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Is This the End of Memecoins?
Crypto just turned on its hottest sector: memecoins.
What happened? Javier Milei, Argentinian president, promoted a memecoin called $LIBRA. This memecoin had marketed itself as the "token to strengthen the Argentine economy".
Javier Milei is known as pro-crypto. After seeing the tweet from the Argentinian president, people believed that it was a legit token.
And people aped in hard.
You can guess what happened next. Insiders dumped and extracted $107M.
The damage control efforts just made things worse.
- Javier Melei tried to distance himself from the memecoin as well.
- One token creator said that the funds would be used to fund Argentinian companies.
- Kelsier Ventures, another creator, said they'll invest their profits back into the token, which won't help anyone.
But it was all too little, too late. Everyone saw it for what it was: a massive pump-and-dump.
End of memecoins?
The outrage didn't stop at $LIBRA. Crypto Twitter turned against the entire memecoin narrative.
Memecoins started as a response to the low float, high FDV meta. VCs were launching tokens at sky-high valuations, leaving no upside for retail. In contrast, fair-launched memecoins on Pump.fun seemed like an equal playing field.
But that illusion didn't last long.
Memecoins became a rigged game where snipers and few insiders who could get contract addresses had massive advantages. The cabals were formed to fake token volume, holders, and other metrics that made a "memecoin legit".
For example, $MELANIA & $LIBRA were created by the same team.
Most people already knew memecoins were mostly a complicated game where few insiders systematically took money from gamblers. But the memecoin narrative somehow kept going.
But recently, the extraction reached insane levels. Even politicians started dumping on retail.
- Donald Trump launched $TRUMP
- The US first lady had launched her own memecoin, $MELANIA.
- Central African Republic president had launched $CAR memecoin.
And guess what? All their charts looked just like $LIBRA: massive pumps, followed by brutal dumps that rekt people.
$LIBRA's $100M+ rug was the final straw. Crypto Twitter was done with it.
Memecoins thrived when VC-backed tokens were the villains. But those tokens aren't launching anymore.
New projects allow communities to enter at much lower valuations (e.g., MegaETH, Infinex). The focus is shifting toward fundamental tokens with real value.
That said, memecoins won't disappear entirely. They'll always exist to some extent—but we've likely passed the peak of the memecoin hype cycle.
(At least, I hope so. Because if it gets even crazier than this… I don't even want to imagine.)
The Solana Death Party
Memecoins weren't the only target of the outrage. Solana got dragged into the fire too. Here's a tweet from DefiLlama founder:
#1. Solana culture actively promoted memecoin degeneracy. There's some truth to this. Solana influencers were celebrating the fees raked in by Pump.fun and many memecoin trading bots with 20% slippages.
None of the Solana leadership pushed against this culture. In contrast, Ethereum had Vitalik trying to figure out how to fund public goods via memecoins. (To be honest, Vitalik went to the other extreme where he even questioned DeFi due to the self-referential nature of DeFi.)
This was clear in the $LIBRA episode as well. Top Solana projects like Meteora and Jupiter were closely working with the $LIBRA team for the launch.
#2. Solana's activity is largely memecoins. Right now, I don't have a metric to distinguish between activity powered by pure memecoins and other "fundamental" projects.
If I have to guess I'd say 85%+ of Solana activity is related to memecoins.
Now, the Solana defenders do have some points.
- Solana has several other products in many other sectors like DePIN and AI Agents.
- Solana is a permissionless platform. It can't take responsibility for everything people build on top of it.
- Speculative and scams always happen on cutting edge blockchains. In the previous cycles, Ethereum had similar manias in ICOs and NFTs.
What's next?
For Milei, his reputation just took a massive hit. He's now facing legal charges for his involvement in the $LIBRA pump-and-dump. Hopefully, this serves as a lesson to any other celebrity looking to make a quick buck off crypto.
For memecoins, they're not dead, but the golden era is likely over. They'll survive, but they won't dominate like before.
For Solana, the hate is probably temporary. It has a well-rounded ecosystem and will outgrow this—eventually.
Hopefully, the crypto moves away from insane memecoin narratives. Because let's be honest — if it gets crazier than this, we're all in trouble.
Sponsored By Gearbox
Gearbox's Credit Layer: Making DeFi Borrowing as Simple as Token Swaps.
Swapping tokens inside your wallet has become popular because of its convenience—but what if you could lend and borrow too?
This was impossible before because dApps weren't built for it. Gearbox's Credit Account changes the game.
How?
They've evolved the pool-to-peer model to a pool-to-account model. Essentially, turning your wallet into a DeFi credit hub.
What are the benefits?
- You can get up to 15x of credit to use across DeFi.
- Since your assets aren't deposited in a general pool, they don't get locked. (This is good because you can trade, farm, or swap while borrowing)
- Gearbox's credit layer is backed by 3 years of audits and proven security.
Think of it like adding a credit line to your crypto wallet. And they're already brewing DeFi's big "credit card" moment.
No lockups, ending liquidity fragmentation and reducing the need for excessive management. Gearbox will make you never open a dApp again.
