The meme coin market is showing real strength this week – and a project called Memecoin is leading the charge.

$MEME has gained 28% in the last seven days and saw a staggering 50% gain within a few hours on late Friday evening.

The meme coin market is showing real strength this week – and a project called Memecoin is leading the charge.$MEME has gained 28% in the last seven days and saw a staggering 50% gain within a few hours on late Friday evening. Although its price has since retraced, falling from $0.0026 to $0.002, it remains at a sizeable gain overall.There have been no updates on the project’s X feed since November 2024, so community members were surprised by this rally.However, it comes amidst a broader return of investor optimism to the meme coin space, with countless projects booking significant gains this week. But what are the best meme coins to buy now? Here are our top three picks:

Solaxy

It’s no secret that most meme coin trading occurs on Solana. So, since the meme coin market is showing strength now, Solana is gaining serious traction. It has generated $1.7 billion in 24-hour trading volume, more than any other blockchain. This is close to 2x more than runner-up Ethereum, which has generated $947 million.

Solaxy is building the world’s first Solana layer 2 blockchain to create a new home for meme coins inside the ecosystem. It’ll use off-chain computation and transaction bundling technology to make Solana cheaper, faster, and more reliable. It’ll be the ideal meme coin trading environment.And the meme coin infrastructure sector is heating up, with the Raydium price soaring 50% this week due to its new meme coin launchpad, LaunchLab. This illustrates the strong gains that Solaxy is capable of, but the project is currently undergoing a presale, where it has raised $30 million so far.The presale could mark a lucrative opportunity for investors to buy $SOLX at a ground-floor price before it hits exchanges and potentially explodes.

Popcat

As the Solana meme coin ecosystem advances, one project gaining serious mindshare is Popcat. It’s a cat-themed crypto that has recently become one of the top performers. While its price is red this week, it remains at a staggering 10% premium in the last ten days. This level of momentum reflects real market appeal behind Popcat, which could well translate into continued strong growth as prices rise.Another benefit of Popcat is that it’s one of the few meme coins that all major influencers agree on. Ansem, Murad, and “Bonk Guy” each promote the project, which may have contributed to its recent strength.Looking ahead, Popcat’s position as the top cat meme coin, paired with its backing from influencers and relative strength, indicates that it could be one of the top-performing meme coins.

Brett

Brett is another meme coin that is performing well right now. The project is built on the Base network and is inspired by one of the characters from Matt Furie’s Boys Club comic. The project has also been among the top performers recently, gaining 5% today and 22% this week.One reason Brett is performing well is Coinbase’s recent push to encourage activity on the Base network. It follows a playbook similar to Binance’s CZ, who encouraged meme coin trading on the BNB Chain through several publicity stunts.However, Coinbase is approaching things differently. It’s ushering in a new narrative called “content coins” via Zora platform, which allows users to mint social media content as tokens. While they’re not inherently meme coins, content coins are sparking a new wave of on-chain activity that positively impacts Base’s broader ecosystem. And as the market leader, Brett is riding the wave.If the content coin narrative gains further mindshare, it’ll continue to benefit Brett.