When Meme has fundamentals.
Written by: Tuo Luo Finance
Regarding the hottest track in the past two weeks, it is undoubtedly DeSci.
Since November 8, when Binance Labs announced its investment in BIO Protocol, under the co-signature of CZ and Vitalik, this once-silent concept has risen again, attracting hot money, with RIF and URO generating thousands of times in wealth, creating a new potential MEME track.
DeSci, also known as decentralized science, refers to the act of establishing public infrastructure through Web3 technology to achieve publicly fair funding, storage, and dissemination of scientific knowledge, according to the concept from Messari. DeSci encourages scientists to openly share their research results and gain recognition, while allowing anyone to easily access and contribute to research outcomes. In simple terms, DeSci is committed to using blockchain technology to solve scientific research problems, covering fundraising, knowledge sharing, peer review, intellectual property, and more.
In terms of track performance, DeSci focuses on fundraising directions, with most project models relying on tokenization to finance projects to support scientific research and development. At the same time, research results are mostly encouraged to be put on-chain to enhance transparency and protect intellectual property. Currently, the core role of DeSci is to open new fundraising channels for scientific research that requires long-term investment, as it links the seemingly unrelated fields of crypto and scientific research, endowing tokenization with more practical significance, thus being heavily promoted by the market as one of the cases of MEME practicality.
Regarding the root of the recent explosion of DeSci, the celebrity effect is key. On November 8, according to official disclosure, Binance completed strategic financing for BIO Protocol, bringing this 'on-chain science version of Y Combinator' to the forefront. Subsequently, CZ attended the DeSci Day event held by Binance in Bangkok, and Vitalik was also present. The two discussed DeSci, further pushing it into the spotlight.
The crypto circle, adept at finding hot topics, rapidly surged with DeSci fever. Pump.Science became an overnight sensation, with projects like RIF and URO generating thousands of times in profits, allowing this track to completely break out. Mechanism Capital partner Andrew Kang even stated in a post that 'the DeSci field currently feels like the DeFi era in early 2019. Everything is still very primitive and experimental, but a basic conclusion can be drawn: it has immense potential.' As a result, even amid the current significant market downturn, according to SoSoValue data, the DeSci sector is still up 3.35% against the trend.
Although the vision of DeSci is promising and the opening of funding channels for scientific research undoubtedly has value, from the current perspective, the speculative component is clearly greater than the actual utility. Essentially, the long-term nature of scientific research and the short-term profit-seeking nature of the MEME sector show significant divergence; hoping to reconcile the purely speculative MEME track with the zero-speculation scientific research field feels quite fantastical.
On one hand, scientific research has a great deal of uncertainty; drug development can take many years, and if the direction is wrong, everything can be lost. It features characteristics of high investment and high risk, requiring sustainable long-term investment. This is why scientific research funding usually adopts a model led by the state and leading enterprises, combining state capital and social capital to hedge risks and maintain competitiveness. But in the crypto market, attention is the core; hot spots are hard to sustain. Currently, the hot money surrounding DeSci is mainly concentrated on the meme coin issuance platform Pump.Science, indicating the market's focus on the profit-making effect.
In fact, from a conceptual perspective, DeSci seems somewhat like putting old wine into new bottles. If we trace back to history, the VitaDAO initiated by Vitalik in July 2021 is the earliest and most representative DeSci project, but the development of this project has not been as grand as its concept.
VitaDAO is a community-owned project dedicated to funding early longevity research, aiming to promote scientific innovation through the collective power of the community, researching and supporting projects aimed at extending human life and preventing age-related diseases. In other words, VitaDAO is a DAO community focused on longevity research.
Previously, due to the strategic investment by traditional pharmaceutical company Pfizer in this project, VitaDAO briefly sparked heated discussions, but later, as the conversation waned, it quickly fell silent. Currently, VitaDAO is also broadly laying out its plans, not only deploying $4.2 million in funding and sponsoring 24 projects, but also collaborating with well-known universities like Newcastle University for research. However, relative to its actions, the actual results appear quite limited. Since 2021, it wasn't until the recent Devcon that Vitalik finally showcased VitaDAO's first product, VD001.
On the other hand, although the on-chain of scientific research results will enhance transparency and intellectual property protection and is beneficial for scientific dissemination, in the relatively closed scientific research field, this point is almost a structural disruption. In today's scientific research system, most research teams maintain a high degree of confidentiality regarding research results and experimental data during the research process to prevent unauthorized individuals from stealing, utilizing, or leaking research results, especially when it involves deep interests, confidentiality is of utmost importance. With the strong entry of decentralization, the security of data is also difficult to guarantee.
