Alberto Maria Mongardini, Sapienza University of Rome and Technical University of Denmark; Alessandro Mei, Sapienza University of Rome
From viral jokes to a billion-dollar phenomenon, meme coins have become one of the most popular segments in cryptocurrency markets. Unlike utility-focused crypto assets like Bitcoin, meme coins derive value primarily from community sentiment, making them vulnerable to manipulation. This study presents an unprecedented cross-chain analysis of the meme coin ecosystem, examining 34,988 tokens across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, and Base. We characterize their tokenomics and track their growth in a three-month longitudinal analysis. We discover that among high-return tokens (>100%), an alarming 82.89% show evidence of artificial growth strategies designed to create a misleading appearance of market interest. These include wash trading and a new form of manipulation we define as Liquidity Pool-Based Price Inflation (LPI), where small strategic purchases trigger dramatic price increases. We find that profit extraction schemes, such as pump and dumps and rug pulls, typically follow initial manipulations like wash trading or LPI, indicating how early manipulations create the foundation for later exploitation. We quantify the economic impact of these schemes, identifying over 17,000 victim addresses with realized losses exceeding $9.3 million. These findings reveal that combined manipulations are widespread among high-performing meme coins, suggesting that their dramatic gains are often driven by coordinated efforts rather than natural market dynamics.
Open Access Media
USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.
