LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

TL;DR

  • As of November 29, 2024, the overall market value of Meme Coin has climbed to $116.82 billion, accounting for 3.5% of the market share, and is showing a growing trend;

  • Overall, the Meme coin market performed well in 2024, with the Benchmark index performing 279.8%, surpassing mainstream coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. It has become a new type of investment target and is welcomed by retail investors, institutions, and funds.

  • The prosperity of the Meme coin market is largely based on the continuous improvement of the underlying infrastructure, especially the launch platforms Pump.fun, Sunpump, Moonshot and other products, which have greatly reduced the cost of token issuance and player participation;

  • Memes of chains such as Solana and Ethereum are more competitive. Although the launch of Base chain in Q2 and Sunpump on Tron chain in Q3 ushered in a brief boom, the narrative is obviously weak and the long-tail effect is insufficient;

  • In 2024, the meme wave was influenced by narrative, social hot spots, technology, etc. At this stage, animal memes and cult culture memes are the majority in narrative, and they have deep cultural roots and loyal fan bases;

  • Meme has become a new battlefield for crypto CEX competition, exacerbating the user traffic disputes between leading exchanges and radical exchanges. Among them, LBank has become the new Meme King with the advantages of "being the first to launch Meme and having a concentrated Meme wealth effect";

  • Although Meme was controversial in the early days, with mixed attitudes among institutions, retail investors and KOLs, as the Meme market effect became more pronounced in the second half of the year, the attitudes of some institutions have changed;

1: Meme’s overall market performance is better than other narratives

Meme Market Outperforms Other Narratives

According to Artemis Terminal data, from the beginning of the year to November 29, Memecoin's Benchmark index performance was 279.8%, far exceeding Bitcoin's 118.9% and gold's 27.4%. Among them, in the first half of 2024, AI Token took the lead, but starting from March, Memecoin overtook and bucked the trend, with the Benchmark index ranking top 1, and the data maintained above 40%; in the second half of 2024, with the market recovery, Memecoin, Bitcoin and gold showed a positive correlation, among which Memecoin's Benchmark index performance was significantly better than Bitcoin, gold and Outerlands fundamentals index.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 (Data source: Artmis Terminal)

According to CoinMarketCap data, as of November 29, 2021, the total market value of Meme Coin has increased significantly, jumping from $22.28 billion at the beginning of the year to $116.82 billion, an increase of 424%. At the same time, its daily trading volume has also experienced a significant increase, from a low of about $685 million in early February to a high of $71.91 billion on November 14.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 Meme coin market cap and daily trading volume

(Source: CoinMarketCap )

It is worth noting that compared with the peak of transactions in March, November ushered in the Meme Summer craze again, with daily trading volume remaining stable at about 30 billion US dollars and once exceeding the 70 billion US dollar mark. The market's interest and confidence in the Meme has rebounded strongly to close to the level of March, and this trend is still continuing.

In 2024, the entire crypto market has undergone natural screening and evolution. The long-revered crypto narrative has been questioned, financial nihilism is prevalent, and Meme coins have occupied the headlines of the crypto market with their super strong communication properties and their own absurd, spontaneous and dramatic performances. They have also been officially recognized as a single track and have gained widespread recognition and audience base, becoming a new "growth point" pursued by the crypto market.

Review of the Meme Market Dynamics of the Year

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

Starting from mid-March 2024, the pre-sale of BOME's Meme coin ignited the market. Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm's BOOK OF MEME (BOME) caused a surge in gas fees on the Solana chain, and the market value reached 1.9 billion US dollars in three days. At the end of March, Slerf adopted a pre-sale model, but due to the founder's mistake, the liquidity token was destroyed. Instead, it became a "Fair Launch" social experiment, and the market value quickly exceeded 100 million US dollars, becoming the new king. Since June, the TVL of the Base chain has grown to 8 billion US dollars, and the Meme coin project has gained popularity on the Base chain. In July, Mister Miggles' Meme coin soared 900 times. As the US election approaches, PolitiFi-themed Meme coins such as People and MAGA (TRUMP) have also set off a speculative boom.

