Yesterday, Jocy, the founder of IOSG, published a viewpoint on the X platform, "The Eastern Crypto Community Cannot Always Be Meme, The Eastern Community Needs a Wildfire", expressing his dissatisfaction with the MEME craze.
He said, "Meme is like opium, an import of Western opium. Currently, the top memes on BN all come from the West. Entrepreneurs and community builders will be lost because of such noise, and the Eastern crypto community is deeply trapped in meme hype. After seeing the success of meme, many entrepreneurs will begin to doubt their entrepreneurial direction and the original intention of their struggle. I think entrepreneurs should resist meme, should not turn their entrepreneurial direction to meme, and hype meme in an assembly line!"
In Jocy's opinion, meme hype has a certain lottery effect, and the probability of latecomers winning will continue to decline. At the same time, memes, like opium, will make early beneficiaries form path dependence, and more people will endorse memes in the community (similar to compradors). The community is likely to continuously strengthen this way of making money, but this will not make our technical protocols and communities more unique and powerful. Early participants may be able to profit from it, but this short-sighted behavior, this gambling game, and the legend of getting rich quickly will eventually burst this bubble and become a disaster for the Eastern crypto market, repeating the story of NFT in the last bull market cycle.
Finally, Jocy expressed his expectations and position, "I always believe that most of the first-line Eastern entrepreneurs will insist on starting a business in the first-line, find their own building blocks in the Lego of infra or application, and keep pace with or even lead the mainstream Western protocols. IOSG will promote the long-term development of the industry and community by investing in and supporting young people at the forefront, and help Eastern entrepreneurs stand out in the global market."
The clear and firm positions and opinions also sparked discussions among industry practitioners.
Some people expressed their support, believing that the whole nation's pursuit of MEME is a temporary solution to a long-term problem. MEME is just a disguise of fairness, and there are still market makers and big dealers behind it, which makes the already nihilistic industry fall into an even more nihilistic situation, which will ultimately only exacerbate the collapse of the industry.
There were also a lot of opposing voices on Twitter. In their view, it was not that MEME was so good, but that VC coins were too bad. Existence was reasonable, and retail investors chose to embrace MEME because they were forced by high FDV VCs.
TechFlow sorted out some comments on Twitter about this view, giving a glimpse into everyone’s views on VC coins and MEME in this cycle. Some of the views have been simplified:
Ethsign co-founder Xin Yan: MEME is so popular because VC coins are gradually losing touch with reality
VCcoin and memecoin are not clearly distinguished. On the contrary, a good VCcoin should also have very strong meme attributes, such as monad and berachain. VC attributes represent functionality and moat, while meme attributes represent the ability to resonate with the community. The trend of modularity has led to many VCcoins solving problems that are too specific, and retail investors are completely unable to perceive or participate. Even if such tokens have utility, they are limited to a very small range. If you still refuse to meme your own values or community, it is recommended that you directly change to a software service company and do not issue coins. The success of Base and berachain has gradually proved that in the currency circle, community > technology. Technology can be copied endlessly, and all L2s are actively exporting their own technical solutions. The problem is that there is no community, no on-chain activities, and in the end they can only become technology providers.
AC CAPITAL partner Vincent: MEME is not a track but an attribute
The problem is that VCs put memes in opposition, but they don’t realize that memes are not a track at all, but an attribute. If vc coins cannot propose a direction for retail investors to participate and make profits, but only consider how to get TVL from large investors, then they are indeed inferior to memes. At least people can participate. Under the guise of lofty ideals, they are actually licking the big investors’ accumulation. This is the point that everyone is not OK with.
VC practitioner H.E. ZEPUMP: The problem with VCs is that they overvalue useless technologies
The problem with VCs in this industry is that they overvalue useless technologies and undervalue interesting cultures and communities. Communities are built on consensus, and projects invested by VCs have no communities at all, so why should they take over? The token itself does not represent the so-called technology behind it, but is priced by the user's attention. Instead of packaging it as a so-called advanced technology and forcibly selling it to retail investors in the market, it is better to think clearly about the essence of the coin and how to better sell it to others.
