PEPE Lands on Solana as a Canonical SPL Token via Wormhole NTT, Hits $40M Volume in 24 Hours

PEPE, one of Ethereum's largest meme tokens by market capitalization, went live on Solana on September 18 as a canonical SPL token issued by Sunrise Sunrise using Wormhole W$0.011-2.7% Wormhole's Native Token Transfer (NTT) protocol. Within roughly 24 hours of listing, PEPE's Solana trading volume crossed $40 million, Sunrise confirmed on September 20.

The launch was announced by the official Solana account on September 18: "BREAKING: PEPE is live on Solana via @sunrise."

Canonical vs. Wrapped: What NTT Changes

Standard cross-chain token listings create multiple competing SPL mints. Each bridge produces its own wrapped version of the same asset, fracturing liquidity across separate pools and leaving users uncertain about which address is authoritative.

Sunrise, built on Wormhole NTT, takes a different path. Rather than letting every bridge issue its own version, it creates one designated SPL mint per asset. That single address is the canonical representation on Solana: Raydium RAY$1.63-11.6% Raydium, Orca, Meteora, and other protocols all point at the same mint from day one.

Sunrise describes the platform as "an orchestration layer, not a traditional cross-chain bridge or a launchpad." The practical result is consolidated liquidity rather than split pools, available across multiple DEXs simultaneously.

$40M in 24 Hours Across Solana DEXs

Sunrise confirmed on September 20 that PEPE surpassed $40 million in Solana trading volume in its first day on-chain. The token trades on Raydium, Orca, Meteora, and PayBox. Across all assets Sunrise has listed since launching in November 2025, the platform had collectively processed more than $10 billion in Solana trading volume by early September 2026, per CryptoBriefing.

PayBox Demo: Buying PEPE via an AI Agent

PayBox used the PEPE listing to demonstrate a purchase flow driven by an AI agent. The team posted on September 19 that they bought PEPE inside a Claude AI agent on PayBox the same day it went live on Solana.

Sunrise's Role in Solana's Cross-Chain Listings

PEPE is the first major Ethereum meme token to receive a Sunrise canonical listing on Solana. The platform has previously brought cross-chain assets including Injective's INJ, Arbitrum's ARB, and Bittensor's TAO onto Solana under the same canonical-mint model. On September 19, Sunrise also supported the tokenized BlackBerry ($BB) stock listing via Backpack Securities, showing the same NTT infrastructure handling both cross-chain crypto assets and real-world securities.