In Q4, Neiro led the craze of dog-themed meme coins and experienced dramatic ups and downs. Solana chain's Neiro soared 50 times due to Vitalik's selling of MEME tokens. The capitalized NEIRO on Ethereum used the exchange to push its market value back to $180 million, but it encountered a crisis of trust due to the "rat warehouse" incident. At this time, the community version of lowercase $Neiro was launched on Binance, soaring 30 times and becoming an emerging meme force. In late October, $GOAT (Goatseus Maximus), an AI-themed meme, rose 70 times in 4 days and was listed on Binance contracts. At the end of October, $Ban quickly broke through the market value of $20 million with the background of banana artworks auctioned by Sotheby's, becoming a hot spot for performance art.

At the same time, $ACT and $PNUT became representatives of AI Meme and "rescue theme" Meme. The latter originated from the tragic story of Peanut the squirrel and became a symbol of the intersection of politics and culture. The two memecoins $RIF and $URO launched by pump.science soared 20 times in just two days, and Binance Labs' first layout in the DeSci field once again triggered a wave of market innovation. In mid-to-late November, ChillGuy became a rising star in the Meme field with a market value of over 600 million US dollars through tweets from the President of El Salvador and Musk, demonstrating the seamless combination of Meme and social media hype.

2: Solana and Ethereum become the main battlefields for Meme players to participate

In this Meme wave, Solana and Ethereum have become the main battlefields for Meme players to participate, and most of the popular and top projects including BOME, Neiro, MOODENG, and GOAT were also born here.

CoinGecko data shows that as of November 29, the total market value of Meme has grown by more than US$116.82 billion, and the daily trading volume has remained at US$10 billion. Among them, the market value of Meme on Ethereum has exceeded US$34 billion, and the market value of Meme on Solana has exceeded US$20.4 billion. The two account for 46.56% of the overall market. At the same time, most of the Top 10 Meme projects come from Ethereum and Solana, which also confirms the strong influence and appeal of Ethereum and Solana in Meme.

According to DexScreener data, a large number of Meme coins are created every day, especially during the Pump.fun and SunPump crazes, when the number of memes created daily reached an astonishing 100,000. Meme coins have shown a booming development trend in multiple blockchain ecosystems such as Solana, Ethereum, Base, and BNB.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

Ethereum Meme Coin Ecosystem

As the birthplace of the earliest Meme, Ethereum has irreplaceable advantages. Among the top 10 Meme projects by market value, 4 of them are from Ethereum. As of November 29, their total market value reached 26.2 billion US dollars, accounting for 20.85%.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

Judging from market share, development history, user scale, user type and other data, the top Meme coins on the Ethereum chain not only have significant market advantages, but also have strong community support. In terms of launch time, most of the Ethereum Meme coins with higher market value were launched earlier, the earliest of which was Shib, which was released in August 2020 and currently has a market value of more than 14.8 billion US dollars. These Meme coins have gone through a long-term market test, and the accumulation of time has further consolidated users' consensus on the project.

In this round of Meme coin craze, we have observed a significant trend: compared with Solana, the liquidity of the same projects on Ethereum is generally better. Take MAGA as an example, its liquidity on Ethereum is 15.5 times that of Solana, which is particularly eye-catching. In addition, from the perspective of market value, trading volume, position size and other key dimensions, Neiro on the Ethereum platform has also shown better performance than its Solana chain.

Ethereum has a certain advantage in the meme coin market size, which is mainly due to the strong support of old meme coins such as SHIB and PEPE. However, during this round of Meme Summer, Ethereum's performance in creating new meme "stems" was slightly insufficient, and its meme content was still mainly concentrated on zoo themes and PEPE derivative themes.

Solana Meme Coin Ecosystem

Solana is the fertile soil for this wave of Meme craze. Many new leading Memes mostly come from this chain, which has injected strong momentum into Solana's data growth and on-chain activity. DefiLlama data shows that due to the rising hype of Meme coins, the daily transaction fee on the Solana blockchain reached a peak of US$13.86 million on November 22.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 (Source: DefiLlama)

As of November 29, the total market value of meme coins on Solana exceeded 20 billion. Among them, Bonk ranked first in Solana Meme Coin market value with a market value of 3.3 billion US dollars, followed by WIF (3.1 billion US dollars), POPCAT (1.2 billion US dollars), PNUT (1.19 billion US dollars), MEW (840 million US dollars) and GOAT (840 million US dollars).

On November 17, for the first time, six Memecoins with a market value of over $1 billion appeared on Solana at the same time, all of which were in the top 100 by market value, setting a new historical record.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 (Source: CoinGecko )

The meme craze in the Solana ecosystem is largely due to the outbreak of BOME and SLERF in March. These two projects not only created a wealth myth in a very short period of time, but also helped Solana flourish under the FOMO sentiment that is prevalent in the market. In addition, the extensive interaction of Solana's founders has enhanced the spread of this craze and further expanded its influence.

