2025 isn’t slowing down, and neither are we: memecoins, Twitter wars, and fat airdrops.

Ethereum’s developers are at each other’s throats (again), debating whether slow and steady still wins the race, while Solana is laughing all the way to $12 billion in TVL, powered by—you guessed it—memecoins featuring actual Donald Trump. 

Meanwhile, airdrop mania makes its triumphant return on Solana’s Jupiter DEX, where users are already dumping tokens faster than they can refresh charts.  

Prices, you ask? 

How about that Solana! Some folks are setting their sites on a $1k $SOL by the end of the year– what do you think?

The stories for this week:

1. $ETH’s Twitter Clash: Price vs. Purpose: The community is split, with one side demanding faster transactions and louder leadership (think meme-posting Vitalik 2.0), while others preach “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  

2. Solana's Memecoin Power Play: $TRUMP launched, promptly shattered records with wild traction, and boosted Solana’s TVL by 40% in a week.

3. 700M JUP Tokens Distributed: Solana’s Jupiter DEX airdropped $550M in JUP tokens across 2M wallets as part of its annual loyalty campaign.

🥊 The Ethereum Family Feud: Price Pressure and Twitter Drama

Ethereum developers and the community are slugging it out on Crypto Twitter. 

The quarrel boils down to two factions. 

Side A wants Ethereum to ramp up transaction speeds and install a "wartime" leader to turn up the heat. 

Think of someone like Steve Jobs but posting memes. 

Side B prefers to keep Ethereum's deliberate, gradual approach under Vitalik Buterin's leadership.  

Side A’s demands—transaction speed and a louder, bolder Ethereum Foundation—aren’t so much about tech or leadership but about one thing: pumping $ETH’s price. 

Price stagnation has frustrated participants who want to see their Ethereum holdings moon like it’s 2021. 

But let’s call the fight what it is: optics-driven desperation. 

Historically, Ethereum has benefited from its measured roadmap and the trust it builds among users who value consistency. 

Turning it into a fast-and-loose PR machine risks unraveling its hard-won credibility. 

Unchecked cult-of-personality leadership can work…until it doesn’t. 

Just ask the Terra/Luna crowd how that went. Or FTX. Or Celsius. You get the idea. 

Ultimately, price stagnation isn’t a leadership issue; it's an industry thing. 

Bear markets dull us all. If $ETH climbs again (inevitable, many argue), Side A will likely quiet down, side-eye their tweets, and remember why slow and steady wins in crypto. 

If not, Ethereum risks splintering like Bitcoin did with its block-size wars– but will it survive in tact?

The verdict? Ethereum probably doesn’t need a meme-loving ringleader—it needs unwavering focus. 

Solana crushed it with memes, but it was an organic community-led effort. 

Ethereum, the Boomer equivalent to the Solana Millennial, would come off as too try hard with a top-down meme-directed approach. 

And yeah, the fighting does seem absurd when you step back, but it’s still billions of dollars in value at stake. 

📈 Solana’s Trump Card—How Memecoins Ignited a TVL Surge

Memecoins might be jokes, but $TRUMP is nothing to laugh about– at least not yet.

Its launch triggered Solana’s total value locked (TVL) to hit an all-time high of $12 billion—a 40% spike in a week. 

Still rebounding from FTX’s collapse, Solana flexed its transactional muscle as $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins saw wild trading volume.  

But $TRUMP didn’t just debut—it detonated, scaling a $14.9 billion market cap over 48 hours, briefly outranking established tokens like $SHIB and $TON. 

Arguably a highly dilutive play by the Trump powers that be, the hype turned chaotic when the $MELANIA token swiped attention, causing $TRUMP to nosedive almost 50%. 

Even after its rebound, $TRUMP sits steady at a $9 billion cap, making it one of the fastest-growing memecoins ever.  

Behind the meme madness lies an industry-critical note: Solana’s resilience. 

This blockchain, criticized for past outages, handled unprecedented trading volumes without breaking a sweat. 

Decentralized exchanges and aggregators like Raydium, Orca, and Jupiter also saw major usage influx– as did the native non-custodial Phantom wallet. 

Titans like Ethereum should take notes because scalability under pressure is becoming Solana’s signature feature. 

But meme-fueled surges eventually fade and inflated TVL tied to speculative assets isn’t sticky growth.  

For Solana, the short-term hype is nice, but the $12 billion should raise eyebrows among builders and venture capitalists about how much TVL comes from core DeFi activity versus memecoin hysteria. 

If Solana doesn’t follow up on this with actual infrastructure gains, the fire lit by $TRUMP might burn out fast.

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🤔 What’s New at CoinCentral: Is Trump’s Memecoin Actually Legit?

Memecoins and politics got weirder, and for some, incredibly lucrative.

Late Friday, Trump’s official X and Truth Social accounts dropped a bombshell: a Solana-based memecoin called $TRUMP. Within hours, the coin was trading in the hundreds of millions, sparking chaos in the crypto world.

Here’s the twist: Is $TRUMP a legitimate project backed by the Trump organization, or is this an elaborate scam? The evidence leans towards legit, with ties to Trump’s past NFT ventures and no signs of a hack.

But skeptics point to centralized token ownership and questionable funding sources as potential red flags.

Check it out here!

🪂 Jupiter’s $550M Jupuary Airdrop: Loyalty Paid in JUP

Jupiter, Solana’s top DEX liquidity aggregator, just gave away the crypto equivalent of Oprah’s “You get a car!” moment. 

It’s dropping 700 million $JUP tokens—valued at $550 million—across 2 million wallets. 

Traders, stakers, and contributors who’ve stuck with the platform took home the loot.  

This isn’t Jupiter’s first airdrop; it’s part of an annual series set to run until 2027. 

But the strategy highlights an important evolution in token incentive programs. 

Airdrops can onboard users, but Jupiter wants retention, not fleeting attention. Splitting rewards over years builds long-term loyalty, a crucial foundation in DeFi’s cutthroat race for users.  

The catch? JUP’s price fell 8% shortly after the launch, meaning many recipients decided to dump tokens rather than hold. 

However, for Jupiter, the airdrop models loyalty-building over speculative trading. Its “claim by tiers” setup nudges volume-heavy traders and stakers towards reengagement with the platform rather than immediate profit-taking.  

Annualized airdrops might just be the insurance DeFi projects need in a congested market. Still, the move also risks diluting token value over time. Jupiter must find ways to keep its new $2B market cap increasingly tied to utility rather than hype. 

Will it deliver? Check back in January 2027.  

For now, the claim page is: https://jupuary.jup.ag/ and can be confirmed on the Phantom wallet guide. 

We’ll see you next week!

AM

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The content herein is not an investment recommendation or a solicitation to buy or sell any financial instruments or assets. Readers are advised to conduct their own research and exercise caution in making any financial decisions.