Author: Ansem
Compiled by: TechFlow
With all the talk of memecoins, shady deals , and whale lately , I decided to provide some context. Every token project that launches directly on a decentralized exchange (DEX) without venture capital (VC) backing has three elements:
development team
Sniper
Whale(TBD)
The level of complexity and overlap of these three will vary from coin to coin, but a good combination of all three is necessary for long-term success.
development team
Every development team has a sliding balance between being decentralized and organized. On pump.fun , a development team might consist of just one person and a title. On the other hand, a team like $BONK is very organized and made up of some of the smartest active crypto traders on Solana. Both types of teams can perform well, but success depends on two other factors (snipers and whale).
The advantage of organized teams is that they usually have a budget set aside for marketing and future development, so these tokens have more "utility" than memes that just originated from pump.fun . A good example is bonkbot, no other fully decentralized meme can have such a product because they don't have enough funds. Another example is $MEW , which was able to airdrop a large number of tokens to all $BONK and $WIF holders. These teams are also usually able to easily contact market makers and quickly list on exchanges.
On the other hand, fully decentralized teams usually start with lower market caps because there is no deep capital support initially. These teams often form enthusiastic communities early on through extremely low initial costs and widely distributed supply. The best examples are $WIF and $MICHI , which have very low market caps at launch but very active communities. The risk of these coins is that, on average, they are more likely to fail early on because all the snipers try to exit as quickly as possible and there are no whale or teams with long-term interests supporting the project.
Sniper
Honestly, I'm not the best person to discuss this topic in detail because I don't participate in early listing sniping, but I know some people who do. For snipers, they usually don't care what the project is, they just want to get in first, and if there is enough liquidity to exit, they will exit immediately. Many projects without a well-organized team will fail because a large number of tokens are snapped up by snipers at the launch and sold immediately, causing chaos in the price chart.
A good example is the ETHWIF derivative that launched a few months ago. Many wallets bought it immediately when it went live and sold it hours later, making a six-figure profit.
90% of newly issued tokens on decentralized exchanges (DEX) will not exceed $5 million in market cap, the reason being that most of these development teams are anonymous and happy to make a quick profit. This is also why the term “CTO” (community takeover) is so popular, as development teams usually sell their tokens immediately.
Whale
Every coin that grows from 0 to billions of dollars needs whale at some point to drive the price up. For memes, communities are usually formed early on. Once a meme reaches enough attention and virality, their market cap will exceed $100 million. Once they are able to consolidate above $100 million, you will see larger players start to deploy because there is enough liquidity to build large positions. At the same time, these early participants in the meme must hold on and not sell. Once they become whale, they are critical to the long-term success of the project.
in conclusion
In short, every token project has a team, and the degree of organization of the team varies. Every token has snipers and whale, and a good combination of all these factors is necessary to reach a multi-billion dollar market cap, regardless of whether they are the same parties or different.