The Meme projects on the Solana platform have quickly attracted a lot of attention with their keen ability to capture hot spots. They not only show amazing price surge potential and strong appeal to capital, but are also extremely diverse in creativity, ranging from cute pets (cats and dogs), interesting emoticons to cutting-edge PolitiFi and AI themes.

3: The infrastructure is constantly improving, and the Meme distribution platform, mainly Pump.fun, is accelerating the prosperity of the Meme market

Behind this round of Meme market boom, the rapid development of infrastructure and on-chain robots is indispensable, providing multifunctional super sniper robots including fixed investment, limit orders, pool monitoring, etc., which can make smarter decisions based on real-time data and actionable signals. At the same time, the improvement of infrastructure such as "one-click coin issuance", "ultra-low cost" and "simplified process" has promoted the prosperity of the Meme market, and the emergence of distribution platforms such as Pump.fun, Moonshot and SunPump has accelerated the arrival of Meme Summer.

Among them, Pump.fun occupies an excellent ecological position with its first-mover advantage, continues to attract market attention, and forms a liquidity agglomeration effect. More traffic will emerge in Pump.fun and continue to attract liquidity through incremental growth.

Pump.fun

Pump.fun was created by founder Alon in January 2024. It is a platform for creating and trading Meme coins based on the Solana blockchain, allowing anyone to launch their own Meme coins at the lowest cost (0.02SOL). So far, Pump.fun has issued more than 1 million Meme coins, accounting for 67.5% of Solana's daily token issuance, and has become the highest-earning protocol on Solana.

In 2024, most of the popular Meme coins were created on Pump.fun, including PNUT with a market value of US$1.19 billion and GOAT with a market value of US$840 million.

Core features:

  • Core Mechanism: No team allocation, no pre-sale, automated liquidity injection, and a unique Bonding Curve pricing model;

  • Low coin issuance cost and convenient operation: Users do not need to have any programming skills or technical background, and only need to pay 0.02 SOL to create and issue their own Meme coins;

Pump.fun’s Market Performance and Wealth Effect

Dune data shows that as of November 29, Pump.fun has deployed more than 4 million Meme coins since its launch in February, successfully captured 1,527,143 Sols, and generated total revenue of more than $1.5 million.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 ( Source: Dune )

Among them, DefiLlama data shows that Pump.fun is currently the eighth largest revenue blockchain protocol, with fee income reaching US$86 million in the past 30 days and cumulative fee income exceeding US$225 million. On November 25, Pump.fun surpassed Tether for the first time, with a daily income of US$14.49 million, becoming the protocol with the highest 24-hour revenue.

MoonShot

Moonshot is a mobile app built on the Solana network that focuses on Meme transactions. It supports users to directly purchase Meme coins through legal currency deposit methods such as Apple Pay, credit cards, and PayPal. Moonshot has attracted a large number of traditional users to participate in Meme coin investment by simplifying the operation process of cryptocurrency.

Among them, Moonshot was incubated by Alliance DAO, the incubation team of Pump.fun, and was recommended by Murad, a new generation KOL of Meme, in the early stage of its launch. After the launch of $MOODENG and $GOAT, they both achieved an increase of more than ten times and entered the public eye.

Core features:

  • Fiat currency deposit: Users can quickly top up funds through payment methods such as Apple Pay, credit cards and PayPal.

  • Token screening and listing mechanism: Moonshot strictly screens and quickly lists highly popular Meme coins, providing users with potential profit opportunities.

  • Convenient transactions: No wallet management or gas fees are required, and all transactions are completed in seconds through Solana.

Moonshot’s Market Performance and Wealth Effect

Dune data shows that Moonshot's transaction volume and transaction fees are generally on the rise. Since September, Moonshot's daily transaction fee income has peaked at more than 270,000 US dollars, and the maximum number of daily trading users is 13,856.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 ( Source: Dune )

As a mobile platform focusing on Meme coin transactions, Moonshot maintains a low-frequency, high-quality coin listing rhythm with its rigorous token screening mechanism. On the platform, many potential Meme coins shined as soon as they were launched, especially MOODENG and GOAT, which recorded an astonishing 100-fold and 30-fold growth respectively after Moonshot went online, quickly attracting the attention of many retail investors and setting off waves of short-term value surges. Moonshot's model of "selecting coins to trigger growth" has become a highly sought-after highlight in the Meme coin market.

