I once predicted that Meme tokens would become a trend in this cycle. This prediction was several months earlier than when Meme became popular in 2024.

Review:

In my previous blog post "What Kind of DApp Do We Need?", I shared my key components for successful applications: product, subculture creation, and economic model.

I once predicted that Meme tokens would become a trend in this cycle. This prediction was several months earlier than when Meme became popular in 2024.

So the question is:

Why are some public chains active with various meme coins, while others significantly decrease after airdrops and become "ghost chains"?

Before we delve into the discussion, let's first understand the concept of "meta".

What is "Meta"?

You may have heard of "metaverse" or "Meta" (Facebook) countless times, but what does "Meta" actually mean?

In computer games, "Meta" usually refers to the strategy considered the best in the game. If you know the "Meta" of a computer game, you can easily win every game.

For example, in "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," you can shoot arrows at your house after setting them on fire to get unlimited arrows, which is a small Meta in the game.

Another "Meta" in games is the ban/pick phase in all MOBA games (such as DOTA, LOL). Players need to master the meta by conducting in-depth research on the game version, understanding the latest values of heroes, and also understanding the advantages of opponents, as well as the win rates of each hero in battles against each other.

How to Create the "Meta" of Your Own Ecosystem?

In the context of building an ecosystem for a crypto project, we can compare projects similar to public chains to a country or a city, and the "Meta" of this entity can be equated to its culture, including language, history, art, and other elements.

• Name and Mascot

Consider an easily memorable name for your public chain, such as Berachain. A name inspired by an animal is not only easy to remember but also consumer-friendly as it reduces the technical aspect.

If your brand already has a technical or geeky name, consider adopting an official mascot that embodies a charming animal image.

Solana has dogs (Dogwifhat, Bonkinu) and cats (Wen, Meow), while Monad has chosen a purple hedgehog named Molandak as its mascot.

The crypto industry is full of technical terms and numbers, and more cute pets and animal images will add appeal to your project.

• Language

Language is the soul of a culture.

When you use a language understood only by your community, it enhances the connection among its members. Being able to speak a language understood only by a certain group feels both exciting and unique.

Just like in the magical world of "Harry Potter," wizards can cast spells, but Muggles cannot.

The Berachain community uses "Ooga Booga" as a way to say "hello" or "good morning," imitating the sound made by cavemen.

Jesse Pollak, the founder of Base Chain, has been using the word "Based" when retweeting various ecosystem projects related to Base Chain. Therefore, "Based" has become the unofficial slogan of Base Chain. In the Base Chain community, "Based" also means "cool" or "awesome."

Here is the translated text:

Here's a little puzzle: a project has already written its slogan in ciphertext. Can you guess its meaning?

The answer will be revealed at the end of the article. (Hint: find the corresponding letters in the image below)

• Community and Applications

Just as a country's culture is not solely determined by its leaders, the "Meta" of a crypto project is usually not designed solely by the core team or foundation.

How to involve the community? One way is to bring users into non-DeFi projects.

DeFi projects mainly focus on APY, complex calculations, and primarily attract liquidity providers, savvy whales, and airdrop hunters. If tokens are airdropped or APY slightly decreases, these users tend to migrate to higher-yielding places because their primary loyalty lies in DeFi returns.

Base Chain set a strong precedent with its Onchain Summer launch program, which lasted for a month. The NFT collection event involved over 50 renowned brands, creators, artists, and builders, covering on-chain art, games, music, and more.

Additionally, its flagship application Farcaster, as an on-chain social network, provides an open space for the community to share, and the content is not limited to cryptocurrencies. This is why the Base community naturally generated meme coins like "Degen" (to see what made Degen reach a value of $1 billion in three months, please refer to my previous blog post: https://www.noweb3.ai/p/what-makes-degen-a-1b-project-in)

In terms of community involvement, the influence of KOLs cannot be denied. Instead of seeking already popular KOLs, it's better to elevate early core supporters of the community as ecosystem KOLs, allowing them to grow with the project, enjoy the ecological growth dividends, and enhance their loyalty to the ecosystem.

What preparations should be made before building the "Meta"?

• Build a cheap and reliable infrastructure.

For the average user, encountering gas fees exceeding $10 or cross-chain fees as high as $50 may be daunting. More affordable gas fees along with easy-to-use bridges (both centralized and decentralized) will make the user onboarding process smoother.

• Give your users some free candy

Users often find it frustrating to complete countless odysseys and end up with little to no rewards, so sometimes it's worth considering introducing a test token or free NFT as an alternative through a fair launch method.

For example, Jupiter first introduced a meme coin called "Wen" before the official token issuance. This token, distributed for free, is now worth $174 million. Similarly, Hyperliquid also distributed its meme token, named "purr," before its native token.

Another example of asset-first approach comes from the Asian team Bitmap Tech. They launched BRC-420 with an initial minting price of only $0.1, and its peak price approached 0.8 Bitcoin (about $50,000). Starting from NFT collections, the team introduced their own Bitcoin Layer2, Merlin, with a total locked value (TVL) exceeding $3 billion.

In summary, for the sake of convenience, I have constructed a triangular model to illustrate the construction of "Meta". The following chart shows the interaction between the community, culture, and non-DeFi products.

PS. The answer to the ciphertext is: We are so early

PSS: This article has no useful content, it's just a meme.

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