Crypto KOL Dayu: What I hate is not the valuable coins, but the air coins pretending to be valuable
I agree that the cryptocurrency circle cannot be just a meme, and should pursue higher value. However, I still have a different understanding from Jocy: First, meme is a natural selection at the market stage, and it will make the cryptocurrency circle better rather than worse. The essence of meme is passing the parcel, but is there any value? Yes. To a certain extent, this simple and violent wealth game is deeply in line with human nature, so it is the easiest to attract people, so it is very helpful for attracting new members to the cryptocurrency circle. No one should ignore the fact that people come to the cryptocurrency circle basically for the wealth effect - whether it is the early Bitcoin, the later ICO, then doge and shib, and then inscriptions. After each wave of fanatical irrational speculation, the cryptocurrency circle is not worse, but better, because each time it makes Bitcoin believers more and more prosperous. Therefore, I don’t think we have to worry about the bubble covering up the value, meme diluting Bitcoin’s idealism, and washing away the underlying value of the blockchain. The market evolves its own laws, and we don’t have to worry about anything. Good things will get better and better, and bad things will be eliminated. This time, meme is not eliminating Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency circle, but those "air coins" and "sickle coins" disguised as valuable coins.
Second, value projects are not equal to value coins. Not every project can claim to be a value coin. The opposite of a meme is not necessarily a value coin, but may be a "virtual coin". Value coins themselves are a very general term. Generally, the more idealistic classification is defined by what problems the project solves and what it contributes to the world. But there is a problem with this classification, that is, the project has value, but the coin may not. Because, logically, as long as the project solves a certain need, it has more or less value in a certain sense, which is not wrong. However, from the perspective of tokens, it is different. Tokens may be hyped up very high. This market frenzy and randomness seem to have nothing to do with the project party and VC. In this case, retail investors and VCs are both investors, but the rights and responsibilities of both parties are completely unequal. VCs can participate in the investment at a price of 0.0001, and play a role in their status and industry resources. When retail investors buy at the first level, due to the careful design, they buy a chip with a value of 0.001 under the narrative packaged by the project party and VC. If this chip finds a professional and skilled market maker, it can continue to rise for a few days, and then cut it by 70%, completing a beautiful textbook-style coin listing teaching. This is unfair! Retail investors actually bought coins, but did not enjoy anything. Although everything seems to be "self-inflicted", retail investors actually have their own demands: the listing price of tokens should not deviate too much from the real value! Why do retail investors rush for meme? It's not that they don't talk about value, it's not that they are not idealistic, it's just that the "last 10u" is really too much to afford...
dForce founder Mindao: The core of the difference between the East and the West is language
The core of the difference between the East and the West is language. Non-English systems cannot create movements, public chains, and infrastructure with global influence. This is the limitation of the language OS, a flaw that cannot be changed by one's own efforts, and it is not just web3 that is affected by it.
As for applications and consumption, entrepreneurs in the Chinese-speaking region certainly have great advantages. After all, localization focuses on specific groups of people, and the Chinese-speaking region is the world's largest single market.
Memes, whether in the East or the West, actually reflect the undercurrents of society. Financial nihilism and leftism in the West and the lying down in the East are all rolling torrents. This kind of culture and social movement is naturally more limited by language, and it is actually very difficult to play with it.
Scope Protocol founder Oar: meme is not a project, but a culture
Meme is a culture, a spiritual core, a vibe. It is not "another" project. What is opposed to meme is not infra, not dapp, but those useless party games. What retail investors hate is that dau is less than 10 but fdv is because someone invested in a project that wants 10B instead of infra and dapp that really provide value to users and web3.
Crypto KOL qinbafrank: VC institutions and projects need to take more constructive measures to reverse the current market predicament, not just slogans.
Personally, I think the differences between the East and the West are not the main reason at the moment. Even many of this wave of Western projects are meaningless and worthless project promoters: repeatedly reinventing the wheel, using the so-called point system to create false prosperity, VCs and founders working together to push up the overly inflated valuations of primary projects. These are all so-called Western institutions and project parties. Most Western project founders may be similar to those in the East. They don’t think about creating value but more about reaping wealth.
The founders of makerdao, EigenLayer, and uniswap mentioned in the article may be just a few outstanding Western founders, just like there are very few excellent founders of Eastern projects and we cannot generalize.
The current market enthusiasm for memes is not unique to the East. Even mainstream memes such as pepe, wif, and bome all originated in the West, and eventually merged with the East and the West. The underlying reason behind this is the disappointment of the so-called "value projects": the lack of scene applications, repeated reinvention, no value creation, unreasonable capital structure, and overly inflated primary valuations are all the underlying reasons behind this phenomenon.
To make changes does not mean calling on everyone to "not only do things related to transactions, but focus on the construction of infra and protocols, and create a better community atmosphere" and shouting slogans, but that institutions and project parties need to make practical changes. The following aspects are my personal opinions:
1. Explore the value of the project and implement it on the ground;
2. Founders and institutions should exercise restraint and build a good and reasonable capital structure;
3. Build a reward mechanism for token holders.