SunPump

SunPump is a TRON-based Meme coin generator platform launched by Sun.io on August 9. Users only need to select a picture, set the number of tokens and the theme, and then pay a small amount of money to issue their own Meme coin.

Core features:

  • One-click coin issuance: Users only need to fill in simple information such as token name, symbol, description and picture, and pay a small amount of TRX creation fee to issue their own Meme coins with one click.

  • Bonding Curve Pricing Model: SunPump adopts the Bonding Curve pricing model, which ensures that all participants trade in a fair environment and avoids the price manipulation problems common in traditional ICOs.

  • Automatic liquidity injection: When the market value of Meme Coin reaches a certain standard, SunPump will automatically inject part of the funds into the SunSwap V2 liquidity pool and destroy the corresponding number of tokens.

  • Gas fee reduction: SunPump has launched a gas fee reduction of up to 99%.

Sunpump's Market Performance and Wealth Effect

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 ( Source: CoinGecko )

According to CoinGecko data, as of November 29, the market value of the SunPump ecosystem exceeded $220 million. Dune data shows that Sunpump has successfully issued 92,039 Meme coins, with a total profit of $35,635.04 TRX. Its on-chain gas fees and transaction volume reached a historical peak on August 21, and its revenue on that day exceeded Pump.fun, reaching $560,000.

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

 ( Source: Dune )

Meme projects on the SunPump platform have obvious short-term effects and often face challenges that are difficult to maintain in the long term. Among them, Sundog, the most popular meme on SunPump, has rapidly climbed to a high of $200 million in less than a week since its launch. However, the subsequent growth momentum has gradually weakened, and the current market value is stable at around $160 million.

4: Meme narratives are condensed by hot events, celebrity effects, cult culture and AI memes

As a unique phenomenon in the crypto market, Meme coins show diverse development trends in different cycles. In the Meme Summer of 2024, it is not only affected by market sentiment, market narratives, mechanism innovation, celebrity effects, and technological progress, but also becomes an important window for interpreting market sentiment. Meme has gradually evolved into a multi-faceted prism that reflects investor mentality, maps hot events, and leads market narratives.

There are four main types of Meme coins on the market:

  • The cult culture represented by POPCAT has gained market recognition through its unique community cultural cohesion;

  • There are old meme coins such as DOGE, which are frequently endorsed by the "Meme Godfather" Elon Musk, and there are also up-and-coming zoo memes such as Neiro, which continue to lead the market through celebrity effects and lasting market influence.

  • Hotspot mapping systems represented by BAN can quickly respond to and quantify hotspot events;

  • The AI theme series represented by GOAT and ACT combines new technology narratives to create a new arena;

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

Cult and zoo memes showed strong market resilience in the 2024 Meme Summer, especially after experiencing market washouts and long-term turbulence, and achieved a significant rebound and sustained long-tail effect in early November.

Cult-based meme coins, such as POPCAT, have gained strong market recognition through specific cultural symbols and carefully constructed community spirit. Compared with the wide spread of zoo-based meme coins, cult-based meme coins emphasize the cohesion and exclusivity of the community. They maximize user stickiness through a unique "inner circle culture", and this stickiness is not only reflected in the market's rising cycle, but also in the case of market downturns or increased uncertainty, showing strong market tolerance.

Zoo memes represent the most entertaining and social category. From Doge and Shib, which have been frequently supported by Elon Musk, to newcomers Neiro and APU, they have maintained strong user stickiness for a long time through simple, easy-to-spread images and humorous marketing methods. Although the initial performance of Meme coins often depends on market sentiment fluctuations and short-term speculative crazes, their unique cultural and social images, and the blessing of celebrity effects, have given them stronger market resistance. In 2024, the market rebounded, and the zoo meme coins once again ushered in an outbreak with the long-accumulated cultural identity. In particular, the redemption story of PNUT, its counterattack is a milestone event for animal memes. The success of PNUT has led to the rise of a series of redemption concept memes, which is the best proof of the strong resilience and inclusiveness of animal memes.

Hotspot mapping and AI theme are the products of the rapid change of market hotspots and the development of new technologies. The value of Meme coins generated by hotspot mapping such as BAN is more reflected in its ability to quickly respond to market events and effectively convert them into market capital attention; AI theme Memes often use "technology-driven" and "future potential" as selling points to attract a large number of technology investors and AI enthusiasts.

