The recent surge in memecoins, such as $PEPE, has impacted the rankings of established digital assets, with Cardano ($ADA) temporarily falling out of the top 10 in market capitalization.

Market data indicates that the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB) briefly surpassed Cardano’s ADA in market capitalization before experiencing a sell-off that pushed it back below the top 10. Currently, SHIB has a market capitalization of $16 billion, having lost over 2% of its value recently, while Cardano’s ADA has risen to a market capitalization of $16.4 billion.

SHIB's brief rise above Cardano occurred amidst a broader memecoin trend, which has also seen significant price increases for tokens like Dogewith (WIF) and Floki Inu over the past few weeks.

Cardano, once a top-three cryptocurrency during the 2020-2021 bull run, has lagged behind other major cryptocurrencies in the current market cycle, increasing only 21.4% over the past year compared to Bitcoin’s 144% rise and Ethereum’s 101% rally.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum have surged recently, other major altcoins such as XRP, XLM, MATIC, and TRX have shown sluggish performance.

Dogecoin ($DOGE) remains the leading memecoin with a market capitalization of $23.7 billion, ahead of Toncoin’s $22.5 billion but behind XRP’s $29.3 billion.

It is worth noting that the 2021 bull run also experienced a memecoin phase, during which several newly launched cryptocurrencies saw explosive growth amid a retail trading frenzy, and some of these memecoins are still actively traded.