With the support of the above two factors, it can be anticipated that aside from applications on the surface such as scientific content, review fairness, and data tokenization, only topics that are extremely difficult to achieve, time-consuming, and require high cooperation will fit the crypto model. From this wave of enthusiasm, most DeSci projects are aiming at a core issue of common concern for all humanity—longevity, which has also led the market to jokingly refer to DeSci as the on-chain elixir of life.
Immortality is ultimately just a beautiful vision, and the market's interest in DeSci is only for the liquidity it brings. Although the BIOGenesis community fundraising campaign initiated by BIOProtocol raised $33 million, and the DeSci sector has surged in the past two weeks. However, actions in the primary market are limited, large institutions have not participated, and from the perspective of leading projects, attention in the secondary market is also performing flat, with the market capitalization of VITA and RIF both falling between $120 million and $200 million, far from the $1 billion market cap of other leading sectors.
Development status of the DeSci sector, source: sosovalue
However, if we look at it without considering longevity, DeSci is relatively good in the MEME world. Compared to other MEMEs, DeSci has a stronger narrative. The celebrity effect may be hard to sustain, but with actual research projects supporting it, there is a fundamental effect; any innovation in scientific research and product development will strengthen the narrative. The biomedical sector is generally open to fundraising, and the emerging nature of this field makes it more likely to connect with the crypto field. Additionally, DeSci has the potential for a breakout effect; the current celebrity effect in this sector is still concentrated within crypto, led by figures like Vitalik and CZ, while celebrities from traditional healthcare and research have yet to enter, and large institutions have not yet emerged, which also provides direction for future narratives.
Returning to the macro market, whether it’s a zoo or an artist, driven by AI or scientifically validated, it can be seen that MEME has already become the main carrier of market funds. However, the previous recipients of this round of immense wealth are still altcoins. Just looking at the altcoin market, Bitcoin rose from $10,000 to the brink of $100,000, the follow-up effect of Ethereum significantly diminished, and altcoins mostly saw declines. Among the top ten crypto assets, only SOL and XRP saw increases, and the seasonal growth of altcoins, which used to be tens of times, seems hard to replicate.
At its core, the change in the flow of funds is key. In traditional bull market transmission, the common path is from high stability assets gradually sinking to lower stability assets, activating high yield preferences from low return sources, i.e., mainstream coins - altcoins - MEME coins - other sectors, but this year, the path is not as it used to be. However, currently, with the entry of institutions and the saturation of project numbers, large external new liquidity will only flow into the Bitcoin ecosystem, and the public chain ecosystem lacks strong emerging applications. Altcoins are deeply trapped in supply-demand institutional crises, with Bitcoin becoming a siphon for ecosystem funds, and funds from other sectors being siphoned off as well, leaving only the fast in-and-out, wealth effect-concentrated MEME to stand out, thus turning the altcoin season into MEME season.
A typical example is that Pump.fun has become the biggest winner of the bull market. According to Dune data, as of November 24, pump.fun has generated nearly $230 million in total revenue ($228,908,720) and has deployed a total of approximately 3.74 million tokens.
Of course, the two are not substitutes for each other; the rise of MEME does not mean the collapse of altcoins. Under relaxed regulation and sector rotation, altcoins may still turn around against the wind. However, the rise in the status of the MEME market undoubtedly reflects a structural change in the market. In fact, whether it is Pumpfun live streaming, TikTok shouting orders, or AI-driven initiatives, with the arrival of Generation Z and the rapid evolution of new technologies, the crypto market is undergoing profound changes in narrative logic, communication patterns, and operational methods.
Traditional altcoin projects revolving around token release to maintain long-term narratives for continuous profit extraction are difficult to sustain. The market is no longer willing to pay for VC tokens but is shifting towards a direction that is fairer, more autonomous, and closer to the essence of tokens, with attention becoming increasingly scarce. In this regard, the combination of MEME and projects seems to be more competitive than a single project; altcoins are structured, while MEME is relatively fair. MEME lacks long-term nature, while projects provide fundamentals. The two are highly complementary, which may be one of the reasons for the rise of concepts like AIMEME and DeSci.
However, regardless, the formation of consensus has a high degree of randomness, and MEME gold mines are few and far between. According to Panews data, as of November 21, Pump.fun has issued a total of 3.59 million tokens, a quantity that far exceeds the total token issuance in the crypto world over the past 10 years. Among them, the number of tokens for graduates (fully meeting the curve line on Raydium) is 50,389, accounting for about 1.4%. The number of tokens with a market cap over $100 million is only 32, and less than one in ten thousand of MEME's market cap exceeds ten million dollars.
In the long run, finding a consensus balance between attention and longevity will become an important topic for the development of MEME, but for individuals, survival and not going to zero is the premise of everything.