Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless; Compiled by Tao Zhu, Jinse Finance
This weekend, while browsing Twitter, I saw David Hoffman highlighting what he believes are the best meme tokens currently on Base.
Great minds think alike, right, because these are the 5 very similar tokens I'm currently seeing on Base. Why?
Fully disclosed, I currently hold some of them, particularly HIGHER, ANON, and ghffb47yii2rteeyy10op. But beyond my personal views, these tokens all have some timely key themes:
They are popular among advanced Farcaster users.
They are also at least indirectly related to artificial intelligence and MEME coins.
They are higher-risk contenders in Base, as people increasingly seek new speculative bets on L2.
Nevertheless, keep your wits about you. The trading volatility around these smaller tokens often spikes sharply up or down in short order. Losing money is inevitable in this realm.
However, these tokens are currently garnering attention for specific reasons. I believe they do have potential upside. At the very least, understanding them can help us better grasp what is currently exciting crypto traders.
Next, let's look at why I think these 5 tokens stand out on Base.
1. HIGHER
The term "MEME coin" suggests the token is primarily driven by its MEME DNA. That's why I wouldn't strictly consider HIGHER a MEME coin, but rather a scene coin: its primary driver is as the native token for the Higher community scene on Base and Farcaster.
Even so, the token's smooth code and the optimistic "let's go higher" theme do imbue it with a shiny and eternal memetic appeal. But when you zoom in, you'll find there's more depth here than 99.9% of MEME coin games. That's why I wouldn't be surprised to see it listed on major centralized exchanges (ahem, Coinbase) in the not-too-distant future.
In short, Higher is an emerging headless brand. I see it on par with Nouns DAO, just more amorphous, and centered around the fungible token HIGHER rather than NFTs. The overall thrust is the same: trying cool experiments together with a group of like-minded creatives. Going higher together.
There are signs this is just the beginning of the fascinating AI-driven curiosity that advanced collectives will produce in the coming years. I'm bullish on it accordingly.
2. CLANKER
The Clanker account, created by Proxy Studio, allows you to mint your own token code, name, and featured image (optional) through any Farcaster client, and then the Clanker AI will bootstrap your liquidity pool on Uniswap V3 on Base for you.
As such, Clanker has become very popular on Farcaster in recent weeks. So far, it has been the driving force behind some of the biggest "fareconomic" token launches, and so far, interest in it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of slowing down. People really like the simplicity and ease of use of this bot.
That said, CLANKER is the native token of Clanker, launched by Clanker, and so it has been trading as a proxy for the broader Clanker token ecosystem that has been thriving on Base and Farcaster lately.
If your thesis is that this token launcher is only going to get bigger in the near future, then CLANKER is one of the primary ways to get in on that journey.
3. LUM
I've already mentioned HIGHER and CLANKER above. The fusion of these two hot projects gave birth to Luminous (ticker LUM), which is why early investors found this token intriguing.
Long story short, someone recently prompted the advanced AI agent Aether to prompt the Clanker token bot to create a brand new token. The result was $LUM.
So, it's not the official token of the Higher community. In short, LUM is now serving as a proxy for the excitement around Aether, and it has now become one of the largest Clanker tokens, currently second in market cap only to CLANKER.
Looking ahead, I think the main risk for LUM is market saturation. More AI agents will enter crypto, and their next experiments will be more novel and exciting.
4. ANON
The ANON story has many touching parts, so let me break it down as simply as possible:
Supercast is an advanced Farcaster client with a Super Anon account, where users can post anonymously; someone used this account to anonymously prompt the Clanker bot to create the ANON token.
Then came the community building. Kartik deployed anoncast.org, which is a new independent privacy-preserving Farcaster client backed by zero-knowledge proofs. If you hold 5,000 ANON, you can use this platform to post anonymously to Farcaster.
While the use case looks simple, it's undeniably elegant, and it's one of the first consumer crypto applications we've seen here that's backed by zk. Even Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has taken an interest; he bought a small ANON bag, asked questions, and even offered design suggestions.
Now more and more people are rushing to use the application, but what's the long-term potential?
Time will tell, but there's no doubt that Anoncast and ANON are currently capturing the imagination and attention of the Farcaster ecosystem. The bullish prospect is that Anoncast iterates new features around ANON, making it an increasingly popular utility token on top of Base, which is certainly possible.
5. ghffb47yii2rteeyy10op
The idea behind this MEME coin is a dog in a tie asking Clanker for a MEME coin. That's pure dadaism. Remember how I said MEME coins are primarily driven by MEME DNA? Well, ghffb47yii2rteeyy10op is pure MEME. There's nothing here beyond the delightfully absurd narrative, and that's enough to garner some attention these days.
However, don't harbor any illusions: this token has only a few days of history, and it may very well be discarded and forgotten in short order. Of the 5 tokens mentioned in this article, this is the highest-risk one so far. But sometimes the crazy and incomprehensible can survive and thrive under current market conditions, so if you're looking for degen plays on Base, this is one of the latest contenders to consider.