The highlights of Meme Summer 2024 are Cult culture, zoo concepts, hot events, and AI innovation, but we can foresee that as the Meme market continues to develop, Meme narratives will become more diverse, and under the catalysis of short video platforms such as Tiktok, the spread speed and influence of Memes have been significantly improved. For example, Tiktok-concept Memes such as Chillguy are popular in the market, showing the characteristics of the integration of hot events and celebrity effects. Looking to the future, this interweaving of multi-dimensional narratives will continue to inject new vitality into the Meme market and bring more possibilities to Meme creation.

5: Meme has become a pump pool for CEX to compete for traffic, among which LBank has become the new generation of Meme King with its significant wealth effect

In the current market environment where competition between CEX and DEX is becoming increasingly fierce, traditional centralized exchanges are facing a situation of being squeezed. In order to seek new sources of revenue and seize market share, CEX has begun to actively adjust its listing strategy, increasingly tending to cater to users' demand for Meme coins. Meme coins have become a key tool for attracting new users and stimulating capital inflows due to their high traffic and rapid wealth effect.

In essence, similar to Bitcoin's dual nature as a safe-haven asset and a risky asset, Meme coin is a new category that can be treated as a single sector for most exchanges. Due to its skyrocketing wealth effect, it meets investors' rigid demand for profit growth and lowers the learning threshold for investors to allocate risky assets.

We have sorted out the information of the competitive exchanges that have listed Meme coins, and started with the popular Meme coins, measuring the sensitivity of the exchanges through data such as the time of listing and the maximum increase. The details are as follows:

1) Listing situation, mainly statistics on the number of meme assets on various exchanges, details are as follows:

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

Throughout 2024, LBank, Gate, and Bitget have the largest number of memes launched, which are 281, 63, and 46 respectively. The proportion of meme coins is also very significant, with LBank reaching 34%, Gate 15%, and Bitget 9%.

2) Popular memecoins are compared mainly based on the listing time, current increase and market trading volume share. The situation is as follows:

LBank Labs 2024 Meme Track Research: Breaking the Circle and Rebirth, From Controversial Narratives to the 100 Billion Track

Data research shows that Binance still has the highest market share and still has a relatively strong listing effect, but compared with second-tier exchanges such as LBank, Bitget, and Gate, its listing effect is weakening;

Secondly, LBank, Gate and Bitget, with their keener market sense and higher coin listing efficiency, were listed the earliest and successfully captured the early dividends of the Meme market, becoming the best battlefield for PVP to gain Beta benefits. Among them, LBank launched MOODENG as early as September 23, and its maximum increase reached an astonishing 63 times. Its GOAT and PNUT set a record of 299 times and 81 times of increase on LBank respectively.

It is worth noting that LBank’s special cooperation with SLERF in April attracted a large amount of traffic, among which the transaction volume of Goat, Neiro and other platforms even surpassed Kucoin and was on par with OKX data. Especially in the early stages of the Meme coin craze, trading platforms attracted a large number of community users and transaction traffic by quickly launching hot projects, thus establishing a strong competitive barrier for them in this field;

The competition landscape of the Meme market is gradually differentiating. First-tier exchanges rely more on brand effects and existing user advantages, while second-tier exchanges such as LBank have come from behind in the battle for traffic with faster coin listing speeds and strategies that are closer to market sentiment. This trend shows that future competition among exchanges will not only rely on platform scale and brand strength, but also require greater flexibility and accuracy in market timeliness and user demand satisfaction.

This strategic shift by the exchange is not only an active response to the Meme culture, but also an effort to create a narrative of “emerging retail investor power” in the increasingly cyclical cryptocurrency market, further strengthening its influence in the minds of users. This trend also reflects the importance of market-driven Meme sentiment in the exchange’s revenue strategy.

6: Although Meme coin was controversial in the early days, with mixed attitudes from institutions, retail investors and KOLs, as the Meme market effect gradually emerged in the second half of the year, the attitudes of some institutions began to change

VC coins were once regarded as the "future stars" of the crypto industry due to their strong financial support and technical team. However, with the massive influx of private equity capital and overly aggressive valuations, many VC coins are facing the dual problems of low circulating supply and high fully diluted valuation (FDV), making it difficult for these projects to realize their long-term value.

