How to Make Meme Coins: The Launch Framework (2026)

Making meme coins, plural, means running the same six-stage sequence over and over: lock the concept, ship the art, configure the mint, seed liquidity, get listed, then review and decide whether to run it back. The mint barely changes cycle to cycle; the one real choice is flat-launch on Raydium (5-25 SOL seed, full control, you burn the LP) or pump.fun's bonding curve (0 SOL to create (~0.02 SOL first buy), control deferred until 411-SOL ($41K) graduation). Treat it as a framework instead of re-deciding from scratch each time and you spend less per cycle, catching config mistakes before they cost a launch.

Quick Facts

Two mechanics, one underlying mint. Everything below assumes you've already decided what to launch and are trying to build a process you can run again next month.

What "making meme coins" means as a repeatable process

Under the hood a meme coin is a plain SPL token: a mint account under Solana's Token Program, a Metaplex metadata PDA holding the name and image, and a liquidity venue. Nothing about the mint is meme-specific. What makes it a memecoin is the convention around it, round supply, revoked authorities, and a liquidity mechanic chosen on purpose.

The reason a framework matters is survival math. Across the 50,000-launch dataset behind why 87% of Solana memecoins die in 24 hours, most launches lose 90%+ of peak market cap inside a day. That's just scary for one launch. For a series, it's a design constraint: build a process that makes each cycle cheap enough to survive being wrong most of the time.

BONK (100T supply, 5 decimals) and WIF (1B supply, 6 decimals) show the two configuration templates repeat launchers actually reuse, both on the same SPL Token Program. And the category is big enough to justify a process: CoinGecko's meme-token category tracks hundreds of listed meme coins across a combined market cap in the tens of billions of dollars, and listed coins are the survivors — the unlisted long tail behind them is orders of magnitude larger.

The 6-stage meme coin lifecycle

Six stages, in order, and stage six loops back to stage one instead of ending the sequence.

flowchart TD
  S1["Stage 1: Concept & Name"] --> S2["Stage 2: Art & Metadata"]
  S2 --> S3["Stage 3: Mint Configuration"]
  S3 --> S4{"Stage 4: Liquidity, flat pool or curve?"}
  S4 --> S5["Stage 5: Distribution & Listings"]
  S5 --> S6["Stage 6: Post-launch Review"]
  S6 -->|Run it back| S1
  S6 -->|Retire this concept| END["Archive the learnings"]

The loop is the point. A single-launch guide stops at announcement. This framework assumes stage six feeds the next stage one, because most of what a repeat launcher learns (which ticker collided, which fee tier felt off, whether the socials mattered) only pays off on the next cycle, not the one that just ended.

The 6-stage relaunch checklist: run this before every cycle.

1. ☐ Concept & name locked: searched X and DexScreener for ticker collisions, not just Google
2. ☐ Art & metadata ready: logo tested small; it renders at 32×32 in wallets, not the 512×512 you're looking at
3. ☐ Mint configured: decimals picked before signing (they're immutable after)
4. ☐ Liquidity mechanic chosen and funded: flat pool fee (~0.4 SOL) is non-refundable, curve creation is final too
5. ☐ Distribution and listings requested: DexScreener indexes in 5-15 minutes, Jupiter strict-list takes 7-10 days
6. ☐ Post-launch review scheduled: decide, before hour 24, whether the wallet and socials get reused or retired

Stage 1-2: concept, name, ticker, and art

Before any transaction: name, ticker, one-sentence pitch, logo. Run the collision check yourself on DexScreener and X (we skipped this once on a 2025 cycle and spent an afternoon untangling our chart from a same-ticker impostor). It takes ninety seconds and it's the cheapest mistake to avoid in the whole sequence.

Concept sourcing is the stage that stays slow across cycles, because it's the only one that doesn't repeat mechanically. The shortcut is Trending Coins — Pump.fun's live trending and newest boards rendered inside alchemii, with a Copy Coin button on every card that opens the creator prefilled with that coin's name, image, and the standard 1B/6-decimal config. On a repeat cycle that removes stages one through three almost entirely: you're picking a format that's demonstrably getting attention right now instead of inventing one cold, and you're signing a mint minutes later rather than an afternoon later, with the mint-authority revoke bundled into that same transaction and the LP burn queued up right behind it. Keep the collision check regardless, and be clear-eyed that a copy inherits the format and nothing else — separate mint, separate liquidity, separate holders, judged on its own.

Art is a 512×512 PNG. Phantom and other wallets shrink it to roughly 32×32 for list views, so detail that reads fine at full size turns into a smudge at icon size; test it small before you commit. Hosting is close to free: the Metaplex Token Metadata program stores name, symbol, and a URI pointing at an off-chain JSON file, typically pinned to IPFS through Pinata for $0 on the free tier.

Stage two ends with three fields locked, name, symbol, image URI, since everything downstream reads from these. Revoke update authority later and they can't change again.

