The new presale craze on the Solana blockchain has led to a number of astronomically successful token launches. $SLERF became the second most successful launch within the trend, reaching a $500 million market cap in just two hours, after the developer accidentally lost access to the collected funds meant for users.

The tragicomic nature of the situation is especially evident in the developer's statement on Twitter: "This is not a joke I really f****d up and im really sorry. Was a simple mindless misclick when I was in the process of burning the the lp."

The developer had received $10 million in SOL from the token presale and was supposed to distribute half of the token supply among participants. However, the token creator accidentally sent the allocation to an arbitrary address, losing the ability to distribute $SLERF to buyers.

Despite the setback, the market reacted positively to the loss of user funds. The token not only managed to achieve a high market cap within a few hours but also surpassed some key assets in terms of trader activity — $SLERF reached $1.7 billion in trading volume within just 3 hours, exceeding Polygon's 7-day volume(!).

The presale narrative was started by NFT artist Darkfarms1, who announced they were raising funds to launch a new token, $BOME. The viral success of the project—at its peak, the token's market cap was $1.6 billion — led to the emergence of numerous similar presales. For instance, $30 million was sent to the address of Web3 artist 0xDekadente while raising funds for the $smole token launch.

As part of the trend, a new tokenomics model became widespread, where half of the funds are used for liquidity and burned. The remaining tokens are distributed among the presale participants. Sometimes small allocations are set aside for marketing and development.

The presale allows for a fair distribution of tokens between participants, as it eliminates the advantage "snipers" have when liquidity is added. However, the model carries obvious risks associated with the possibility of fraud.

Within hours of its launch, $SLERF was listed on MEXC, Poloniex, Gate, and Huobi. The token was also mentioned on Twitter by Bybit Web3.

The presale narrative on Solana continues to evolve and migrate to other blockchains. Some on-chain analysts estimate that over $100 million was sent to various presales over the weekend. The memecoin fever is accompanied by the rise in the value of SOL, which crossed the $200 mark for the first time since 2021.