Author: 0xLeoDeng Source: X, @leodeng08
Meme? Absolutely not, they are just hot air.
There was a time when I was so rigid in my rejection of Meme, but now, it's either tokens that pump people up, or a reflection on the fact that existence is justification. The more I understand Meme, the more I constantly refresh my understanding of it. Here are my thoughts on Meme and the development of the crypto industry:
I. Reality: The continued outbreak of Meme in 2024 reveals the end of the Tokenomics 1.0 era
Tokenomics 1.0, the "VC coin" model in the common sense, that is, the traditional token economic model, emphasizes technical implementation and long-term planning, and has been seen as the core of crypto projects. Projects are usually driven by whitepapers, relying on technical narratives, scenario design, lock-up mechanisms, and other means to endow tokens with long-term value.
However, the market share of Meme coins has increased by 45% since the beginning of the year, while the performance of most VC-backed tokens has remained sluggish. The rise of Meme coins indicates that the market's patience for the VC token model is weakening - that is, from the complex technical narrative to the easy-to-understand, emotionally-driven Meme narrative.
Tokenomics 1.0 requires long-term ecosystem building, and users often have to wait for years to see the value, while Meme coins do not need to wait, and can quickly capture attention. Take $GOAT as an example, its market value soared from $5 million to nearly $1 billion in a few weeks, attracting a large number of retail investors and short-term speculators.
Even the top-tier European and American VCs have given positive comments on this round of Meme craze, with well-known institutions like Pantera Capital and a16z also starting to support Meme coins. Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit said that Memecoins are the Trojan horse of cryptocurrencies; a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen @pmairca even admitted in a podcast that Meme coins are becoming the "new entry point for the crypto market", attracting a large number of new users' attention.
The rise of Meme coins is not only the influx of capital and users, but also the redistribution of market attention, revealing a new trend in the crypto market: a shift from technology-driven to emotion-driven.
II. Review: The history of the crypto market proves that there is Meme before there is scenario, without exception
It may not be unreasonable to say that the origin of crypto is Meme. In fact, from Bitcoin to Ethereum, and then to Dogecoin, etc., the development of crypto projects follows an obvious pattern: there is Meme first, and then there is scenario. These projects won market attention through simple and attractive narratives before technical implementation.
- The Meme stage of Bitcoin (2008-2013): Bitcoin was born in 2008, with the core narrative being "decentralized electronic cash", a digital currency not controlled by governments and banks. In 2009, the genesis block was born, further strengthening the Meme of "financial freedom" and attracting early believers who distrusted the traditional financial system. In the first few years, Bitcoin mainly relied on community faith and the aspiration for decentralization. In 2013, with the Silk Road incident and more public attention, Bitcoin's symbolic value gradually transformed into real market value. It has transitioned from an idea to a commodity with scarcity and anti-inflation characteristics, entering a more mature stage. #BTC
- The Meme stage of Ethereum (2014-2017): Ethereum's early development mainly relied on the concept of "world computer" and community faith. In 2014, Vitalik Buterin released the whitepaper, with the vision of "decentralized applications and smart contracts", attracting developers and early supporters. After the mainnet launch in 2015, although the application ecosystem was not yet mature, Ethereum still quickly gained attention due to its "future potential" and the narrative of decentralization. The DAO incident in 2016, although it once caused a crisis, also strengthened Ethereum's "anti-censorship" and "trustless" ideology. Until 2017, with the explosion of ICO and DApp, Ethereum gradually entered the application-driven stage, marking the end of its Meme stage. #ETH
- The Meme stage of Dogecoin (2013-2021): Dogecoin was positioned as a "joke token" from the beginning. In 2013, relying on the popular Shiba Inu meme image on the internet, Dogecoin quickly became popular on social platforms, attracting a large number of users through community consensus and a lighthearted and humorous culture. It did not have a complex technical narrative, but instead built an inclusive and active community in a relaxed way. In 2021, with Elon Musk's tweets and the push of Meme culture, Dogecoin's market value soared to $75 billion, and this "joke token" became the public's entry point to the crypto market. Ultimately, Dogecoin evolved from a Meme to an asset with actual market value, demonstrating the power of community-driven.
III. Reflection: Can the new Meme culture initiate the revolution of Tokenomics 2.0?
Nowadays, Meme is not just entertainment or hype, but hides profound insights into token economics. The possibility of Tokenomics 2.0 is emerging in the Meme culture.
Traditional Tokenomics 1.0 relies on whitepapers, technical models, and long-term visions, while Tokenomics 2.0 may no longer be the cold technical narrative, but a socially-driven economic system that focuses on user emotions and engagement rather than technology. As @BTCdayu mentioned, from the perspective of academic rigor: what is the relationship between $DOGE and that dog? What is the relationship between $moodeng and that hippopotamus? These questions are only about dissemination, emotion, psychology, and speculation.