Stage 3: the mint configuration that repeats exactly

This stage barely changes between cycles, which is why it belongs in a framework rather than a one-off guide. Standard config: 1,000,000,000 supply, 9 decimals, actually, 6 is the one that matters, since it matches USDC's decimal count for cleaner aggregator math and 9 is just the SPL default nobody memecoin-launches with. BONK runs the outlier template, 100 trillion supply at 5 decimals; WIF runs the standard 1B/6dec.

Two settings you decide once and reuse every cycle: revoke mint authority and revoke freeze authority. Revoked mint authority correlates with a 4.2x higher 24-hour survival rate in alchemii's 50,000-launch dataset, revoked freeze authority with 3.1x. Both checks take a second on Solscan (mint authority: null, freeze authority: null) and both are the first thing an experienced trader looks for. Skip either by accident and you've spooked the exact buyers a repeat process depends on.

A flat launch runs this stage for about 0.22 SOL all-in. Only ~0.0191 SOL of that is the on-chain protocol floor every Solana tool pays, ~0.0014 SOL mint rent, ~0.0056 SOL Metaplex metadata rent, a 0.01 SOL Metaplex protocol fee, ~0.002 SOL token-account rent, plus Solana's per-signature network fee; the rest is a flat one-time service fee with no cut of your trading volume. Revoking authorities adds a flat amount on top, itemized on the form before you connect a wallet, which puts the typical memecoin config around 0.32 SOL. Pump.fun bundles the same conceptual stage, mint, metadata, curve init, into one 0 SOL to create (~0.02 SOL first buy) transaction. Same Token Program underneath either way. Actually, that's the whole point: whichever mechanic you pick downstream, the mint is close to solved by cycle two.

What each stage costs: a lifecycle cost breakdown

Seed liquidity, not the network fee, is what actually separates the two mechanics. It's also what plugs your pool into real order flow: Solana's DEX volume, trackable daily on DefiLlama's Solana chain page, is the pot every seeded pool competes for a slice of, and a 5 SOL pool with no distribution plan captures approximately none of it. Five bonding-curve tests through pump.fun run about 0.1 SOL total (5 × 0.02 SOL), each one disposable the moment a meme doesn't catch, which is less than the ~0.4 SOL non-refundable Raydium pool fee alone on a single flat launch, before any liquidity. A launcher who tests five concepts on the curve for 0.1 SOL and commits real capital only to the one that shows traction runs a cheaper R&D loop than someone flat-launching every idea from day one.

Curve testing vs. one flat-launch commitment (SOL, excluding seed liquidity)

5 curve tests   ▓▓ 0.10
1 flat pool fee ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 0.40
1 flat cycle    ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 0.72  (excludes 5-25 SOL seed liquidity)

Flat launch vs bonding curve: choosing your mechanic each cycle

flowchart TD
  A{"Do you have 5+ SOL you're willing to lock as liquidity?"} -->|No| B["Bonding curve: pump.fun, 0 SOL to create (~0.02 SOL first buy), curve fronts liquidity"]
  A -->|Yes| C{"Does this concept already have organic traction?"}
  C -->|"No, still testing"| B
  C -->|"Yes, proven"| D["Flat launch: Raydium, your price, your fee tier, burn LP at minute zero"]
  B --> E{"Did it graduate at ~411 SOL of market cap (about $41K at ~$100/SOL)?"}
  E -->|"~1.4% chance"| F["Now trading on PumpSwap, fees tiered 1.25%→0.30%, aggregator-visible"]
  E -->|"~98.6% chance"| G["Effectively abandoned, cost was ~0.02 SOL"]

Neither mechanic is universally correct. Pump.fun's cheap failure mode makes rapid testing possible: a dud meme costs 0.02 SOL and a few minutes, not a burned pool fee (curve math, ~$0.000005 start price to ~$0.00007 graduation, lives in the Pump.fun platform guide). Raydium's flat launch makes committing to a proven concept worth it: you set price and fee tier, and the pool-creation flow puts you on DexScreener and Jupiter from the pool's first block instead of behind a graduation gate only ~1% of curve launches clear, per pump.fun's own docs. Full mechanics: Raydium token launch, Pump.fun vs Raydium, Alchemii vs Pump.fun.

Most repeat launchers converge on a hybrid: test on the curve for 48 hours, commit flat-launch capital only once a concept shows organic buying. It doesn't always work. We ran this on a meme in Q2 and the curve test sat at 3% of graduation for a full week with zero organic buyers; you can't force curve visibility pre-graduation, so a good idea can die quietly with nobody watching.

Distribution and post-launch: deciding whether to run it back

Two listings matter, both free. DexScreener auto-indexes a fresh Raydium pool within 5-15 minutes. Jupiter's Strict List is vetted, typically 7-10 days once authorities are revoked and LP is burned. Pump.fun coins skip both until graduation.

Before running it back, check the same signals the launch checklist tracks: holder count in hour one (healthy is 50+ wallets), buy-to-sell ratio, and whether the social account was old enough to matter. A 30+ day-old Twitter account survives at roughly 2.7x the rate of a same-day account; fresh accounts survive at only 0.37x that rate. Planning cycle two? Build that history now.

