Meme Coin News: Memes Roar Back as Risk-On Returns to Crypto

With the broader cryptocurrency market seeing a bounce, meme coins are back in vogue this week. Most popular memes are soaring, but a handful didn’t get the memo. Here’s the scoop on what went down in the meme coin sector this week. Meme Coin Snapshot Memes are back in top form this week, with some of the top performing major meme coins tacking on upwards of 40% week-over-week (WoW). Source: Top Memecoins Page. Pepe (PEPE) and Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) are leading the charge among the top 10 list, gaining 47.6% and 41.6%, respectively. But Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led the narrative with a 621% gain on significant trading volume, sending it to a $21.4 million market capitalization (mcap). As is typical with meme coins, a handful of major names saw contrarian price action—dumping hard. Some of the worst performers include: Meme Coin Launchpad Metrics Pump.fun (Solanaive) continued to outperform Four.meme (BNB Chainive) across most major metrics this week, solidifying its position as the most popular launchpad. Pump.fun currently achieves roughly 10x the number of daily token launches of Four.meme. The monthly graduation rates of the two platforms is ~0.65% vs 0.62%, respectively. Source: Counterparty_research/Dune. This suggests Solana is still the home for meme coins, at least for now. Meme Coins vs Other Sectors With the CMC Crypto Fear and Greed Index ticking back into neutral territory, speculators are beginning to switch risk-on. This has resulted in the meme coin sector outperforming most others over the last week. The meme coin sector was second only to the DePIN sector in terms of its mcap-weighted category performance. The sector saw a seven-day mcap-weighted gain of 14.5%, eclipsing most other sectors. Source: DefiLlama Chain Specific Highlights Meme coins across most L1s saw a major recovery this week, fueled by more favorable macroeconomic conditions and a reset of trader sentiment moving into 2026. Some highlights across prominent L1s include: Ethereum: Shiba Inu (SHIB) up 22.4%; Solana: SPX6900 (SPX) gained 21.7%; BNB Chain: Floki (FLOKI) soared by 31% Highlights across major L2s include: Base: Brett (BRETT) spiked 27.6%; Arbitrum: Degen (DEGEN) pumped 26.2% Meme Coin News Roundup Another week, another wave of major developments in the meme coin space. Below, weve summarized a handful of the most significant to bring you up to speed. Pump.fun Expands PumpSwap Beyond Just Memes: Pump.fun pushed PumpSwap as a broader on-chain venue, highlighting support for select verified partner tokens and detailing how trading fees are allocated. Source: Pump.fun; K9 Finance Sets a Hard Restitution Line: K9 Finance reiterated a Jan. 6, 2026, deadline for victims to be made whole following the Shibarium bridge incident, warning a DAO vote on its future relationship with Shibarium if resolution stalls. Source: K9 Finance; BONK.fun Meme Revenue Hits Public Markets: Bonk, Inc. (Nasdaq: BNKK) disclosed a $1M value transfer attributed to its BONK.fun revenue interest (half cash & half BONK), framing it as a revenue-to-treasury flywheel. What You Can Do Now With the meme coin market heating up, here;s how you can stay ahead of the game. Peep the trending list: Spot narratives early and position accordingly (click here) (click trending) utomate your research: Get CMC AI to dive into the projects you00re most excited about. Thats all for this recap! Check in next week for more on the latest meme coin news and developments. This article contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only ("Third-Party Sites"). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of CoinMarketCap, and CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. CoinMarketCap is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by CoinMarketCap of the site or any association with its operators. This article is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is important to do your own research and analysis before making any material decisions related to any of the products or services described. This article is not intended as, and shall not be construed as, financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors [company] own and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinMarketCap. 0 people liked this article