Preface

With the popularity of cryptocurrencies, an emerging MEME culture is rapidly emerging, but for many people, it may be difficult to understand MEME coins and the broader crypto culture.

Since its release, the sloth-shaped token $SLERF has had a market value of nearly $600 million. It took only three hours to complete the development process that took BOME three days. Its market value once exceeded BOME and became the eighth largest Meme coin by market value.

Source: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/SLERF

MEME coins are eye-catching because, on the one hand, they are usually low-priced, providing a wide range of investors with opportunities to participate; on the other hand, they are humorous and entertaining, bringing investors a unique experience. Although the prospects of MEME coins are full of uncertainty, they have established their own special position in the field of cryptocurrency.

MEME

What is MEME?

MEME is a cultural element that is widely spread on the Internet, usually expressed in the form of pictures, videos, animations, text or other forms. For example, SLERF is a MEME coin featuring a cute and lazy sloth. Memes are like units for spreading cultural ideas and symbols. They continue to spread and spread in people's consciousness. Some memes have strong dissemination capabilities and can exist for a long time, while some with less influence will be quickly forgotten. Today, the word MEME has become widely circulated, mainly for two reasons: first, because MEME often has humorous, ironic, exaggerated or resonant characteristics, it can be quickly spread through social media, online forums, instant messaging and other channels; second, because the popularity of the Internet and social media allows people to easily create, share and spread content.

MEME track data

According to Coingecko, MEME’s market cap is currently $54.7 billion, while the total cryptocurrency market cap is $1.18 trillion. The MEME token’s share of the cryptocurrency space is 1.48%.

In Q1 2024, Solana (SOL) among the top 10 memecoins achieved an incredible growth of + 801.5% and a market cap of over $8.32 billion. By the end of the quarter, their combined market cap had reached $9.36 billion.

Source: CoinGecko 2024 Q1 Crypto Industry Report

SLERF’s Narrative

Source: https://www.slerf.wtf

$SLERF is a MEME coin featuring a cute and lazy sloth. It has attracted widespread attention and heated discussions from the community since its birth. The whole process from its birth to "death" and then to "resurrection" is like awakening the most sleeping sloth.

On the morning of March 17, SLERF posted a fundraising tweet on Twitter. It is worth mentioning that the project's Twitter account was just created that month. In just 13 hours, SLERF's fundraising amount reached its maximum, raising more than 50,000 SOL. According to the news released by SLERF, 50% of its raised funds were used for pre-sales, and the other 50% were injected into the LP pool. This strategy is basically the same as the previous MEME project fundraising method.

On March 18, the founder of $SLERF admitted an operational error on Twitter. He accidentally destroyed the tokens reserved for airdrops in his wallet and the SOL tokens raised by the pre-sale, lost his LP and lost the right to mint coins. This unexpected event directly led to a rapid drop in the $SLERF token. Although the developer made a major mistake, it did not affect the popularity of the project. On the contrary, the market value exceeded $500 million in just three hours, becoming one of the fastest growing MEME tokens. The founder maintained the popularity of the community by hosting events on Twitter Space and making self-deprecating remarks. Subsequently, $SLERF launched a rescue operation, hoping to raise $10 million to compensate pre-sale participants. This action was supported by Justin Sun, LBank and multiple exchanges. This story of continuous reversal has brought continuous popularity to SLERF, and its ecosystem is now developing.

What makes SLERF successful?

Community

The key to SLERF’s success lies in its community. An active, genuine community with a unique culture is crucial to the success of the project.

Under the combined influence of various events, SLERF attracted a large amount of funds and experienced a period of violent rise and fall. However, when the price fell to its lowest point, the popularity of the token did not diminish. The Space held by the founder of SLERF attracted thousands of participants, and even produced "SEC established a task force to investigate the SLERF incident" Fake images linking tokens to prison concepts on the X platform.

SLERF attaches great importance to community participation and user-friendly interaction. Unlike some MEME tokens that only pursue popularity but lack substantive content, SLERF is committed to establishing effective connections with users and providing them with a smooth interactive experience.

In addition, SLERF also stands out for its innovation and development potential. With its ecosystem and dramatic MEME token development concept, SLERF has attracted different types of investors and supporters, many of whom are confident in its future development prospects.

Public chain background

Solana Chain has the soil for the development of Meme culture in terms of product features and cultural background. Thanks to the rapid increase of SOL tokens in the early stage of this bull market, Solana Chain has acquired the first batch of users in this round of MEME fever.

