In the month of May that has just passed, a wealth effect magnified thousands-fold, triggered a surge in the Meme market. As the fervor gradually subsided, three new projects entered the forefront of the meme sector in terms of market capitalization — ArbDog AI, Milady Meme Coin, and PEPE. Of these, ArbDog AI adopted a distribution model that airdropped to specific addresses, while Milady Meme Coin and PEPE were directly sent to liquidity pools. This article provides a retrospective look at these three projects.
ArbDog AI
ArbDog AI was launched on April 15th with a total token volume of 210 quadrillion (2.1 quadrillion). 95% of the tokens were distributed freely to addresses with ARB token airdrop eligibility. The claim period lasted from April 15th to May 15th, a total duration of one month. 5% of the tokens were set aside to incentivize users’ invitation. The inviters could generate a unique link to invite eligible addresses for the airdrop. In return, they would receive 10% of the total token amount claimed by the invited address as a reward. The 5% reward pool operated on a first-come-first-served basis.
ArbDog AI did not adopt an average distribution method. The earlier an address claimed its tokens, the more tokens it received. The quantity received by the last batch of addresses was merely 1% of that received by the first batch.
ArbDog AI imposes a 15% burning tax on chain transactions, which is allocated as follows:
This allows for AIDOGE mining, with a current staking quantity of 41,745.6 trillion, representing 20% of the total issuance, at an APY of 43%. Users who purchase $100-$1000 of AIDOGE on-chain will be eligible to participate in the Lucky Drop, which draws winners every half hour.
The project team has also issued AICODE tokens, which users can earn through “mining” in the form of burning and trading AIDOGE. Burning Mining accounts for 60% of the issuance, with totaling 12,600,000 tokens, and Trading Mining accounts for 40%, with 8,400,000 tokens.
AICODE has helped absorb some of the selling pressure from AIDOGE, and the token price has been on a downward trajectory. On May 23rd, the project team passed a proposal to cease further issuance of AICODE, and stopped releasing AICODE mining rewards from May 24th. This proposal benefits the price maintenance of AICODE, but it also reduces the use case for AIDOGE tokens.
AIDOGE has been listed on OKX, Gate, and Bitget, with a current address count of 263,000. The highest point of AIDOGE token price appeared on May 1st, reaching a circulating market value of $150 million. The price has since fallen, with the current circulating market value at $55 million.
PEPE
PEPE Memecoin was launched on April 18, 2023, and made it to the list of top 100 tokens by total market value in just over two weeks. It has been listed on major exchanges, including Binance.
According to its official website, PEPE Memecoin aims to be the most memorable Memecoin. However, it clearly states that PEPE is a Meme token with no inherent value or expected returns. There is no official team or roadmap, and PEPE has no practical use and is strictly for entertainment. Also, it declares that “PEPE Coin has no association whatsoever with Matt Furie and his creation, Pepe the Frog Meme.”
PEPE uses a more direct distribution an’anxanxxmethod. It has a total issuance of 420.69 trillion, with 93.1% of the tokens sent to the liquidity pool. The remaining 6.9% is stored in a multi-signature wallet named “pepecexwallet.eth”for future use in listing on exchanges, cross-chain, and LP usage. In terms of mechanism design, $PEPE represents pure meme culture, and its minimalist design maximizes meme culture and sentiment.
PEPE brought the Meme season to its climax, creating many wealth legends. Currently, it has 115,000 token holders, and according to MESSARI statistics, PEPE gained over 100,000 holders on-chain in just 22 days, growing much faster than other tokens.
A significant number of early PEPE purchasers also held Milady NFTs, which could have been the early capital force driving the rise in PEPE’s price.
Milady Meme Coin LADYS
Milady Maker is a collection of 10,000 neochibi-styled PFP (Profile picture) NFTs, created in August 2021. The term ‘chibi’ originates from Japanese, meaning ‘little dwarf’, ‘buster’, or ‘little guy’. It’s used in anime art to denote a youthful, childish style of drawing, similar to the ‘chibi’ or ‘Q version’ in Chinese expressions.
The design of Milady Meme Coin is similar to PEPE, with a total issuance of 888,000,888,000,888. 94% of the tokens were sent to the liquidity pool, 1% was airdropped to $PEPE and Milady NFT holders, who could claim these between May 8th and 15th, 2023. 5% is stored in an ens-named “miladymeme.eth” multi-signature wallet for future use in listing on exchanges, cross-chain, and LP usage.
On May 10th, Musk shared a picture of a Milady NFT on Twitter. After Musk’s tweet, the price of LADYS soared, with the market value reaching a high of $150 million.
Aside from exchanges, contracts, and addresses added to the blacklist, DWF Labs holds the most significant amount of LADYS. According to lookonchain observations, DWF Labs’ “0xd4b6” address transferred 2.2T LADYS Tokens to an exchange on May 11th, and the price of LADYS experienced a decline after the transfer.
Conclusion
Looking back at the development path of meme coins, the rise of a meme project typically requires the following steps:
1. Build a simple and easily disseminated image or narrative.
2. Fairly distribute to a broad group.
3. Community propagation, such as KOL promotion, attention-grabbing wealth stories, and frequent Twitter space.
4. Celebrity effect, such as Elon Musk, the strongest IP in meme.
5. Rapid price increases draw market attention and a wide range of users.
6. Once a certain scale is reached, list on centralized exchanges to increase liquidity.
Investment strategies for meme tokens can be summarized as follows:
1. Discovering targets — Focus on Tokens where the main daily on-chain transactions profit and track smart money address position changes.
2. Evaluating targets — Consider a more diversified token holding distribution; a certain number of token-holding addresses and trading volume/liquidity; whether contract settings are secure; whether the team is anonymous; and whether the token economic model is fair and reasonable.
3. Controlling risk — Diversify investments and pay real-time attention to large-scale on-chain changes.
4. Perceive changes in sentiment and social dissemination scope.
5. Monitor the increase speed of token-holding addresses and changes in trading volume.
Tracking meme coins requires the ability to quickly capture and analyze information, react and act promptly. The challenge is to align knowledge and action, being able to sell when excitement is at its peak, which is a challenge of human nature. Meme tokens have shortened and intensified the game between people, with every meme token’s rise invariably driven by capital. Choosing to participate in the game also means playing with whales, you could be getting on board or getting left behind. While we see wealth legends, it’s also crucial to acknowledge the high risks involved.
Historically, the first two meme market events occurred towards the end of a bullish market. After meme tokens generated large trading volumes, BTC experienced a decline. Meme tokens seem to be a final carnival. While tracking meme alpha, it’s important to closely and timely monitor major market changes to protect your large positions of funds.
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LD Capital has successively discovered and invested more than 300 companies in Infra/Protocol/Dapp/Privacy/Metaverse/Layer2/DeFi/DAO/GameFi fields since 2016.
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