How to create a successful MEME?

Written by: 1912212.eth, Foresight News

MEME coins are dancing again. Yesterday, the prices of PEPE, BONK, FLOKI, and others surged significantly, with WIF even reaching an all-time high. Is the familiar MEME market returning? Buying MEMEs is a technical skill, but what about creating a successful MEME project?

Before answering how to create a MEME, let's first ask a question: Why are MEMEs important?

MEME, known as "meme" in Chinese, in the world of meme coins, we don't talk about fundamentals, forget about total market capitalization and FDV, and also discard the high-level jargon often mentioned by mainstream VCs.

This is a paradise for ordinary players.

Here, the spirit of entertainment reigns supreme. Xiao Zhao plays slot machines, Xiao Ming plays A-shares, Xiao Wang plays sneakers, Xiao Zhang plays U.S. stocks, Xiao Chen plays mainstream coins, and at this moment, we play MEMEs, perhaps having the chance to win a grand prize and thus a bright future.

It is precisely for this reason that MEMEs have remained popular in the financial market, and even more so in the cryptocurrency industry.

Decentralization, community, anti-VC, anti-traditional, fair launch, grassroots, etc., these Web3 terms are naturally tailored for MEME players.

In the past few years, well-known MEME coins like Dogecoin, BONK, PEPE, and SHIB have emerged. Each successful MEME is not casually created or easily breaks into the mainstream.

So, back to the point, how do we create a successful MEME?

Large Supply, Low Price

MEMEs are different from public chains, L2, or DeFi, where the issuance often ranges from 1 billion to 10 billion coins, while the total supply of MEMEs is calculated in hundreds of billions or trillions. Taking the top 150 MEMEs by market cap as an example, we can see the statistics in the chart below.

（Data as of February 23, 2024）

The large total supply captures the psychological expectations of players trading MEMEs. Smart project teams won't let MEME tokens launch at several dollars. They will use low-price strategies to attract high-risk players and retain those small retail investors with limited funds.

We must keep the price low, allowing players to see a large quantity when they buy, betting small to gain big, which will make players more inclined to hold.

Another key point is to facilitate "zeroing out" actions.

Not only in trading, but "zeroing out" also represents a strong bullish indicator. For the project community, it is easier to ignite community sentiment and FOMO, spreading rapidly.

During bull markets, stories of sudden wealth spread the fastest and reach the widest audience. Once MEMEs occupy a position in this narrative, they will attract a flood of bold capital.

Design Popular Cultural Symbols

Many globally recognized brands often have their brand images associated with universally recognized mascots, such as Ferrari's logo being a horse, Lamborghini's logo being a bull, and QQ's logo being a penguin. These universally recognized animal images and logos are memorable and easy to understand, providing a significant advantage for brand dissemination.

To create a successful MEME coin, we must learn from these experiences. The mascots of Dogecoin, SHIB, and BONK are all dogs, specifically Shiba Inu. These animals are based on popular culture, and their expressive images are widely circulated. Additionally, Dogecoin's tipping culture has made it a very popular tipping token in the U.S.

As the oldest MEME coin, Dogecoin has been repeatedly refined through multiple bull and bear cycles and continues to write its legend.

Looking back at last year's newly emerged PEPE, it uniquely chose a frog, beloved by Western communities, as its mascot. Its image is quite distinctive, with large eyes and green skin, giving it high recognition.

Moreover, this frog has been derived into various memes, showcasing a range of emotions such as happiness, anger, and surprise. Some crypto KOLs occasionally use this frog image for comments, adding to its popularity.

Therefore, if we are adept at leveraging well-known popular culture or mascots, it can significantly aid in creating a MEME.

We see that MEME coins do not immediately attract the attention and affection of celebrities upon their birth. Dogecoin only gained favor from Elon Musk in recent years due to its cute and interesting symbol and tipping culture.

Musk has hundreds of millions of followers on Twitter, and under such massive exposure, along with favorable factors like small payments on the X platform, it has brought considerable attention to Dogecoin.

In 2023, Musk even changed the Twitter logo to the Dogecoin avatar for a full three days. Previously, Musk even dubbed himself the CEO of Dogecoin, posting about payment methods and commentary related to Dogecoin in the Twitter community.

Every mention of Dogecoin in Musk's tweets or collaborations with his companies injects a lot of attention into Dogecoin.

Setting aside the rare opportunity of having a superstar spokesperson, leveraging celebrity effects is also a good choice.

SHIB, which took off in the last cycle, may not perform as well now, but it initially chose a smart approach. It first left comments in Musk's comment section, successfully prompting Musk to post inquiries, drawing attention.

Subsequently, it transferred half of its tokens to Vitalik, who, during the global pandemic, chose to donate the tokens to charitable organizations in India, generating significant buzz, leading many in India to learn about SHIB. After this event, many MEMEs rushed to imitate, transferring tokens to Vitalik, but the effect was far less than that of SHIB.

