Notes · 2026-10-12
Who makes money in memecoin pools? I read 58,701 real positions
For two weeks I tested ways to buy Solana memecoins with a program instead of a gut feeling. Every test was written down before it ran, and every one lost. The trend-following version is the clearest: across its first 63 signals it loses between 6% and 12% a trade, depending on how it exits.
The reason is plain once you measure it. A round trip in these pools costs 2% to 3.6% in fees and price impact. And the price of a coin an hour after any given minute is, on average, where it was. A buyer pays the toll and gets nothing for it.
So I asked the other question. Someone collects that toll. Do they make money?
What I read
Solana's Meteora pools pay their fees to the people who put money in the pool, called liquidity providers. Meteora's public API shows every provider's real results: what they put in, what they took out, the fees they were paid. No simulation is needed.
- I took the 40 memecoin pools with the most fees in the last 24 hours. Together they had collected $381,227 in fees on $24.7M of deposits in one day. For one pool the day's fees were 80% of the pool.
- 3,268 wallets had a position open in them. I drew 1,500 at random.
- For each wallet I read every position it closed in memecoin pools in the last 30 days: 58,701 results.
What it says
| Above zero | Typical result per deposit | |
|---|---|---|
| All closed results (58,701) | 68% | +0.4% |
| Under $100 put in | 63% | +0.3% |
| $100 to $1,000 | 68% | +0.5% |
| Over $10,000 | 74% | +0.3% |
The typical provider is ahead. Not by much per deposit, but the same money goes in many times: a position is open for a median of 36 minutes. Small positions that put in only SOL made about 1.8% a day on the money while it sat in a pool.
Fees were 0.9% of everything deposited, and what was kept was 0.3%. Price moves took back two thirds.
The part that flatters
Three things make these numbers look better than what a newcomer should expect.
- Losers are left open. Of the 6,474 positions open at the moment I looked, only 30% were above zero, and a third had fallen out of their price range. A closed position is one somebody chose to close.
- Small wallets are a coin flip. Counting open positions too, wallets with under $1,000 in total were above zero about half the time. Wallets with over $10,000 were above zero 77% of the time.
- I only see the survivors. The wallets are the ones still providing today. Whoever quit after a bad month is not in the sample.
The same people keep winning
I split each wallet's month in two. The fifth of wallets that did best in the older half made a typical 1.47% per deposit in the newer half. Everyone else made about 0.3%. Skill, tooling or size: something carries over.
What I do with this
Nothing with real money. The rule I work by is that a finding from the past earns a test on the future, and only that. So 300 of these wallets are now fixed in a list, and every position they open from 12 October on is counted, including the ones they never close. A verdict needs at least ten days of positions.
What I take from it already: in this market the reliable income belongs to whoever runs the toll booth, and the tools that count honestly are worth more than another way to pick coins.
This is software research on public data, not financial advice.