YBB资本：懂MEME，懂Web3流行文化

原作者：YBB资本研究员泽克

前言

近期，随着BTC现货ETF的通过，市场热情逐渐达到顶峰。

由 Mingwen 和 Solana 社区主导的 MEME Coin 再次席卷全球。

各种暴富千倍万倍的神话充斥社交媒体，做空市场的散户开始涌入市场。

那么最近的MEME币和过去有什么不同呢？

如何在本地人多的市场中选择一款有潜力的MEME币？

什么是 MEME 币？

“MEME”的概念最早由英国进化生物学家理查德·道金斯在其1976年出版的《自私基因》一书中提出。

道金斯使用 MEME 一词来描述那些通过人与人之间的传播在文化中传递的信息单位，例如基因。

他的目的是解释如何理解文化传播的过程，类似于生物学中基因的传播方式。

如果说生物进化和繁衍的基本单位依赖于基因的传承，那么文化理念传承的基本单位就是MEME。

它的形式多变，可以是一句话、一个故事、一个典故、一幅图画。

只要能承载一定的文化思想“载体”，就可以称为MEME。

虽然“MEME”一词在刚提出时是一个比较严肃的学术概念，但进入网络时代后，各种网络恶作剧文化的“百花齐放”需要一个合适的名词来统称，因此“MEME”一词“MEME”已经在一定程度上被使用了。

重构后，它已成为这类网络恶作剧文化的总称。

说白了，“MEME”也可以对应中国网络文化中的“模因”。

所谓MEME Coin，其实正如字面意思，是一种基于MEME文化的加密货币。

最早的 MEME 币通常被认为是狗狗币。

狗狗币是比利·马库斯和杰克逊·帕尔默于 2013 年通过复制莱特币代码并添加柴犬表情来嘲讽 BTC（他们认为 BTC 只是空气）而创建的恶搞代币。

但后来的发展却更加讽刺。

狗狗币不但没有成为一文不值的空气代币，还受到Reddit（国外知名论坛）的疯狂追捧。

首富马斯克表示，“狗狗币可能是我最受欢迎的货币”。

喜欢加密货币，这很酷。”

它还使它成为“致大月亮”。

狗狗币的市值开始飙升。

至此，一枚因无厘头笑话而诞生的“空气币”，已成为千亿市值的加密货币市场前十的传奇。

2023 年最热门的表情包

In the 21st year since Dogecoin rushed to the moon, various imitation tokens with animal pictures have sprung up, all hoping to become the next Dogecoin. At that time, the community also had a very interesting name for these tokens. ——"Zoo Coin". But only a handful of outstanding ones survived, such as Shib and Floki, the more popular MEME Coins, while the remaining 99% of “zoo coins” basically disappeared into thin air in the subsequent bear market. Looking at it this way, choosing a MEME Coin that can become a Dogecoin seems to be no less than finding a needle in a haystack. So how should you choose a MEME Coin that seems to have no fundamentals to analyze? How to change our thinking in a new bull market started by Inscription? We might as well first look back at the common points and innovations of MEME Coin (selected from some of the tokens that impressed me) that were still impressive in the bear market over the past 23 years.

BABY

The character Pepe the Frog (PEPE) was created by American cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005 for his comic "Boy's Club". Although the funny MEME image of this frog-headed man has been widely used on Western social networks is an evergreen tree, but there has never been a matching PEPE Coin in the MEME track (in fact, the PEPE token that is currently known to everyone is not the earliest, but other PEPEs have not been marketed). On April 4, 2023, a Twitter account named pepecoineth posted a meme of PEPE wearing a hat, but no new tweets were posted in the following ten days.

When the next tweet was released on April 14, the creation of PEPE Coin, Telegram group and official webpage (the domain name pepe.vip was bought as early as March) was directly announced. On April 16, two days after the token was released (two days need to be allowed for insiders to buy), some big Vs on Twitter suddenly began to promote PEPE Coin. In the following two days, the price and number of fans of PEPE token A surge began. After attracting the first wave of traffic, PEPE’s official Twitter also began to cooperate with the increase in token prices and frequently posted some emoticons mocking other MEME Coins to continue to build momentum. On April 18, Shaurya Malwa, leader of the Coindesk Asia Data Team, published a short report titled "'Pepe the Frog' Meme Coins Rocket as Crypto Twitter Moves Over Dogecoin Obsession", PEPE once again received a lot of exposure. Just one day later, on April 19, some first- and second-tier exchanges began to publish Frog-related tweets and votes, and many of them even listed PEPE directly online.