It is worth mentioning that even the MEME coin in the Solana ecosystem, nuts, also chooses to ride on Musk's comments. Whenever Musk comments on nuts (strange), it triggers a surge in the price of nuts.

Another influential spokesperson is Solana co-founder toly, whose SILLY, with its cute and quirky design, successfully captured toly's attention. At Solana Breakpoint 2023, toly even wore a dragon-themed outfit on stage, creating a "silly dragon" trend.

Gather More "Community Consensus"

The price increase of cryptocurrency is closely related to attention. The more attention it receives, the more the audience understands, and the more buyers there will be, thus driving the price upward.

To create a successful MEME, we must recognize its essence. It is different from other utility or governance tokens; it completely discards the old narratives of staking and other concepts, honestly stating that its token is "useless." In this case, the value of the token entirely depends on "community consensus."

Community and decentralization are the most authentic elements in the crypto community. This also means that its viral spread requires the community to resonate and have "spontaneity," rather than relying on deliberate marketing.

Of course, in the case of declining popularity, some marketing is still necessary.

The DOGE-funded "Doge-1" lunar mission has also driven its token price upward, while SHIB and Dogecoin, besides having high online traffic, have also made notable offline connections. Some cinemas, supermarkets, and brands accept their payments, such as luxury brand Gucci, the largest U.S. operator AMC, and the retail giant GameStop in the U.S. video game and entertainment software industry, undoubtedly enhancing their brand exposure.

As a MEME coin, it is not enough to just sit back and do nothing, expecting to gain massive community support by frequently posting images on Twitter. Although BONK may not be as aggressive as its predecessors in offline brand expansion, it has also made notable interactions within the Solana ecosystem, such as collaborating with other DeFi products to add liquidity and stake tokens.

PEPE, on the other hand, releases interesting images or memes, comics, and other works within the community. Additionally, it promotes the frog emoji through sponsoring art competitions.

Whether online or offline, leveraging celebrity influence or trending events to gather more "community consensus" is essential for providing sufficient fuel for the MEME coin price to take off.

Choose Mainstream Public Chains (Ethereum and Solana) with the Most Funds and Users

Looking at existing MEMEs, most MEME projects are on popular public chains, such as Dogecoin, SHIB, and PEPE on Ethereum. With the rise of the new public chain SOL, BONK, WIF, and SILLY have also gained fame.

Other public chains have not seen particularly successful MEMEs for various reasons. Public chains are like reservoirs; where there is more wealth and users, more funds can flow into MEMEs. Additionally, since MEME-type assets largely rely on the "spillover" of active funds on-chain, there is almost no survival space for MEME-type assets outside of the top public chains.

For example, the MEME coin FUD on Sui, although it was initially highlighted by Sui's official Twitter and chose a dog image with a high "tolerance for error," did not achieve the "expected" results, and its price continued to decline, even with Sui's impressive price performance and continuously rising TVL. In fact, there has not been a single successful MEME token in the Sui ecosystem to date.

When we shift our attention to L2, we suddenly find that there are also very few MEMEs. Earlier, Airdoge gained some popularity through extensive airdrops but then disappeared, and no high-profile MEMEs have emerged from other L2s since.

During key events such as airdrops, mainnet launches, and token model announcements, if arranged properly, it may attract considerable attention.

Make Good Use of Airdrops to Attract Market Attention

In the absence of other favorable conditions, if we want to quickly raise the profile of a MEME, conducting extensive airdrops to selected public chains and some token holders is one of the most effective methods.

A notable example of airdrop is the new public chain BONK on Solana, which initially faced some challenges. During the heavy blow to the Solana ecosystem due to the SBF incident, it generously allocated 60% of its tokens for airdrops to ecosystem users. As SOL rapidly recovered and attracted market attention over the past year, BONK was subsequently listed on exchanges like Binance and OKX. BONK carved out its own path without the backing of celebrity influence or trending events, relying on widespread airdrops and the recovery of the Solana ecosystem.

Even non-MEME projects often gain significant attention through airdrops. For instance, Flare, Celestia, Dymention, AltLayer, Wormhole, etc. Some project tokens have even become "golden shovels," allowing users to receive new project airdrops simply by staking in their wallets.

For example, if we conduct airdrops in the Cosmos ecosystem, we often choose stakers of tokens like TIA and ATOM, as these users are typically numerous, and the number of token holders is also high, allowing for rapid visibility thanks to the recognition of other projects.

Conclusion

Now that you've read this far, I believe attentive readers already know what to do, right? To create a successful MEME, we need to consider factors such as tokenomics design, mascots, airdrop strategies, and the choice of issuing chains. With the right timing, location, and people, the probability of success will increase.

If you need some small animals as mascots, you might consider these few: the Cotton Candy Frog, Chao's Marsh Rabbit, Silvery Marmoset, Utah Goose, South African Elephant Shrew, and Marimba Bear…