Trump Family Memecoins Overload Solana Network, Spark Investor Concerns

Solana users faced network issues following the high-profile launches of memecoins by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, just days before Trump’s January 20 inauguration.

The Official Trump ( TRUMP ) token debuted on January 18, followed by the Official Melania (MELANIA) token on January 19, both launched on the Solana blockchain. The influx of activity from these tokens reportedly led to network congestion and transaction delays.

By January 19, Solana’s blockchain explorer had ceased reporting new transactions for at least 30 minutes, according to a post by crypto trader Dave. Other users also reported encountering “500 Internal Server Errors” on Solscan during this time.

While Solana has maintained 100% uptime for the past 90 days, past network disruptions, such as the February 2024 outage, have fueled ongoing debates about its scalability.

The Trump family’s memecoins have drawn significant attention, but questions around their token allocations have raised concerns. The MELANIA token’s website claimed its distribution was divided among the team (35%), treasury (20%), community (20%), public (15%), and liquidity (10%).

However, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps revealed that nearly 90% of the token supply was held in a single wallet, contradicting the stated distribution.