This article reviews the development of Meme from a community currency to the current involutionary competition. Meme has encountered problems such as shortened life cycle, inability to settle narrative culture, and dispersed funds.
Written by: Sammi
Last year, I wrote an article to explore the underlying logic and investment methodology of meme success. Two days later, $pepe$aidoge appeared and became popular. Meme started a bull market that lasted for more than a year and gradually developed into the most profitable and popular track in the current crypto industry. Now, with the passage of time, meme has also evolved into a PVP battlefield. It is difficult to find a new world with an old map. We need to start thinking about the new development direction of meme.
1. Meme homogenization and involution
According to CoinGecko data, on April 14, 2023, the total market value of global cryptocurrencies was approximately 1.34 trillion, and the total market value of the meme sector was approximately 20.8 billion. On September 19, 2024, the total market value of global cryptocurrencies was approximately 2.242 trillion, and the total market value of the meme sector was approximately 43.4 billion.
During this period, the market value of Bitcoin alone has risen to 1.25 trillion, and the overall market value of the meme sector has also doubled. From the beginning, meme was a community currency that was fun, easy to spread, and had a wealth-creating effect, but now it has developed into a purely involutionary PVP battlefield, where physical strength, tools, and speed are the key factors.
There are too many tools for issuing coins, and everyone can be a project owner. For a good name, you use uppercase letters, I use lowercase letters, you use Sol, I use Trx. People who are not capable of doing a good project also try to get a piece of the pie by issuing coins and cutting leeks, and a large amount of garbage is artificially created on the chain.
The life cycle of memes is getting shorter and shorter; narrative culture cannot settle; funds and attention are scattered, which are the main problems in the current development of the track. This directly leads to the fact that hot spots are not scarce, VCs are not scarce, retail investors are not scarce, and good DEVs and communities have become scarce.
2. Binance listing helps meme survive
When the development of meme reached a bottleneck and aesthetic fatigue, Binance’s listing of coins gave meme a new lease of life.
Among the three meme coins launched by Binance this time,
$Neiro: A community coin with high popularity, dispersed stakes and low valuation
$Turbo: The founder was inspired by artificial intelligence and spent $69 to create a meme coin using GPT-4. (AI+meme)
#babydoge: meme coin on BSC chain (public chain + meme)
Binance's preference for listing coins, whether actively or passively, will be instructive for the market in the future. After all, the ultimate goal of all coins is to be listed on Binance. This also points to a feasible development direction in the future.
3. Meme enters the second half
Meme 1.0 Era:
By piggybacking on celebrity speeches, various cat and dog animal images, an expression, an event, and creating a TG group, it may develop into a meme.
Next, the meme 2.0 era. The development route has three main branches:
1. Public chain + meme
Comparing the public chain to a city, meme is a tourist attraction, a specialty (Zibo barbecue), or a celebrity concert (Kanye West’s Hainan concert). If it is well run, it can drive the GDP of a city. There are many infrastructure projects in this round, hundreds of public chain L2s, with high valuations and few users. The official support of meme coins for infrastructure projects can achieve the effect of "small balls controlling big balls", attracting users, traffic and attention. For meme coins, it also avoids the situation of multiple chains with the same name and the diversion of communities competing for uppercase and lowercase letters, and builds a moat for meme coins.
Representative coins:#babydogeon BSC, $sundog on trx, $bulb on sui
2. Application + meme, cross-track + meme
App coins are products, memes are marketing and advertising. The mainstream voice in the market has always placed meme coins VS institutional VC coins in opposition to each other. If the advantages of the two coins can be combined, cross-track integration. App coins are responsible for capturing value + meme coins for acquiring community and user traffic, or in the form of "surface meme, inner utility token", there will be an opportunity to develop a composite narrative and form a 1+1>2 effect. For example, the aggregator Jupiter once airdropped test coins $wen for active users.
Representative coin: $turbo of AI concept + meme, $wen, a test coin on Jupiter, a DeFi track
3. Push meme
In the past, online communities were for mutual recharging of faith and advocating hodl. Working together to build consensus. Most communities nowadays can no longer be called communities, but rather groups shouting orders to sell to family members, and communities have become PVP battlefields where leeks cut each other. Offline communities have higher stickiness, stronger community authenticity and consensus, and with enough users, they will become the fat meat that major exchanges will compete to list.
Representative coin: $Neiro, $core
4. The “meme+” era
Currently, the entire industry is in a narrative drought, and the development of each track has reached a bottleneck:
Institutional VC coins have high valuations, high selling pressure, ghost towns on the chain, and few users
Meme coin has many users, high activity, ultimate pvp, leeks cut each other
The pain point of VC coins is users, the pain point of meme coins is the lack of endorsement and platform, and the pain point of retail investors is the lack of small-cap, reliable memes to bet on. If the goals and advantages of the forces of several parties are combined, such as the public chain creating memes to attract users and increase the activity on the chain; VC product projects airdrop meme coins to early contributors to encourage user participation, and then transform into communities... In this way, cross-sector integration will usher in the "meme+" era, and there will be a chance to burst out new sparks, revitalize the entire market, and trigger the "public chain meme wave" and "product meme" wave.
at last
Retail investors in the market are against VCs and want fairness, but in fact they are against not making money.
When we take off the narrative coat made up of all kinds of high-sounding nouns, such as DeFi/L2/intention/GameFi/chain abstraction/RWA... In fact, there is only one original and successful crypto narrative of Web3, which allows a small number of people to "turn a small capital into a big one."
Only when ordinary people become rich and the stories of underdogs’ counterattack break through the circle can they truly bring new funds, new users, and new traffic to the market. This is the mass adoption that institutions and exchanges are pursuing.
