MEME coins are once again making headlines as prices for tokens like PEPE, BONK, FLOKI, and even WIF soared to new heights. The familiar world of MEME trading is back in action. But how do you create a successful MEME project?
Before we answer that question, let’s first ask ourselves: why are MEMEs important?
In the world of MEME coins, we don’t talk about fundamentals, forget about market caps and FDVs, and ignore the fancy vocabulary used by mainstream VCs. This is a playground for regular players.
Here, the spirit of entertainment reigns supreme. Little Zhao plays slot machines, Xiao Ming plays the stock market, Xiao Wang plays with sneakers, Xiao Zhang plays the stock market, and Xiao Chen plays with mainstream coins. And at this very moment, we play with MEMEs, with the chance of winning a big prize and having a bright future.
This is why MEMEs have thrived in the financial market, especially in the cryptocurrency industry.
Decentralization, community, anti-VC, anti-traditional, fair launches, grassroots, and more – these Web3 terms are naturally tailored to MEME players.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen the emergence of well-known MEME coins like Dogecoin, BONK, PEPE, and SHIB. Every successful MEME doesn’t just go viral easily or effortlessly.
So, let’s get back to the main topic: how do we create a successful MEME?
Large supply, low price
MEME coins are different from public chains, L2s, or DeFi. The latter often have a supply of 1 billion to 10 billion tokens, while MEME coins are calculated in trillions or even quadrillions. Let’s take a look at the top 150 MEME coins by market cap as shown in the chart below.
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(As of February 23, 2024)
Behind such a large supply is the capturing of the speculative expectations of players. Smart project teams won’t list their MEME tokens for a few dollars. They’ll use low-priced strategies to attract high-risk players and retain small retail investors who don’t have much capital.
We must keep the price low so that players see a larger quantity when they buy, allowing them to play with a small investment but have the chance to win big.
Another important factor is the ease of “going zero.”
Going zero is not only a strong bullish indicator in trading but also helps ignite FOMO in the community, spreading quickly.
During bull markets, stories of sudden wealth spread the fastest and widest, and once a MEME occupies a position in that narrative, it will attract a frenzy of bold capital inflows.
Design popular cultural symbols
Many well-known global brands often have brand images associated with universally recognized mascots. For example, Ferrari’s logo is a horse, Lamborghini’s logo is a bull, and QQ’s logo is a penguin. These globally recognized animal symbols and logos are memorable, easy to understand, and provide a huge advantage for brand dissemination.
If we want to create a successful MEME coin, we should learn from these experiences. Dogecoin, SHIB, and BONK all have dogs as their mascots, specifically Shiba Inus. These animals, based on popular culture, have had their facial images widely disseminated. Additionally, Dogecoin’s tipping culture has made it a popular tipping token in the United States.
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As the oldest MEME coin, Dogecoin has gone through multiple bull and bear cycles and is still writing its legendary story.
Looking at the more recent PEPE, it stands out by choosing a frog, a widely beloved mascot in Western communities, as its symbol. Its unique design, with big eyes and green skin, gives it high recognition.
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Not only that, this frog has spawned various expressions, showing different emotions such as happiness, anger, surprise, and more. Some crypto influencers even occasionally use this frog image in their comments and replies, adding to its popularity.
Therefore, leveraging well-known popular culture or mascots can play a significant role in creating a MEME.
MEME coins don’t instantly gain attention and popularity from celebrities. Dogecoin, for example, only gained Elon Musk’s favor in recent years due to its cute and fun symbols and tipping culture.
Elon Musk, with billions of followers on Twitter, has brought significant exposure to Dogecoin. The small payment tipping feature on the X platform has also been a positive factor, generating a lot of buzz.
In 2023, Musk even changed his Twitter logo to the Dogecoin icon for three days. He also temporarily declared himself the CEO of Dogecoin and shared payment methods and opinions about Dogecoin on Twitter.
Every mention and even the collaboration between Musk’s companies and Dogecoin brings a lot of attention to Dogecoin.
Apart from the rare opportunity of having a celebrity spokesperson, leveraging the celebrity effect is also a good choice.
SHIB, which took off in the previous cycle, may not be performing well now, but it started off smartly. It first left a comment in Musk’s Twitter thread, successfully catching his attention and sparking interest.
Later, it transferred half of its tokens to Vitalik when the global pandemic was raging. Vitalik then donated the tokens to an Indian charity organization, generating a lot of buzz and making SHIB known in India. After this event, many other MEME coins tried to imitate by transferring tokens to Vitalik, but their effects were far from that of SHIB.
It’s worth mentioning that even MEME coins on the Solana ecosystem, like nuts, choose to piggyback on Musk’s Twitter comments. Whenever Musk comments on nuts, the price of nuts soars.
