Analysis of the Development Process and Value Logic of Meme Coin

This article systematically sorts out the development history of meme coins, analyzes typical cases, and reveals their unique value logic: unlike traditional financial assets, the core value of meme coins is expressed as "cultural dissemination × community consensus," rather than solely relying on technology or practical value. Based on their evolutionary characteristics, they can be divided into three key development stages:

1. Breaking Ground/Foundation Laying (2013-2016) - Barbaric Growth, Sifting Through the Sands

• Ephemeral type: short-term popularity, lack of cultural accumulation, and rapid extinction. (e.g. Mooncoin, TIPS, Nyancoin)
• Undefeated General Type: Cultural Symbol + Community Driven, Long-term Survival. (e.g. DOGE)

2. Dormancy/Outbreak (2017-2021) - The Era of Smart Contracts, meme coins usher in a qualitative change

• Meteor Shining Type: Speculation driven, bubbles burst quickly. (e.g. UET, HOGE)
• Stellar Everbright Type: Ecological expansion, breaking limitations. (e.g. ShibaSwap of SHIB)
• Transformational breakthrough: Attempting innovation, but progress is slow due to various limiting factors. (Such as FLOKI's metaverse blueprint, SAMO's public chain binding)

3. Precipitation/Reconstruction (2022-2025) - The Rise of New Narratives and Market Reshuffling

• Short-term speculative: relies on trends, extremely high risk. (e.g. the political narrative craze of TRUMP)
• Ecosystem-driven: Based on public chains, short-term explosion. (e.g. WIF, BONK)
• Narrative Innovation: AI + Meme, Concept Hype, Trust Crisis. (e.g., GOAT)
• Cultural Symbol Type: Internet Celebrity IP, short-term popularity. (e.g., MOODENG)

Meme coin will continue to face the balance test of "speculation and substance," while technological innovation (such as AI, DeFAI) and community building will become key factors. Despite the market undergoing adjustments, as a typical product of the attention economy, meme coin will still maintain its unique position and influence in the cryptocurrency field.

Review history and trace the context

As one of the most unique existences in the cryptocurrency field, meme coins possess both cultural attributes and financial characteristics. Looking back at the history of meme coins is also a reflection on the collision between internet culture and financial speculation.

From a sarcastic joke at the beginning to a virtual currency that now occupies a place in the market, meme coins are telling us through their experiences that in today's era, perhaps cultural resonance and community belief drive value creation more than technical whitepapers. While the traditional financial world is still trying to create new value, meme coins have already reshaped people's understanding of "value" itself.

In an era dominated by social media, the speed and manner of information dissemination have undergone fundamental changes. A meme that goes viral on Reddit or Twitter can receive hundreds of millions of exposures globally within a few hours, and the power of this viral spread has now been directly converted into financial value. Meme coins, as the perfect medium for this conversion, have written their own stories and legends along the time axis.

Breaking Ground/Foundation Laying (2013-2016) - In the time of rising trends, the brave stand at the forefront; amidst the waves, the disheartened quietly exit.

This period witnessed the original innovative journey of meme coins from zero to one, presenting a unique ecology where barbaric growth coexists with natural selection. Marked by the birth of DOGE in December 2013 and ending with the maturity of Ethereum's smart contract technology in 2016, it constitutes the most pure and authentic "Genesis Era" in the history of meme coin development.

On the technical level, with few exceptions, the meme coins at this stage are almost all based on forks of Bitcoin or Litecoin code.

In terms of market performance, historical data from CoinMarketCap shows that meme coins born during this period have an average active cycle of only 11.7 months, but survivors like DOGE have demonstrated remarkable vitality.

From the perspective of historical significance, the foundational meaning of this stage cannot be underestimated. In fact, history tells us that true innovation often arises when rules have not yet been established, and the experimental field from 2013 to 2016, which had yet to form a system, preserved the most precious rebellious gene and innovative spirit of the cryptocurrency world.

Lurking/Exploding (2017-2021) - Amid the tidal fluctuations, the wise rise to seize the opportunity; where the winds and clouds change, the powerful have their ambitions dashed.

In the past five years, the market has witnessed the transformation of meme coins from niche subculture to mainstream financial assets. With the popularization of the ERC-20 standard in 2017 as a technological turning point, and the historical market value set by SHIB in 2021 as a milestone, meme coins have undergone a qualitative change from "internet joke" to "phenomenal investment standard."

From a technical perspective, the maturity of smart contracts has completely restructured the issuance logic of meme coins. According to data on the Ethereum chain, most meme coins born between 2017 and 2021 chose to adopt the ERC-20 standard or rely on other protocols, reducing the issuance cost to less than one-thousandth (compared to the tens of thousands of dollars for independent chain development). This democratization of technology, akin to a double-edged sword, has spawned a craze of "everything can be a meme", but it also lays the groundwork for homogeneous competition.

At the same time, on the market narrative level, CoinGecko data shows that in December 2017, DOGE's market capitalization first broke 1 billion dollars, while during the peak in 2021, the overall daily trading volume of the meme coin sector exceeded 30 billion dollars, accounting for 12.3% of the entire cryptocurrency market. It is worth noting that the meme coins born during this stage have a significantly improved lifespan compared to the previous period.

However, it should be noted that not all meme coins have a higher survival rate and a longer lifespan. According to data from the Chainplay research report, meme coin projects experienced deaths on average every month in 2020.