Then PEPE's road to the moon began to be unstoppable. Compared with the two Shiba Inu predecessors who had to settle for several years before achieving success, the "carefully planned" PEPE became an instant hit in just 4 days, and in just a short period of time afterwards Within a few months, it reached an astonishing increase of up to 375,000 times.

Silly Dragon (organized here into "Review of Silly Dragon Silly's Ten Thousand Times Journey")

Silly Dragon is a MEME Coin that took off with the recovery of Solana. Now this silly dragon has become a spiritual symbol in the community. Talking about the origin of this silly dragon, at the Solana Breakpoint Summit on October 30, 2023, Solana co-creator Anatoly appeared on stage wearing a Western green doll dragon costume. Anatoly first laughed at himself for being a silly dragon, Another insightful explanation of the outfit: I'm standing here wearing a dragon suit, which is crucial to our discussion of what we're building and why we're building it. We need to know what our goals are and what exactly we want to achieve.

For Solana, who has risen from the ashes under the difficulties and dangers of the bear market, this silly dragon seems to have many special "meanings." Twenty days after the summit, a Twitter user named DrakoSolana posted his first tweet, which was a silly dragon avatar adapted from the MEME picture. DrakoSolana has received a lot of attention under this trend, but unfortunately, although DrakoSolana was the first Silly Dragon on Twitter, due to the delay in the launch of the token, it was preempted by an account named Silly Dragon. machine.

Silly Dragon did not have an advantage in terms of initial attention and Twitter release time, but by coincidence they were the first to release their own token SILLY. After the token was released, Silly Dragon’s popularity began to quickly overtake it, with the support of huge traffic. , Silly Dragon strikes while the iron is hot and holds the Silly Dragon Art Competition.

It was during this event that Silly Dragon attracted Anatoly’s attention. Although the token price did not take off at this time, on December 16, Anatoly posted a tweet on Twitter: “Silly Dragon is urgently needed. MEME emoticon package, Samsung and Apple have 1 billion device sales, while Solana mobile phones only have 20,000." This tweet instantly ignited the enthusiasm of the community, and the price of SILLY also began to skyrocket, becoming a new ten thousand times myth.

Harry Potter Obama Sonic 10 Inu

This may be the coin with the longest name you have ever seen, Harry Potter Obama Sonic 10 Inu (because the name is so ridiculously long, I will replace it with HPOS 1 I below, but their own token name is Bitcoin). The coin’s name highlights its prank nature, and of course the name is not the only one that is outrageous. HPOS 1 I became popular on the Internet with an extremely crude spoof webpage when the token was deployed on May 10, 2023. The project team filled the webpage with spoofs of Harry Potter, former US President Obama, Sonic ( A video, picture, or parody story with elements such as the protagonist of a well-known parkour game), cryptocurrency, the Illuminati, etc. It can be said that it directly hits various classic hot topics on Western social networks.

The development method of HPOS 1 I is also very unique. Now the ownership of the project has been given up. There are no developers at all, but its community takes the lead in development. This is also one of the unique selling points of the project, a development method purely based on the community's MEME culture. While various MEME pictures in the community are spreading crazily on social networks, the price of HPOS 1 I is also climbing step by step, reaching a peak of $0.1783 in August 2022, achieving a 100-fold miraculous achievement in the bear market.

Source

The most ridiculous emoji in history, the most arrogant panda, and the green years we miss the most are the slogans from Pogai. Its image is the most familiar Pandaren in our Chinese Internet circles. It is a token with no fee, no copyright, and no development route. It is only a purely community-driven project. The community can decide the future direction, and all tokens are dispersed. The founder only leaves 100 million Pogai tokens to work with the community to make a fool of the Panda family.

The project team used a sultry and humorous promotion method to continuously hit the Chinese Twitter circle at the time. Coupled with the familiar panda head emoticon package, it was impressive. The project was issued on May 2, 2023, with an issue price of $0.000008 and a maximum price of $0.0005. Although there is no exaggerated increase like other MEME Coin, the token is still impressive.

SATS

In December 2022, Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor released an open source software called ORD, which runs on Bitcoin Core software. ORD allows users to mint Bitcoin inscriptions in two steps: enter arbitrary information, such as a string of text or an image ("inscription") on the Bitcoin blockchain, and connect the uploaded inscription to a specific Satoshi. Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin. 1 BTC = 100, 000, 000 satoshi. The final product is a Satoshi with an inscription, also known as the Bitcoin Inscription.

