jakiro
Author: Aaron Elijah Mars, crypto investor; translation: bitchain vision xiaozou
I have been in this industry for four years and have invested in more than 30 startups.I have worked with the largest Web2 and Web3 IPs.However, I have never issued tokens myself, nor have I issued NFTs.It’s time to end this situation.
One of the most popular topics this year is the debate about meme coins and utility tokens.Meme coin analyst Murad said it well: “Utility tokens are just meme coins that have taken a few more steps.”That’s a cool narrative.But is this true?
MemeCoin comparisonVCIs the currency fairer?
I’ve bought a lot of meme coins with a hot mind, and most of the time their team is really bad.Why is this happening?What’s the difficulty of issuing tokens?Well, I will share my knowledge about this industry and the meme currency market.
Honestly, I haven’t issued tokens yet – my team (about 10 people) and I run a CTO (Community Takeover).I like the CTO concept, resurrecting a dead token.You just need to find a ready-made narrative.I think there is a lot of potential to mine, with very good dormant tokens.
We have accumulated a lot of tokens for the CTO (probably too much) and started creating content, developing strategies to revitalize the community, and trying to form a team.
It grew very fast and achieved a hundredfold growth in one day.To be honest, we made a lot of mistakes.
First, we did not make any profit and did not get a penny.With an idealistic vision, we want to establish a “sect” and should have tens of millions of supporters in the long run.If marketing is a money game,memeCoins are hardcore mode.
KOLs are not your friends, they are not reliable at all.They just kept saying that a certain token was a “new paradigm”, but it was sold after 30 minutes.Rise and fall, rise and fall, always end with decline.
Soon you will find that this is very similar to traditional advertising, and you have to face data such as CAC and customer ROI.This is aPVPGames, you need to fight against your ad network and users.
In this game, if you don’t make a profit, you will be harvested.This is a very bad industry framework, but it is true.Either it’s you or it’s them.
When it comes to communities, it is very difficult to create something reliable in this market.People have a short duration of attention, and if you don’t move in a day, people can lose 90% of their selling.
NFTs have many flaws, but they do promote community building.This is very difficult for meme coins of less than ten million US dollars.
Now, I think of meme coins as a sandbox for building utility tokens (and building overall skills).You can become best at content creation (FWOG or using MERV) or community creation (Retardio).But in the end, if you succeed, you are going to create the product.
This is also a very good way to build a top team as it is a high risk/high return environment with a lot of stress.I was shocked by the pressure, especially during the price increase.And how frustrating this is, especially during the price drop.
I was surprised that the meme coins and utility token communities have been continuously built in such a mess.To be honest, you have to experience it yourself before you can understand the taste.
We also see how bad Twitter is for crypto projects, but are not sure if Farcaster solves some of the problems.Ultimately, the best meme coins are those with existing audiences that bring their social capital together.
This makes me very excited about the social DEX/release platform, putting people in charge and weakening the effects of the bundling.
I also think there are many opportunities for innovation in this field:
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Excited by Flaunch/Baseline and interested in how to make LP profits and return volatility to users.
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There is no case study/document at all.You may have read some articles, but you can’t find a (good) article on meme coins and how to properly publish and community management on the Internet.We are in the early stages.
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New models of venture capital, market makers and products that specialize in managing meme coins have room for development.Because this is very similar to startups, your pre-seed buyers take the most risk (but they aren’t locked up).
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Pump is really a casino.If you are a serious team, you don’t need a Pump.And you are losing a lot of income.
I don’t know if I’m a bastard trying to do some unnecessary specification/complexity.However, I really believe that this area can be more interesting and responsible.
The debate between utility tokens and Meme coins is irrational.I would rather buy a token from a16z than just buy a token with a market value of $5,000 and bundled with a dozen wallets.Unless we can reduce this risk, we can’t really have fun because it’s a zero-sum game.
I like the vision of meme coins, community building has never been so important, and I do think this will succeed.But we need better tools to do this, and VC mode isn’t that bad.I want early users to buy my tokens, but I don’t want them to sell it at a low price after 1 day.
I also think venture capital funds are too nonsense and will never make money and will not create a lasting community.So we might need a hybrid mode.
Finally, I think this is nothing more than community construction, where meme coins are an attention mechanism.Just like Pudgy Penguin or Milady.
The best memes have won the favor of the Internet.
But I also want to know how useful community building is when you can create memes automatically.Is cryptocurrency just a framework for turning humans into an AI agent with economic incentives?
