodler’s Digest Jan 12 – 18