SocialFi protocol Zora has officially introduced its Attention Markets platform on the Solana blockchain, marking a major shift from its Ethereum-based roots as it aims to monetize trends, topics, and memes before they go viral.
Tokenizing viral trends on Solana
Zora started out as a SocialFi platform on Ethereum’s Layer 2, mostly helping digital artists through “Creator Coins.” Now, by moving to Solana, they’re creating a real-time marketplace where you can actually trade on hashtags, memes, and trends. The idea is to let users take a position on cultural moments before they even hit the mainstream.
The new platform utilizes a dual-structure: Trends, which represent broad topics, and Pairs, which function as sub-markets. In an effort to maintain market quality, Zora co-founder Jacob Horne confirmed that deploying a new Trend requires a fee of 1 SOL.
“This is designed to disincentivize spam,” the official platform guidelines stated, noting that while Trends themselves do not offer creator rewards, the Pairs under them, such as the early traded $redlight and $coldplunge tokens, are built with incentives for those who drive the content.
Base community backlash
The shift to Solana got with immediate friction from the Base community, where Zora has operated since early 2025. Developers and users on the Base expressed disappointment. Jacek Trociński, creator of the Degen memecoin, described the move as “really disappointing” after a year of ecosystem support.
Traders are already testing the app, with “attentionmarkets,” “longevity,” “cats,” “dogs,” “bitcoin,” and “aigirlfriend” among the most-traded tickers so far. The platform allows users to trade these Trends and Pairs just like ordinary tokens, featuring a built-in dashboard that tracks profits and losses in real-time.
Big names are moving to Solana
Even though Zora has deep roots in the Base network, it’s joining a growing list of major names moving to Solana for its speed and low costs. Just this week, PayPal made Solana the default network for its PYUSD stablecoin, meaning payments will now automatically use Solana’s faster rails.
The $ZORA token responded well to the announcement, climbing 6.2% over the last 24 hours, as the broader crypto market actually dipped by 1.2% during the same period. Most early tokens currently hold market caps below $10,000, suggesting that while the technical infrastructure of Solana offers the speed required for Attention Markets, deep liquidity has yet to follow the migration.