Depending on whether the input information is text or an image, Bitcoin inscriptions can be divided into two categories. The main use of text-based inscriptions is to create tokens, such as the BRC-20 standard. Image-based inscriptions are mainly used to create NFTs, such as various cartoon images.

SATS is a kind of MEME inscription issued based on the BRC 20 standard (I personally like to call the inscription a detachable text NFT, but now there is a more accurate name for the inscription, that is, semi-fungible token, semi-homogeneous Token), whose full name is Satoshi, is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, often referred to as Satoshi, or Satoshi Nakamoto. 1 BTC is equivalent to 100 million satoshis, and the total supply is 2100 trillion, which is equivalent to 21 million BTCs.

The casting process of SATS lasted nearly half a year. The inscription was deployed on the blockchain in March and was completely minted in September. It is different from the prank culture and rebellious culture of traditional MEME Coin. SATS is very special because it means Satoshi or Satoshi Nakamoto (the basic unit of Bitcoin and the founder of Bitcoin), and the total amount corresponds to the total amount of BTC. It has the deep meaning of paying tribute to BTC and commemorating Satoshi Nakamoto, so The fact that a huge amount can be minted also reflects the strength of the inscription consensus. The popularity after SATS has intensified. On December 12, 2023, the day Binance was listed, the market value doubled directly, once soaring to 1.15 billion US dollars, even surpassing the first inscription ORDI, and ultimately reaching a maximum increase of 25,000 times. .

Diversification of MEME Coin

Judging from the above MEME Coin, it is not difficult to find that MEME Coin has shifted from the zoo imitation disk dominated by dogs in the past to a more diversified development direction. The current categories can be divided into the following four categories:

1. Classic MEME: Tokenization of some classic MEME images represented by PEPE and Pogai. There are many classic MEME images that have not yet been tokenized or have not been successfully tokenized, such as Trollface, Grumpy Cat, Success Kid, Kermit the Frog;

2. Crypto-native MEME: Some MEMEs from crypto-native “memes” represented by BONK and Silly Dragon, both of which come from the Solana community. There are also some imitated MEME Coins, such as Polygon’s “Polygon Dragon”;

3. Inscription MEME: Inscription MEME represented by SATS and RATS. Due to the special distribution method of inscriptions, this type of MEME does not even have a picture image, but uses text as a carrier. Most of them have tribute, commemoration and ironic meanings. For example, SATS pays tribute to BTC and Satoshi Nakamoto (it can also be regarded as the native culture of encryption), and RATS has ironic meanings for rat warehouses and exchanges;

4. Original MEME: MEME represented by the original style of HPOS 1 I and Ladys is different from the simple imitation of past MEME Coin. This type of MEME Coin has its own original style.

What elements are needed for the success of MEME Coin?

How to judge whether a MEME Coin is successful is actually a very difficult thing. As a product of prank culture, MEME Coin always has different opinions on the source of its value. I personally believe that the success of MEME Coin comes from cultural identity, publicity capabilities, and narrative direction. Below, representatives from MEME Coin will talk about their personal opinions.

The carrier of MEME is very important

In the crypto market, we often hear about the myths of sudden wealth created by various MEMEs, but in fact there are only three MEME projects that can rank in the top 100 in terms of market value: Dogecoin, PEPE, and Shib. Here we talk about the first two first (although Shib is essentially an imitation of Dogecoin and also uses the classic Shiba Inu image, the success of Shib comes more from grassroots culture and external environmental factors at the time, so it is not discussed here. Expand), the biggest similarity between Dogecoin and PEPE is the use of the classic MEME image. Arendt once said that only things that are hotly discussed and have a broad public base will have strong vitality, and everything else will They are all short-lived and not worth mentioning. This sentence is also very suitable for MEME Coin. The breadth of the audience determines the upper limit of MEME Coin (of course, this does not determine the lower limit). During the last bull market, there were also many non-Shiba Inu MEME Coins that were very popular, such as Pig, Feg and various animal tokens. Why didn’t they survive? The main reason is that the factors that drive the public to buy them are the FOMO emotions and herd effect brought about by various myths of sudden wealth. The MEME elements of such tokens basically come from some pictures or stories created by the project team. The real audience of these MEME elements is very small. Token holders just want to make profits and may not be interested in these unfamiliar MEME elements at all. Once the market situation is not good, these MEME Coin will not be far from returning to zero.