Throughout the entire history of cryptocurrency, the most profound transformation during this period lies in the reconstruction of value perception. When DOGE was listed on mainstream exchanges like Coinbase in 2021, and when the SHIB founder managed to leverage a market value of tens of billions anonymously, traditional finance had to re-examine the essence of meme coins - as revealed in the report "Meme Assets and the Economics of Attention" published by the MIT Digital Currency Initiative in 2021: "The value capture mechanism of assets like Dogecoin essentially converts network attention into liquidity premiums." This shift in perception has laid a crucial foundation for subsequent social finance experiments in the Web3 era.

Sedimentation/Reconstruction (2022-2025) - When the chaos falls, true gold begins to show its true color; in an era of great contention, the pattern finally becomes clear.

Since 2022, the meme coin market has undergone a deep adjustment from frenzy to rationality. Marked by the collapse of Terra in May 2022 and the rise of the BRC-20 standard in 2023, the meme coin ecosystem is experiencing a brutal yet necessary revaluation of its value.

According to CoinMarketCap statistics, the overall market value of meme coins shrank by 82% in 2022, but leading projects DOGE and SHIB still maintained their positions in the top 20 by market value. A new report titled "State of Memecoin 2024" released by GameFi market data center Chainplay, which studied and analyzed over 30,000 meme coin projects on Ethereum, Solana, and Base, noted that "97% OF MEMECOINS HAVE DIED." The report further pointed out: "Different blockchain platforms exhibit different meme coin mortality rates. Base leads with a mortality rate of 66.91%, followed by Solana at 54.03% and Ethereum at 36.59%."

Nevertheless, we should not underestimate or speculate whether meme coins have reached the end of the story. The cryptocurrency market has always been full of variables, and meme coins, as a particularly distinctive category within it, are even harder to assess with conventional perspectives.

As Mathew McDermott, the head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, stated: "Meme projects that can still secure funding after 2023 must demonstrate their ability to capture long-term value beyond mere speculation." Similarly, as noted by a16z researchers: "This winter is filtering out speculative bubbles, leaving behind digital assets that truly possess cultural durability." The future landscape may prove that meme coins capable of crossing cycles will ultimately become a key bridge connecting the crypto world with mainstream culture.

Decompose and delve into key details

Breaking Ground / Foundation Laying (2013-2016)

The coins in this phase can be roughly divided into the following categories based on their lifecycle/community activity/market cap changes, etc:

Ephemeral

In the rapidly evolving ecosystem of cryptocurrency, driven by innovation, projects lacking sustainable vitality are destined to be fleeting visitors. They may capture market attention during specific periods, but ultimately find it difficult to escape the fate of being "a flash in the pan." Although they may shine brilliantly when they bloom, it is hard to maintain that heat for long.

Mooncoin - An Unfinished "Moon Landing" Dream

As an entertainment meme coin with the slogan "To the Moon", its slightly short life could not carry the ambition of this grand narrative. As Crypto Briefing stated in 2015: "Mooncoin has no actual use cases related to space or moon landing, aside from its name."

Looking back at its development trajectory from 2014 to 2018 (with its last GitHub commit in 2018 (v1.8.0), which almost marked the project's practical demise), the early performance of mooncoin was quite remarkable: it set a record of over 300% single-day increase in its first year; the discussion volume in the Reddit community r/Mooncoin exceeded 5000 posts in a month; it collaborated with the gaming platform Moonrocket (which later went bankrupt); and it was even referred to by Coindesk as "the most serious joke coin."

However, after the spotlight comes a long silence: in 2015, the delisting from mainstream exchanges led to a market cap loss of over 90%; the following year, members of the anonymous development team announced "indefinite hibernation"; it wasn't until 2018 that the project experienced a brief resurgence - but this was not due to its own breakthroughs, rather it benefitted from two external factors: first, the overall recovery of the cryptocurrency market (Bitcoin rebounded from $13,000 to $17,000 in Q1 2018, driving altcoins to rise); second, the launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket reignited the "To the Moon" internet meme, and a parody video titled "Mooncoin Countdown to the Moon" created by community members (with over 500,000 views on YouTube) unexpectedly brought traffic.

Unfortunately, Mooncoin failed to seize this last opportunity. The development team claimed to create a "lunar base" metaverse game, but in the end, the white paper did not materialize, and the so-called "metaverse game" was just a Unity demo video. After this, with Bitcoin plummeting 60% in April 2018, market enthusiasm waned, and Mooncoin completely faded from the stage. As summarized by Delphi Digital's "Cryptocurrency Cycle Report" (2019): "This flashback confirms the brutal law of Meme coins - projects lacking cultural accumulation, any technological updates are merely life support."

Fedoracoin (TIPS) - A niche "gentleman" recognition

FedoraCoin (TIPS) was born on December 22, 2013, and its core is not aimed at the mass market, but rather precisely targets the "Fedora-wearing neckbeard" subculture on Reddit. This highly vertical positioning allowed it to quickly gain popularity within specific communities in its early days, but it also sowed the seeds for limited development in the future.

On a technical level, TIPS adopted the relatively common Scrypt algorithm at the time, and its design supporting GPU mining made it quite user-friendly for ordinary users. This simple and practical architecture helped it to grow rapidly in the early stages.