Within this framework, the "attention-resonance-construction" model driven by Meme will become more important. $GOAT's market value soared to $300 million in a short period of time, precisely because it utilized the power of community-driven, demonstrating the influence of emotion and attention in digital assets. $GOAT is not just a "toy" or "joke", but a fusion of social culture and economic incentives, driving widespread market participation and high-frequency interaction.
The future Tokenomics 2.0 will no longer rely solely on technical support, but will build a more vibrant economic model through user experience and emotional resonance.
We are seeing, or are about to see:
- Smart contract-driven meme supply adjustment: Introducing smart contracts to automatically adjust the supply of meme coins, such as AI automatically increasing or burning based on specific market conditions, social emotions, trading volume, etc.
- Projects start to issue Meme tokens: By defining Meme coins as an extension of project tokens, cleverly associating them with project tokens, maintaining the core value of the project while using Meme coins to attract a wider user base and traffic.
- Investment institutions: Appropriately adjust their investment portfolio to balance long-term technology-driven projects and short-term Meme hotspots; obtain returns through short-term arbitrage and flexible exit mechanisms.
- KOLs: Project parties may be more inclined to collaborate with KOLs who have the ability to create Meme topics. Simply shilling will become outdated, and the competition will be about creative content, humorous expression, and the integration of hot topics.
- Wallets: Launch short-term savings and staking services for Meme coins, allowing users to "lightly stake" or "flexibly stake" Meme coins in wallets to earn some short-term returns;
- Platform tools: One-click Meme coin issuance platforms, such as http://daos.fun @daosdotfun, which can quickly create and deploy Meme coins, saving development costs and time, and quickly occupying market hotspots; community operation and management tools (such as community points systems, interactive activity planning, etc.)
IV. Investment: Which field has the greatest development potential when combined with Meme?
In my personal opinion, the combination of Meme and AI is undoubtedly the most promising in the current crypto market (I threw the same question to Chatgpt, and his answer was also AI).
The Block co-founder Mike Dudas believes that Memecoins are a similar and eye-catching asset class to Non-Fungible Tokens, and as the pace of experimentation accelerates, Memecoins will present a variety of different styles; while AI coins will be one of the most important directions.
The emergence of AI has brought an explosion of creativity, allowing Meme not only to capture hot spots in real-time, but also to generate personalized content and optimize user experience. With the support of AI, Meme becomes more intelligent, not only meeting the entertainment needs of users, but also able to adjust the narrative at any time to adapt to social trends, maintaining the continuous freshness and appeal of Meme culture.
The new "AI + Token + Social Media" trend proposed by @0xcryptowizard is highly recognized. Imagine that in the future, users holding $GOAT will be more willing to interact with the truth terminal, and users holding $ACT will be more willing to share or even participate in the experiments and research of ACT. The community can also donate to support more frontier research on the combination of AI and encryption. The community has a dedicated technical research team, where holders voluntarily participate without compensation, spending time to disassemble the relevant technologies and follow the progress of various AI agent technologies, etc. All of these will contribute to the long-term development of the project.
In addition, AI has also endowed Meme projects with the ability to self-evolve. Through real-time data analysis and machine learning, the AI-driven Meme ecosystem can quickly adapt to market changes, and even predict user demand.
The integration of Meme+AI not only represents the combination of social and entertainment, but also becomes the convergence point of the new generation of attention economy and technological innovation, with lasting vitality.
The "Meme+AI" representatives with already significant scale and influence (all closely associated with a16z):
$GOAT = AI of Bitcoin; a16z founder Marc Andreessen believes that $Goat is the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency, the first instance of the convergence of AI and cryptocurrency.
CA: CzLSujWBLFsSjncfkh59rUFqvafWcY5tzedWJSuypump
$ACT = AI of Ethereum; a16z founder Marc Andreessen's only other funded project besides $Goat; focused on the interaction of multiple AI agents, a pioneer in AI agent collaboration.
CA: GJAFwWjJ3vnTsrQVabjBVK2TYB1YtRCQXRDfDgUnpump
#ai16z: AI of a16z; an investment DAO that uses AI agents to obtain market information on-chain and off-chain, analyze community consensus, and automatically conduct token transactions.
CA: HeLp6NuQkmYB4pYWo2zYs22mESHXPQYzXbB8n4V98jwC
Summary
In 2024, the explosion of Meme coins revealed the limitations of Tokenomics 1.0, and the possibilities of Tokenomics 2.0 are quietly emerging in Meme culture. This change has brought new opportunities and challenges to various links in the industry chain, including investment institutions, project parties, and trading platforms.
Through the new path of "capturing attention first, and then gradually building application scenarios", Meme coins may open up new growth opportunities for the cryptocurrency industry. The combination of Meme+AI is the most worth watching, as it combines the social propagation power of Meme with the technological innovation of AI, driving Meme culture to move towards a deeper economic model.
The diamond hands of Meme may receive more gifts of the times in this cycle.
