TRUMP and MELANIA Tokens Trigger Solana Network Delays

As the United States prepared for the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20, Solana network users faced technical difficulties due to the launch of memecoins by Trump and his wife, Melania, on January 18 and 19, respectively. These releases, which significantly increased trading volumes, reportedly resulted in congestion on the Solana blockchain.

The Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin was launched on January 18, followed by the Official Melania (MELANIA) token on January 19. The surge in trading activity was significant, leading to network congestion . An anonymous cryptocurrency trader, Dave, highlighted on social media that Solana's blockchain explorer had not reported new transactions for 30 minutes as of 9:43 pm UTC on January 19.

Other users echoed these experiences, reporting "500 Internal Server Errors" when conducting transactions via Solscan.

The ongoing debate regarding Solana's capacity for monolithic versus modular blockchain scalability was rejuvenated by a significant network failure in February 2024, which necessitated a restart by validators. However, despite these challenges, Solana maintained 100% uptime over the past 90 days with no outages since February 6, 2024, according to Status.Solana.

While the Trump family’s memecoins have captured widespread interest, their distribution has caused concern among investors. The MELANIA token website claimed 35% allocation to the team, with 20% each for the treasury and community, 15% to the public, and 10% for liquidity. Nevertheless, a blockchain analytics firm, Bubblemaps, reported on January 19 that nearly 90% of this token supply resided in a single wallet, contradicting the distribution claims.

Intellectual property rights for the website "melaniameme.com," which facilitated MELANIA’s launch, belong to MKT World, a company established by Mrs. Trump in 2021. This firm shares its business address with the Trump International Golf Club, as per records from the Florida Department of State.

In a related development, the TRUMP token experienced a dramatic $5 billion reduction in market capitalization within 40 minutes after the MELANIA token launch, witnessing a price dip of 38% from $74.6 to $45.9, according to CoinMarketCap. By 9:08 am UTC, the TRUMP token was trading at $57.50, marking a 3.3% decline in the past 24 hours.