In addition, DEX products on Solana have many advantages in terms of speed, ease of operation, and on-chain data. Among them, Solana's transaction speed is about 1300 TPS, and the transaction fee is about $0.0029. Solana's on-chain TVL is about $3.9 billion, and the number of daily active users is about 800,000.

Source: https://dune.com/salva/sol-token, SOL price and network activity correlation

SLERF data performance

According to Coingecko data, the token price of $SLERF reached $1.1 on the day of its launch. After the founder announced the operational error, the price of $SLERF fell sharply in a short period of time, falling to as low as 0.3 USDT. After attracting market attention and enthusiasm, the price of $SLERF tokens also rebounded rapidly, reaching 1.2 USDT.

Source: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/SLERF

According to the DUNE panel’s MVRV metric (the MVRV ratio is defined as the token market capitalization divided by the realized capitalization.

When this value is too high, the token price may be overvalued, which may indicate selling pressure. On the other hand, when this value is too low, the token price may be undervalued, which may indicate buying pressure. ), it can be seen that in the first two days of the $SLERF token launch, this value was above the moving average, and then it has been below 1, which means that the average holding cost of the entire network is a loss.

Source: https://dune.com/killer_whales_dao_levilin2008/SLERF-trading-analysis

According to DUNE data, as of May 11, 2024, the total transaction volume of $SLERF in the entire network was 6.359 B, and the total value of $SLERF destroyed was 7.058 M. The daily buying and selling volume only showed a high level in the first two days of the token launch, and then it has been sluggish, which may be related to the overall downward trend of the crypto market.

Source: https://dune.com/onchainmetrics/SLERF

https://dune.com/onchainmetrics/SLERF

The mechanism of MEME propagation from SLERF

Social Media and Community Engagement

The MEME coin project relies heavily on social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram to interact directly with users, share updates, host events, and respond to community feedback in a timely manner. This interaction increases the project's visibility, strengthens community cohesion, and accelerates the spread of information.

Viral Marketing

MEME coins use viral marketing to promote projects at low cost but efficiently through highly contagious content, such as eye-catching slogans, interesting images or unique concepts, and quickly gain widespread attention. For example, $SLERF cleverly uses the visual element of sloths to spread quickly on social media. $SLERF further enhances the effectiveness of its viral marketing by holding community interactive activities, such as the sale of NFTs.

Leverage celebrity

Use the celebrity effect to spread MEME coins, cooperate with influential public figures, share MEME coin information on their social media platforms, and attract fans' attention. Create highly interactive content, such as challenges and live broadcasts, to increase user engagement. For example, the popularity of $SLERF is mostly due to the popularity and influence of the tweets published by its founder.

Wealth Effect

The price fluctuations of MEME coins are accompanied by a strong wealth effect. Rising prices attract new investors into the market, driving prices up further and expanding the cultural reach of MEME coins. For example, $SLERF’s market value exceeded $600 million in a short period of time.

Incentive Mechanism

Incentive mechanism is one of the important strategies for promoting MEME coins. The project encourages users to hold and trade tokens through airdrops, transaction burning taxes, and lucky draws, thereby increasing market activity and user stickiness and attracting more attention and discussion.

Unique concept and design

The design of the MEME coin is closely related to its concept, and its unique visual elements and cultural connotations make it stand out among many cryptocurrencies.

Innovative and easy-to-spread topics

MEME coin projects often combine innovative or viral topics to increase attention. For example, $SLERF’s unique narrative and community engagement drove its success in the market.

MEME Token Risks

High market volatility: The market volatility of MEME tokens exposes investors to significant financial risks. Some projects have experienced dramatic surges and plunges, and this extreme volatility is often affected by individual core figures, news, or network trends.

Over-dependence on sentiment: Many new MEME coins lack underlying technology or real use cases, causing their value to be completely dependent on market sentiment.

Market Manipulation: The concept-driven nature of MEME coin attracts some fraudsters who may deliberately create false market news to drive up the price of the coin, and then sell their holdings when the price reaches a high point, causing huge losses to investors.

Fraudulent behavior: Many MEME projects are launched by anonymous or pseudonymous developers, which makes it difficult to assess the credibility and intentions behind the tokens. There is a certain risk in pre-selling MEME projects because once a certain amount is reached, the development team may abscond with the funds.

Summarize

The performance of MEME coins highlights their unique position and influence in the cryptocurrency market. These coins have attracted widespread attention with their rapid rise and fall, narrative development, and community-driven characteristics. However, investors need to be extremely cautious when participating in MEME coins, as they are very volatile and lack the practicality and community support of traditional cryptocurrencies. Although the future development path of MEME coins is unclear, they have undoubtedly had an impact on the crypto world and will become a unique investment field.