Solana (SOL) co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko believes meme tokens have a role to play in advancing the product-market fit of crypto projects.

Yakovenko says on the social media platform X that memecoins offer something unique to the crypto industry.

According to the Solana creator, memecoins are getting so much attention from crypto traders that digital asset projects are being forced to deliver something of value in order to stand out.

“I think previous cycles were also 90% meme 10% product. My theory is that memecoins today have completely absorbed the meme energy that drove other cycles, like DeFi (decentralized finance) summer. Now each product has to make it purely on value. If that’s the case, it’s a good thing for the industry.” 

Yakovenko also offers his counter-argument to investors who believe that meme tokens have no fundamental value. He says the market ultimately decides whether an asset or a product is valuable.

“Memecoins and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have no value. Neither do loot boxes, and that business has enough revenue to destroy the second-largest army in Europe every year.” 

Data from CoinGecko shows that the total valuation of the memecoin sector has ballooned to over $53 billion. Eight meme projects are currently in the top 100 list of the largest crypto assets by market cap led by Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE).