Have shared this opinion before…
The creative proliferation of tokens in the Ethereum ICO days was a net positive for society.
Tokens as discrete, scarce, posessable digital bearer assets was a new economic primitive and was obviously good and important… Bitcoin being the first one of these, and still the most successful.
SEC came along, believing its job was to tell American adults how to invest their own money, and through its process of opaque regulation by enforcement, it suffocated nearly all creative energy and entrepreneurship from continuing to iterate with this new primitive.
Attempts at actual commercial utility + proposition of economic gain led to fear of being deemed a “security.”
Memecoins, being just jokes without any attempt at utility or economic rationality, were the only species somewhat unassailable by the SEC. They flourished, and Solana presented itself at the perfect time to be the world’s best memecoin dapp.
Real change seems to have occurred at the SEC since Trump’s election. Whatever you think of him, this part of the story is a good one.
I hope that ten thousand earnest builders return and begin their experiments anew.
Markets always find a way.