A crypto civil war took place this weekend after the owner of the dog that inspired the Doge meme announced she had adopted Neiro, a 10-year-old rescue Shiba Inu. Since then, while two Neiro-inspired Solana meme coins have been feuding, an Ethereum token has quietly taken the lead.
Neiro on ETH (NEIRO) was created 14 minutes after the largest Solana Neiro (NEIRO) token. As the Crypto Twitter-fueled battle got messy, Neiro on ETH remained fairly quiet and finished the weekend below a $15 million market cap—less than both Solana coins.
But as the new week started and there was still no clear winner of the Solana civil war, meme coin speculators turned to Ethereum for a fresh start.
At the time of writing, Neiro on ETH has skyrocketed 994% since Monday morning to hit a $137 million market cap. Its market cap is now higher than either Neiro token on Solana—or any chain, for that matter. Meanwhile, the two Solana meme coins sit at a $30 million and $4.5 million market cap as interest rotates to the Ethereum token.
Now, many believe that Neiro on ETH is the real Neiro token—a question that dominated Crypto Twitter this weekend. However, it’s important to remember that none of the Neiro tokens will ever be “real” in a way that links them to the dog they’re named after.
The owner of Neiro—who goes by "Kabosumama"—took to Twitter over the weekend to state that she does not "endorse any crypto project except OwnTheDoge because they own the original Doge photo and IP.” OwnTheDoge is the project that fractionalized the original Doge photo and turned it into the coin DOG; it is not Dogecoin, which has no official link to Kabosu.
As Neiro on Ethereum’s popularity started to rise, on-chain analyst company Bubblemaps issued a warning to investors. The firm found that 78% of the token supply was bought by 80 addresses all within the same second, 11 minutes after it launched.
Bubblemaps co-founder and CEO Nick Vaiman believes this is a “clear case of sniping,” where people with insider knowledge purchased large amounts of tokens before the project was promoted. However, there’s not yet confirmation that the 80 wallets have links to the token deployer for Neiro on Ethereum.
Since launch, the cluster of wallets has sold $4.5 million worth of Neiro on Ethereum tokens leaving 66% of the supply left in the wallets. But some believe that if it's the core team that bought these tokens, it isn’t that bad.
“If ‘supply control is bullish’ why do these projects work so hard to hide it?” Vaiman said, in reference to the cluster of wallets spreading their tokens to over 400 addresses. “Let's not normalize: Sniping 77% of the supply (do you really need that much?). Dispersing it into 400+ wallets. Selling in thousands of tiny transactions using scripts. Spreading sales across multiple decentralized exchanges and centralized exchanges.”
He added, “Owning your supply isn't inherently wrong, but these shady tactics are exactly what's wrong with new launches.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.