And Shenfangou (the source of the image of Dogecoin) and PEPE are both MEME images that have been popular on the Western Internet for more than ten years (because they are inconsistent with Chinese MEME culture, so when we pay attention to these tokens, they are often soaring. , however, the emergence of Pogai in 2023 also confirmed the importance of the MEME audience). Various spoof emoticons about them have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the audience is extremely wide (it is also easy to get some influential celebrities). Natural viruses The infectious power of spread is also extremely strong.

Why is this PEPE successful?

We also mentioned above that the PEPE we are currently familiar with is not the first PEPE Coin, so why did the early PEPE (there was an earlier PEPE inscription on BRC 20) not succeed? In fact, the fundamental reason is the lack of publicity capabilities. Excellent publicity capabilities can not only accelerate the success of MEME Coin, but also determine the lower limit of MEME Coin.

For example, in our daily lives, the more household-known a brand is, the more it invests in advertising. For any product, its advertising audience can be divided into high-frequency consumers, low-frequency consumers, and non-consumers. The mechanism of advertising's action on these three types of people is different. The logic of advertising's action comes from four aspects - informing, persuading, reminding, and strengthening. The promotion logic of MEME Coin should also be the same, to consolidate community members and speculative buyers and bring in more potential buyers. Therefore, in addition to choosing the right carrier for MEME Coin, it is also important to use what kind of method to "advertise it widely" .

The reason why PEPE can achieve success in a very short period of time is inseparable from the publicity method that is good at using human nature. Looking back at the PEPE part above, it is not difficult to find that these big Vs have quietly purchased PEPE tokens long ago, driven by the bundling of interests. These big V began to promote hard. There are also plans for domain names and tokens that have been planned for a long time (there are relevant personnel in the team to connect with the exchange), causing the price and currency holding addresses to rise crazily in a straight line in the short term, coupled with PEPE’s ready-made Magic emoticons were used in conjunction with these good news for daily publicity. The two complemented each other and started the explosive spread of the virus. How bright a fire can burn depends on the amount of firewood. PEPE This fire will definitely burn like a prairie fire. Therefore, PEPE’s success is not simply due to good luck. It is not simple how the project side cooperates with the planning to form the ultimate herd effect without misfiring. (Readers who are interested in this point can compare the early related tweets of the two accounts $pepe.BRC-20 and PEPE.)

A MEME who doesn’t want to be a MEME——Shib

Going back a few years, I still remember that I was certain that Shib would fail. Because in the Web3 circle, it is almost impossible for an imitation disk to challenge OG. But then Shib gave me a hard slap in the face. Looking back at Shib’s counterattack now, I still think it was a miracle caused by multiple factors. If you put aside some luck factors (economic big release, Musk Related tweets, etc.) to analyze Shib, I personally think that what is special about Shib is its excellent community culture and bold attempts in narrative direction.

所有狗型MEME币其实都有一个致命的问题。

由于这些代币都是狗狗币的简单创作，同质化程度非常严重。

项目团队和社区创造的MEME表情在社交网络上传播。

力量也很弱，正如上面提到的，他们真正的受众很小。

Shib也面临这个问题。

无论是西方网络文化的认可度，还是名人效应，狗都占据绝对上风。

一张二代柴犬卡通图绝对不会是“狗狗币杀手”。

那么Shib的叙事方向只能是生态的。

一个有 Swap、跨链桥、Layer 2、元界期待的 MEME 币，会突然火起来吗？

虽然Shib的这个发展方向伴随着很多质疑，但我个人认为这是正确的，也是唯一能够延续其作为狗狗币杀手的生命力的方向。

结论

MEME Coin的市场总是充满诱惑，但也伴随着高风险。

据 CoinMarketCap 统计，MEME 赛道共有 1,467 个代币。

如果只算市值前300的项目，只有9个，成功率甚至不到百分之一。

目前，随着MEME Coin的进化以及铭文MEME的加入，选择的复杂度也在增加。

如果你今天真的想买一些 MEME 币，那么你必须做一些关于加密货币的特殊文化，以及西方 MEME 文化。

在做足功课后，一个潜在的 MEME 项目还应该至少具备文化认同、宣传性、叙事性和社区性中的一项。

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