The credit layer is built for mass adoption.
Project update
$KAITO: Making Pumpamentals Legible
The next multi-billion project introduced its token.
Kaito is a social analytics platform that we've talked about before. They announced $KAITO token (and released their whitepaper).
How can you get $KAITO? Yaps
There are two ways to get $KAITO: buy Kaito Genesis NFT & earn yaps.
Yaps is their points program. But you don't have to do any hour-long quests on testnets to get it. Just connect your X account with Kaito and start tweeting.
You'll get Yaps depending on the value you provide to the crypto community. If you want to learn how to earn yaps, click here.
When Kaito first launched, I had asked you to start farming Yaps. Just farming them has given me a lot of benefits since then.
- Kaito gave me 0.2 ETH for the top 1000 yappers.
- Many projects are airdropping tokens to top yappers. (Eg: $ANIME and Story Protocol.)
- Kaito has dedicated leaderboards for different projects. Weekly, different projects compete to get a leaderboard for them. Users vote with Yaps to select which projects get the leaderboard. So, you can get bribes from projects in return for voting for them.
I'm pretty sure that Kaito will distribute tokens among yappers. So, earning it is the best way to get $KAITO.
What's the value of $KAITO?
Information overload is the biggest problem we're facing right now. Generative AI has made it cheap human-like content. And our feeds are now filled with meaningless AI-generated content that just wastes our time.
This has created problems for everyone. Creators want to be paid for their efforts, X users want to find high-quality creators, projects want detailed data on their pumpamentals, traders want data on mindshare, and more.
Kaito is solving this issue using AI and crypto.
Creators get yaps & bribes, users get leaderboards to find quality accounts, projects can get their own leaderboards and other dashboards, traders can get mindshare data, and more.
There'll be many such interactions between these stakeholders. $KAITO will be the currency for this InfoFi ecosystem.
If that's too abstract, here are some concrete example utilities for $KAITO. (Note these are speculations. The specific utilities aren't guaranteed.)
- Project leaderboards on Kaito track how much influence different X accounts are contributing to a project. Kaito can run an auction with many projects
- Projects have to stake $KAITO to get access to social data on their project. Who's promoting the project best? What are the major criticisms? What do people like about the project? and more.
- Kaito is already mapping the mindshare of different projects. They can create an index fund that tracks the mindshare of different projects. And KAITO can represent a share of that fund.
The exact capabilities of Kaito's backend aren't public yet. But Kaito is solving really hard problems for many stakeholders: creators, X users, projects, traders, and probably more. They'll be able to capture some of that value.
Anyways, the data with Kaito is really powerful. It can be used to design further utility for various stakeholders.
For example, distributing tokens to believers is a big challenge for many projects. Kaito will know the X accounts that are believers by tracking their X activity. Kaito can require projects to pay using $KAITO to get access to believers.
Pumpamentals have always played an important role in crypto. Until now, there weren't reliable ways to track pumpamentals. Kaito is solving this issue and making it legible for everyone.
Update: Kaito just took their airdrop Snapshot, but will take their NFT one tomorrow
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Arbitrum has launched BoLD. It is their solution for enabling permissionless validation. It's a commonly accepted requirement for becoming decentralized.
Pump.fun launched a mobile application for memecoin trading. Theoretically, this should help them attract more users.
Jupiter Exchange will start buying back $JUP tokens using 50% of the protocol fees today. These new tokens will be locked for at least 3 years.
Ondo Finance has announced a partnership with World Liberty Financial. WLFI is planning to integrate USDY, OUSG, and Ondo tokenized securities.
Osmosis launched the limit orders on their platform. It wouldn't have additional fees and is powered by orderbooks.
Clearpool partnered with io.finnet to enable institutional investors to seamlessly access Clearpool's credit markets via the Io.finnet Apps.
Aave Labs has proposed a framework for using $GHO as the gas token on chains. If successful, this can boost the adoption of $GHO.
Balancer v3 has launched on, Base. It improves the customizable AMM development.
CZ, the founder of Binance, shared the pics of his dog and subtly encouraged memecoins on the BNB Chain. This had led to a resurgence in BNB activity.
Ethereum Foundation has officially started using applications on the mainnet L1 from their wallet. They've deployed 25k $ETH across many apps.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
OpenSea announced the $SEA token. While the TGE date isn't out yet, historical usage will be a big factor in determining your token allocation.
MyShill AI, which describes itself as the AI Consumer Layer, introduced the $SHELL token.
Wayfinder is a leading project in the AI Agent narrative. Here's the guide for farming the airdrop.
🚀 New Launches
Panoptic launched on Unichain. It's a platform for liquidity providers to be more profitable, manage risk, and earn passive yield.
ZK Sync introduced Union Chain from Union Fintech. The new chain will focus on bridging TradFi and DeFi in Southeast Asia.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Recap of the memecoin meta.
- Visual guide to sequencing mechanisms.
- The technical side of how BTC is on HyperLiquid.
- What do non-crypto companies build on Ethereum?
- Top 10 insights from the "DeFi Year Ahead" Report.
😂 Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
Today's email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing.
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