The Solana blockchain experienced network congestion following the launch of memecoins by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, ahead of the presidential inauguration on January 20. The Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin was introduced on January 18, followed by the Official Melania (MELANIA) token on January 19, both on the Solana network.
The influx of transactions from these launches reportedly led to delays and errors on Solana’s network. Users reported issues such as “500 Internal Server Errors” when attempting transactions, and Solana’s blockchain explorer showed no new transactions for a 30-minute period leading up to 9:43 pm UTC on January 19.
Despite these challenges, Solana has maintained 100% uptime over the past 90 days, with no outages since February 6, 2024, according to Status.Solana. However, the distribution of the Trump family memecoins has raised concerns among investors. The MELANIA token’s website claimed specific allocations, but blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps revealed that nearly 90% of the token supply resided in a single wallet, contradicting the stated distribution.
Additionally, the TRUMP token experienced significant volatility, with its market capitalization dropping by $5 billion within 40 minutes after the MELANIA token’s launch, leading to a 38% price decline from $74.6 to $45.9. As of 9:08 am UTC, the TRUMP token was trading at $57.50, down 3.3% over the past 24 hours.