In mid-to-late April, Eddy Lazzarin, managing partner of a16z, publicly supported VC coins and criticized the impact and damage of Meme coins on the crypto market, which triggered a large number of retail investors’ siege and ridicule, and even became the fuse of the debate between VC coins and Meme coins. However, in October this year, a casual conversation between a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen unexpectedly gave birth to the first AI Meme coin, GOAT, marking a new trend for Meme coins.

Unlike VC coins that rely on strong technical and financial support, the value of Meme coins does not come from practical applications, but from the community's enthusiasm and spiritual resonance with Meme culture. Although this unique dynamic makes the market performance of Meme coins full of uncertainty and volatility, it has also injected unprecedented vitality into the crypto market.

Different types of meme coins display rich cultural connotations and fan bases, which directly affect their sustainability, spreadability, and community participation. Animal memes, cult culture memes, and AI memes continue to attract market attention with their deep cultural backgrounds, loyal fan bases, and new narrative features. In contrast, other types of meme coins often rely on short-term hot spots, and their attention may rise quickly and then fall back quickly.

Although Meme coin was controversial in the early days, with mixed attitudes from institutions, retail investors and KOLs, as the Meme market effect gradually emerged in the second half of the year, the attitudes of some institutions began to change. With the promotion of the decentralized issuance mechanism, the transparency and credibility of Meme coin continued to improve, and it gradually gained more recognition.

Among them, large institutions have begun to accelerate their layout in the meme field. Pantera Capital partner Paul Veradittakit published an article summarizing that "Meme coin is a Trojan horse for cryptocurrency", Dark Horse Venture Capital and market DWF Ventures once published an article on the X platform stating that "Meme coin will become a new GTM strategy for many ecosystems and projects", VanEck's MarketVector launched a Meme coin index, and Franklin Templeton also published a number of reports related to MEME coins.

While MEME is in a frenzy, it has also caused more market deviations and even more artistic abstractions. From whether to give Vitalik coins, the distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters, and blank symbols, a series of chaos have led to a situation where the market is crushed by hype and short-term surges. Recently, the market has been dominated by AI meme -Goat, and its wealth effect has achieved a thousand-fold increase in just one week compared to the previous long period of 6 months of precipitation and community consensus.

However, if we look at the on-chain data and the online celebrity effect, we may have fallen into the PVP trap again. It started with the perfect escort of a16z’s co-creation of $50,000 BTC, and the passionate call of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes. Goat’s market value jumped to 500 million. However, after Truth Terminal announced that “the stock code is GOAT”, GOAT fell by 54%. In less than 24 hours, top trader Eugene posted a message claiming that he had purchased Goat. The founder of Truth Terminal said that “the 1.25 million GOATs held by individuals will not be sold for the time being”. Subsequently, Goat rebounded to break through 0.44, with a 1-hour increase of more than 50%. As of November 29, the market value remained at around 800 million US dollars.

It is hard not to connect this with the table effect behind it. Meme can attract a large amount of liquidity in a short period of time, and the rise and fall are directly controlled by the remarks of leading institutions and KOLs. It is not yet clear whether this behavior is manipulated by institutions disguised as meme coins, or whether it is repeated harvesting by market makers behind the scenes.

Frankly speaking, VC coins and Meme coins are not in opposition or contradiction. The core issue lies in the expected redemption method. The two are not hostile, but each attracts user groups with different preferences.

VC coins and Meme coins represent two different economic models and market dynamics in the crypto market. VC coins can quickly attract capital and attention in the early stages with the support of funds and technology. The value of Meme coins is more derived from community culture and emotional resonance. Although its market performance is full of fluctuations, it also brings innovation and vitality. Overall, VC coins and Meme coins have their own advantages and disadvantages. Their market development and risks coexist, and they are promoting progress and innovation in the crypto industry at different levels.

As 2024 draws to a close, the craze of Meme Summer continues and has become a force that cannot be ignored in the crypto world. From a simple social media joke in the early days to a potential project with a market value of billions, Meme coins are no longer just a short-term speculative object in the market, but are gradually becoming part of the market structure. For retail investors, developers and even institutional investors, the emergence of Meme coins means that the power of culture, market sentiment and community is changing the traditional face of the crypto industry.

Looking ahead to 2025, with the advancement of AI technology and the continuous expansion of the Web3 ecosystem, Meme coins have the potential to become one of the most representative and disruptive asset classes in the crypto world. A new round of innovation will continue to unfold at the intersection of Meme and social trends, and new narratives and projects that continue to emerge in the market will also redefine the value and meaning of crypto assets.