Vitalik Tweet Spurs Flurry Of Meme Coins

Nearly 200,000 Trades Were Conducted On Uniswap In The Past Day, Highest Since June 2021

On Oct. 14, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin mused that a project called “THE Protocol” would be really easy to shill, as its supporters could say “Look, so and so mentioned THE!” when referring to pretty much anything.

Four days later, more than two dozen meme coins named $THE are trading on Ethereum and Binance Chain.

Blockchain security firm Peckshield has already flagged six of them as so-called ‘honeypots’, which are scam tokens that can be bought but not sold, leaving unwitting buyers stuck with useless tokens.

Even Buterin seems surprised. 

“Ok what have I done,” he tweeted after being inundated with replies promoting $THE.

Always up for a good meme, crypto degens have sent $THE soaring over 900% in the past day and a half.

Uniswap Users Hit Seven-Month High

This renewed interest in meme coins has led to a spike in activity on Uniswap, DeFi’s leading decentralized exchange (DEX) with nearly $1B in 24-hour trading volume.

In the past 48 hours, the number of completed trades on Uniswap has increased by 61% while the number of daily users has correspondingly spiked by 39%, according to The Defiant Terminal.

Uniswap Dex User Count + Uniswap Dex Trade Count, Source: The Defiant Terminal

Daily users crossed 30,000 for the first time since March 2022, and at nearly 200,000 daily transactions, trading activity is the highest since June 2021.

Uniswap Dex Trade Count, Source: The Defiant Terminal

$THE was traded more than 11,000 times in the past 24 hours and is the second most-traded pair after USDC-ETH, according to a query created for The Defiant by 0xBoxer, who handles developer relations at Dune Analytics.

Deflationary ETH

Gas prices on Ethereum have remained slightly elevated since the weekend, and the supply of Ether continues to drop as the ETH burned from transaction fees exceeds post-Merge issuance.

Meanwhile, Ether continues to trade around $1300 and is flat on the week.

ETH Price, Source: The Defiant Terminal