Another influential spokesperson is Tolga, the co-founder of Solana. SILLY, with its cute and funny appearance, successfully caught Tolga’s attention. It even appeared on stage at Solana Breakpoint 2023 wearing a dragon costume, creating a “silly dragon” trend.
Gathering more “community consensus”
The price of a cryptocurrency is closely related to the attention it receives. The more attention it gets, the more people will understand it, and the more people will buy it, driving the price up.
To create a successful MEME, we need to understand its essence. It’s different from utility or governance tokens. It completely abandons narratives, staking, and other traditional concepts and openly admits that its tokens are “useless.” In this case, the value of the token is entirely dependent on “community consensus.”
And community and decentralization are the most in line with the original teachings of the crypto community. This means that viral spread requires community resonance and “spontaneity,” rather than intentional marketing efforts.
However, some marketing efforts may still be necessary when the hype dies down.
DOGE’s sponsorship of the “Doge-1” lunar mission, for example, continuously boosted the token’s price. In addition to high online traffic, SHIB and Dogecoin have also made notable offline partnerships. They are accepted as payment by some cinemas, supermarkets, and brands, such as luxury brand Gucci, AMC, the largest operator of theaters in the United States, and GameStop, a retail giant in the American video game and entertainment software industry. These partnerships undoubtedly bring more exposure to their brands.
As a MEME coin, it’s not enough to just sit back and do nothing, relying solely on posting pictures on Twitter to gain community support. BONK, although not as active in expanding offline brand partnerships as its predecessors, has made notable interactions within the Solana ecosystem. For example, it has collaborated with other DeFi projects to add liquidity and stake tokens.
PEPE, on the other hand, shares interesting images, comics, and even memes in the community. Additionally, it sponsors art competitions to promote its frog emoji.
Whether online or offline, leveraging celebrity endorsements or current events, gathering more “community consensus” is essential to fuel the rise in the price of MEME coins.
Choose the most popular mainstream public chains (Ethereum and Solana) with the most funds and users
Looking at existing MEME coins, most of them are on popular public chains. Dogecoin, SHIB, and PEPE are on Ethereum. With the rise of Solana, BONK, WIF, SILLY, and others have also gained fame.
Other public chains, for various reasons, have not seen particularly successful MEMEs. Public chains are like reservoirs – the more wealth and users they have, the more funds can flow into MEME coins. Additionally, since MEME assets often rely heavily on the “overflow” of active on-chain funds, there is almost no survival space for MEME assets on relatively early-stage public chains or on public chains other than the few top ones.
Take FUD, a MEME coin on the Sui blockchain, for example. Despite being promoted by Sui’s official accounts and choosing a highly tolerant dog image, FUD did not achieve the “expected” results, and its price continued to decline, even in the context of Sui’s price performance and constantly breaking new TVL highs. In fact, the Sui ecosystem has not seen any successful MEME tokens “break out” so far.
When we shift our focus to Layer 2 solutions, we suddenly realize that MEME coins are scarce. Airdoge, which gained some popularity through widespread airdrops, quickly disappeared, and other Layer 2 solutions have yet to produce highly recognized MEMEs.
During key events such as project airdrops, mainnet launches, and token model announcements, if executed properly, we may gain significant attention.
Make good use of airdrops to attract market attention
When we don’t have any other favorable conditions, conducting large-scale airdrops to selected public chain users and token holders is an effective way to quickly gain recognition for MEME coins.
A notable example is BONK, the rising star on Solana. Initially, it faced some challenges, but during the heavy blow to the Solana ecosystem caused by the SBF incident, it generously allocated 60% of its tokens to airdrop to the ecosystem’s users. As SOL quickly recovered and attracted market attention over the past year, BONK was listed on exchanges like Binance and OKX. BONK found its own path through widespread airdrops and the revival of the Solana ecosystem, without relying on celebrity endorsements or hot events.
Even non-MEME projects often gain significant attention through airdrops. For example, Flare, Celestia, Dymention, AltLayer, Wormhole, and more. Some projects’ tokens have become golden shovels, receiving airdrops just by staking their tokens in wallets.
For example, when conducting airdrops in the Cosmos ecosystem, it’s often wise to choose TIA and ATOM token holders for airdrops because they have a larger user base and more token holders. Leveraging the reputation of other project teams can quickly gain recognition.
In conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, I believe attentive readers already know what to do, right? To create a successful MEME coin, we need to consider tokenomics, mascots, airdrop methods, and the choice of blockchain for issuance. With the right timing, favorable conditions, and people, the probability of success will increase.
If we want to choose some cute animals as mascots, we can consider these names: Cotton Belly Frog, Chas’s Marsh Rabbit, Serval, Utah Goose, South African Elephant Shrew, Marimba Bear…