Of the six cycles we've run through this exact framework in 2026, only two made it past hour four, and both of those were the ones that generated real fee income, not just a chart. Creator monetization funds the next cycle: pump.fun pays creators 0.05% of trading volume in SOL, and a flat-launch creator holding unburned LP earns a share of swap fees instead, at the cost of the trust signal burning would have bought. That math, and the disclosed-allocation-vs-soft-rug line, is in how do meme coin creators make money. A cycle that doesn't earn enough to seed the next one is still useful data: the meme, not the mechanics, was the problem.

Distribution beyond listings, KOL outreach, Telegram seeding, holder rewards, is its own deep dive: see how to market a Solana memecoin and how to airdrop Solana tokens for rewarding early holders across a series. New to the terms your replies will throw around? Keep the Solana memecoin glossary open in a tab.

Limitations

• This is a framework, not a step-by-step tutorial. For the click-through flow of one launch, see how to create a meme coin on Solana; for a T-7-to-T+24h checklist, see the launch checklist.
• Cost figures assume standard conditions. Congestion and priority fees change the math; see cost to create a Solana token.
• Token-2022 extensions aren't covered. Transfer fees and confidential transfers are a separate mint path most memecoins skip.
• Not financial advice, not a success guarantee. Running the framework correctly doesn't change the base rate; most cycles still end in the 87% that die within 24 hours.
• Marketing execution is out of scope here. Distribution tactics live in the linked marketing and airdrop guides.

FAQ

How are meme coins made on Solana?

Every meme coin is a standard SPL token: mint it via the SPL Token Program, attach Metaplex metadata (name, symbol, image), then pick a liquidity mechanic. A flat launch pairs it against SOL on a Raydium pool you seed (5-25 SOL) and control from minute zero. A bonding-curve launch through pump.fun costs 0 SOL to create (~0.02 SOL first buy) and defers control to the curve until 411-SOL ($41K) graduation. Making meme coins as a process means repeating this mint-then-liquidity sequence, varying only the mechanic and the creative.

What's the difference between a flat launch and a bonding curve when making meme coins?

A flat launch on Raydium costs ~0.22 SOL all-in to mint, or ~0.32 SOL with mint authority revoked as most memecoins do, plus 5-25 SOL of seed liquidity you control, at a fee tier you pick, visible on DexScreener and Jupiter immediately. A bonding curve on pump.fun costs 0 SOL to create (~0.02 SOL first buy) with no seed liquidity, charges a fixed 1.25% buy plus 1.25% sell, and stays invisible to aggregators until the curve fills at ~411 SOL of market cap (about $41K at ~$100/SOL), which only about 1% of launches reach.

How much does it cost to launch multiple meme coins on Solana?

Cost scales with the mechanic, not the count. Five bonding-curve tests on pump.fun run about 0.1 SOL total (5 x 0.02 SOL), each disposable if the meme doesn't catch. A single flat launch on Raydium costs a minimum of roughly 2.8 SOL, and a standard memecoin-credibility launch runs closer to 10.8 SOL. Most repeat launchers test cheap on the curve and reserve flat-launch capital for concepts that already show traction.

Do I need to revoke mint authority every time I make a new meme coin?

Yes, for every flat-launch mint. Revoked mint authority correlates with a 4.2x higher 24-hour survival rate in the 50,000-launch dataset behind alchemii's survival research, and it's the most-checked field on Solscan before a serious trader buys. Bonding-curve launches on pump.fun skip this decision, since the curve program holds mint authority from the start.

Can I reuse the same wallet and socials across multiple meme coin launches?

Technically yes, but it works against you. A Twitter account with 30+ days of history survives at roughly 2.7x the rate of a same-day account; fresh accounts survive at only 0.37x that rate, so recycling an account already used to launch and abandon tokens reads the same as a brand-new one with baggage. Most repeat launchers run a dedicated account per concept and carry over only the wallet and the lessons.

References

1. Solana docs: core fees
2. SPL Token Program reference
3. Metaplex: Token Metadata program
4. Raydium docs: creating a CPMM pool and fee tiers
5. Raydium docs: CPMM trade fees
6. Jupiter Verify: Strict List guide
7. BONK mint on Solscan
8. WIF mint on Solscan
9. DexScreener Solana feed
10. Phantom Learn: Solana token display
11. Pinata docs: pinning metadata to IPFS
12. Solana Program Library on GitHub
13. pump.fun official documentation
14. CoinGecko: meme-token category, market-cap scale
15. DefiLlama: Solana chain DEX volume and fees

Ready to run the first cycle, or the next one? Start a flat launch with alchemii's meme coin creator, go straight to the Raydium-preset flow if you already know you're launching direct, or compare it against pump.fun as an alternative if you're still testing. When it's time to seed the pool, create liquidity and burn the LP close the loop before stage six starts.