Catching New Meta in MemeMania

The memecoin frenzy has been noticed by several projects building fundamental crypto products, but now they are starting their journey in the memecoins world. They're combining the playful appeal of memes with the functionality of DeFi tech.

The Evolution of Memecoins Narrative

The first wave of meme coins started in 2014, when Dogecoin emerged, and quickly gained popularity among a certain group of holders. But the overwhelming majority didn't really know what to make of these funny coins.

Since then, the meme narrative has changed from a "ponzi economy" to a multi-million dollar sector with a new socio-economic phenomenon called the "economy of attention." In the digital age, one of the most valuable resources is users' attention, and the main goal is to keep and make money from it.
There are thousands of new memecoin-related contracts being deployed on many blockchains every day. They're attracting users' attention with art, funny branding, quirky game mechanics, and funny meme stories. Of course, most of them don't last long and are quickly neglected by their creators. But that's the short time they shine like stars. And it's this fact that has begun to attract not only crypto enthusiasts, but also an increasing number of investors, including institutional ones.

Opinion of Market Leaders

As Memecoins have spread like wildfire, so has the community's attitude towards them - there are still some obvious detractors, but the number of supporters has increased significantly.

For example, Ethereum founder and CEO Vitalik Buterin dedicated an entire article to memecoins, titled "What else could memecoins be?", and here is the last part of the article:

“...And so I want to see higher quality fun projects that contribute positively to the ecosystem and the world around them (and not just by "bringing in users") get more mindshare. At the least, more good memecoins than bad ones, ideally those that support public goods instead of just enriching insiders and creators. But also ideally, making games rather than coins, and making projects that people enjoy participating in…”

Buterin's views are shared by the TON Foundation, which has an initiative called Memelandia:

“We recognize the importance of community tokens and meme coins, and we firmly believe that creativity, engagement, and fun are the key ingredients for community growth.”

Large institutional investors have picked up on the meme narrative: the Franklin Templeton fund, which had $1.37 trillion under management by 2023, published an essay on memecoins:

“...Meme coins have been gaining popularity and attention within the past year due to their unique nature. Generally, meme coins require little technical knowledge, have low fees compared to traditional coins, and have the potential to provide opportunities for investors to make quick profits! However, it is important to note that these assets see lots of price volatility…”

However, not everyone shares the same enthusiasm for memecoins, for example Eddy Lazzarin, CTO at a16z, points out:

“Besides undermining the long-term vision of crypto that has kept so many of us in the space, memecoins aren't very technically interesting. It shouldn't be a surprise that they're not attractive to builders.”

Kee Young-Joo, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, agrees:

"Meme coins harm the crypto industry. It's frustrating to see billion-dollar-cap memecoins overshadow hardworking teams building legit products to advance this industry. Easy money can't drive industry-wide progress, as shown by the 2018 ICO burst."

Of course, all new developments, especially in the fintech sector, are usually perceived ambiguously in the early stages, so disputes about memecoins may continue for a long time. However, these controversies are not stopping Web 3 projects from creating their own meme.

Memecoins by Web3 Startups

It goes without saying that the meme narrative couldn't ignore projects focused on creating infrastructure products. Here's just a small list of these projects.

PURR by Hyperliquid

Purr is the first native token of Hyperliquid, a perpetual decentralized exchange. Users who traded on the platform and provided liquidity received PURR by airdrop. In addition, PURR has a special utility that gives its holders multiplier for farming Hyperliquid points for future airdrop of native token #2.

WEN by Jupiter

Wen is the first meme coin to launch at Jupiter's LFG launchpad. In addition, Wen New Standard (WNS) is a fully open-source framework for minting NFTs and paying royalties to creators of those NFTs.

The Wen New Standard NFT architecture is a wrapper around the Solana Token Extensions program that enables traditional NFT functionality using native Solana Programs rather than Third Party Extensions. The "ELEMENTS" bring the first collection minted on WNS by AssetDash

donotfomoew by Bitget Wallet

MOEW is a cat-themed meme token launched by Bitget Wallet on the Base network. By the way, the token does not have any utility. The MOEW was airdropped to all users who suffered losses in this meme marketplace and holders BWB.

Keng Lernitas/Zorksees by Synthetix

The big idea behind this interesting memecoin from the co-founder of Synthetix was to test EIP-4844. All SNX holders received airdrop of Keng Lernitas tokens. After that, users had to burn that token in order to be able to mint a new one called Zorksees.

Big Pump by BakerySwap

PUMP is a meme token by BakerySwap running on BNB Chain. This memecoin is the second token launched on the BakerySwap launchpad and has zero nutility, same as MEOW.

In addition to these projects, many others are preparing to issue their own memecoins, for example BorpaToken by Entangle. Borpa is a strategic financial game where users can play and earn $BORPA for engaging in high-risk financial strategies. The project will be built using Entangle's core components to create a true omnichannel experience as well as a diffusion model of tokenomics.

Reasons Why Projects Do Memecoin Pivot

In addition to the main reason related to earn money by market making, projects started working on creating their own meme for the following reasons:

• Large projects that do not have their own token can release their own meme coin first and distribute a portion of the supply to users. The main goal is to avoid unnecessary pressure from the community regarding the release date of the main token. In addition, such move will give the project more time to develop and choose the most appropriate time to list. A prime example of this is Jupiter's WEN memecoin.

• Projects that already have their own main native token can create the necessary marketing buzz in the community by releasing their memecoin as well, thus attracting additional users to their main product.

• In addition to the vested interest, projects may issue memecoins out of curiosity and technical interest to test new blockchain features. A good example is Synthetix's memecoin, which was used to test EIP-4844 in the context of transaction fees for ‘blobs’.

• A particularly effective point would be the possible added value of the memecoin, which would be linked to the main product/token. A prime example of this is Hyperliquid's memecoin with the meaningful title PURR.

The Bottom Line

In the current Web3 landscape, users' attention is directly endowed with financial value, and memecoins represent a special phenomenon. This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by the big players, and the new meme coin meta is emerging quite fast. New memecoins incubated by big projects will have even greater potential for development and additional utility. In addition, with the emergence of trusted issuers, the problem of fraud inherent to memecoins may disappear.

Investing in meme coins has many risks, the most notable of which is rug pull, so it may not be suitable for everyone. However, if you miss out on the meme fever, you are missing out on a lottery ticket with a potentially impressive prize.