When VC holds a Meme hackathon, is the end of crypto investment all about Memes?

Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow

In the eyes of retail investors, VCs are the enablers of the scythe, while Memes are the big red flag against it.

Culturally and community-driven Memes often lack significant first-round investments and endorsements from major VCs, making them relatively fair and random. This characteristic has turned "chasing meme coins" into a carnival for retail investors — since they are going to get cut anyway, they might as well gamble on meme lottery tickets.

However, this carnival has long ceased to belong to VCs.

VCs with top-notch foresight and vision can clearly see this shift in the crypto space. Whether out of anxiety or contemplation, they must do something to seek breakthroughs in the wave of attention economy.

Recently, Li Jin, co-founder of Variant, took action and wrote on his Twitter:

"Born too late to explore the Earth; born too early to explore the universe; born at the right time to host a meme hackathon."

The event called Memecoin Hackathon, hosted by Li Jin as stated on the introduction page, is scheduled to take place on April 20 at the headquarters of Variant Fund in New York, calling for teams that can build in the following areas:

• New meme coins, especially those seeking to create a positive-sum impact on a broader ecosystem

• Liquidity layers, including Telegram bots, DEX

• Applications using memecoins as a GTM strategy

• Applications building utilities around memecoins

Interestingly, the event mentions a term called "Memefra," which refers to meme infrastructure. It is clear that VCs welcome anything that creates conditions for Memes.

Born at the right time, are VCs, who have always pursued high-end infrastructure technology, really starting to catch up with the meme wave that carries a "doge" temperament?

Attention Economy, The Crypto Circle's Perpetual Motion Machine

In fact, the co-founding of the Meme hackathon by VCs is not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but rather a response to the trend.

VC investment emphasizes value return, and Memes themselves possess "attention value."

Earlier, in Li Jin's blog, he keenly observed that Memecoins, NFTs, and tokens are the new "attention assets," which can measure the value of attention in real-time.

Rich information can lead to a scarcity of attention, making attention a scarce resource. However, in the Web2-dominated advertising business model, the value generated by user attention is captured by the platform, not flowing to the users.

Therefore, cryptocurrencies can be seen as the next generation iteration of the attention economy, featuring a more efficient market.

Memecoins can measure and capture the value of attention in real-time, allowing users to invest in and own attention assets, thereby expressing their belief in whether a specific Meme, media, creator, or network will gain more attention and interest in the future.

From this perspective, it becomes more reasonable for VCs to favor meme coins.

After all, successfully investing in products that can capture public attention (even if they are Memes) is quite tempting and persuasive.

While attracting user attention, the emergence of Memes has also taught many crypto projects a lesson in marketing methods and listing rhythms:

In the traditional model, crypto projects follow the path of "first product, then attention" — first building a product through technology, then marketing to build a community around it, becoming known and gradually developing;

Whereas in the Meme attention economy, crypto projects can completely adopt the approach of "first attention, then product" — by launching a project that is natively integrated with a popular memecoin, new applications/infrastructures can mobilize the base of memecoin holders, allowing them to experience more utility from their tokens.

These two different development ideas clearly show that the era has chosen the latter.

Regardless of the type of crypto project, they are essentially about attracting attention, getting more people involved and using it, and connecting more people with tokens.

Driven by the attention economy, the crypto circle has gone through many stages, from Bitcoin to Ethereum, from NFTs to Memes, with each narrative shift representing a transfer of attention.

Thus, it is not surprising that VCs are pivoting around attention and making timely changes.

Users Educate VCs, and VCs Educate Users

However, you should know that the previous crypto market was not dominated by unfounded Meme carnivals, but rather followed traditional and serious venture capital paths.

In the early days of Ethereum, when it was just born, even Vitalik had to pitch the Ethereum project to various investors from East and West in 2014.

Although many old-timers in the crypto circle reminisce about how "no one understood Ethereum back then, and now they regret not investing," even someone as strong as Vitalik has followed an unchanging process:

First, impress VCs with strength (or boastful strength), then go to the market to seize (or harvest) users' attention.

In this path, whether ICO or IEO, VCs gained a large number of low-priced tokens through early rounds, and then waited for the project to move to the secondary market to sell under different unlocking conditions; of course, there were savvy retail investors who followed along to benefit, but there were also many who bore the last burden.

Over time, people grew weary; after being educated through a round, users probably figured out how things work.

Thus, we increasingly see inscriptions, runes, and Memecoins in the new cycle, projects that VCs do not participate in, cannot participate in, or disdain to participate in. They not only break the established venture capital processes but also disrupt the path of attention growth:

First, directly capture users' attention with explosive growth, then leverage the user base to do other things.

Users are not afraid of volatility; they are afraid of not having a better opportunity than others to enjoy volatility. Clearly, Memes provide users with a relatively closer channel, even if they may also get cut, but it's certainly better than being explicitly handed over to VCs.

Thus, to some extent, users are also educating VCs: "Hey, the times have changed."

It is interesting to see a role reversal in the upstream and downstream of the ecological chain, and this is precisely what makes the crypto circle fascinating:

Mutual cutting, mutual harm, mutual growth.