Memecoin THE Surges After Vitalik Buterin’s “Joke” Tweet

A humorous tweet by Vitalik Buterin has sparked a frenzy around a new memecoin called THE, which has recently made waves on Uniswap.

On October 14, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted that a project named “THE Protocol” would be easy to “shill” due to the common use of the word ‘the’ in everyday speech, which could serve as inadvertent promotion for the project. The exact wording of the tweet was as follows:

“If a project were named THE Protocol, it would be so easy to shill because the word ‘the’ is everywhere and it would be like a built-in marketing boost.”

Four days later, over 20 different memecoins named THE have emerged and are being traded on both Ethereum and Binance Chain.

Blockchain security firm Peckshield has flagged six of these tokens as ‘honeypots,’ which are fraudulent tokens that can be bought but not sold, trapping buyers with worthless assets.

Vitalik Buterin himself has expressed “regret” over his tweet after seeing the number of tokens created as a result. The Ethereum founder has previously contributed to the rise of another memecoin, Shiba Inu (SHIB).

In another development, the surge in interest around the original THE memecoin has led to a dramatic increase in trading volume on Uniswap, approaching $1 billion in just 24 hours. This marks the highest trading volume recorded on the decentralized exchange in the past seven months.

According to The Defiant Terminal, Uniswap trading volume has surged by 61% over the past 48 hours, while daily active users have increased by approximately 39%.

User Activity and Daily Trading Volume on Uniswap. Source: The Defiant

Data from Dune Analytics reveals that the THE token has been traded over 11,000 times in the past 24 hours, making it the second most traded pair on Uniswap after USDC-ETH, with a trading volume of $346 million.

Price Fluctuations of THE-WETH Pair on Uniswap, Screenshot from Dexscreener at 05:00 PM, 19/10/2022