Meme coin operator: The ten meme coins you bought might all be issued by me

Author: Mia, ChainCatcher

Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher

When talking to ChainCatcher about the issuance of memes, Old Mai (pseudonym) used an old joke: How many steps does it take to put an elephant in a refrigerator?

According to Old Mai, a meme project is like "putting an elephant in a refrigerator," requiring just three steps: pre-heating the token issuance, market cap management, and community maintenance.

In the midst of meme Summer, ChainCatcher spoke with several meme coin operators, who either actively followed trends to launch meme coins and then operated the projects; or wholesale issued meme coins, releasing a bunch and constantly switching trends; or became "shareholders" by buying meme coins, thus becoming operators of the projects.

In this wealth creation movement, human joys and sorrows are not interconnected.

According to data from The Block Pro, in May this year, approximately 455,000 tokens were created on the Solana blockchain, 177,000 on the Base chain, and 39,000 on the BNB Chain, not counting other public chains.

Most tokens created on Solana are meme tokens, partly thanks to the explosive popularity of Pump.fun.

It is estimated that at least over 100,000 tokens are generated on-chain every day, and the environment for one-click token issuance has become a paradise for monetizing meme culture.

Perhaps while you are thinking about buying a bunch of meme coins, there is always a team behind the scenes doing bulk issuance.

However, this carnival currently shows no signs of ending, as many institutions are joining in.

Project Teams Are Taking Action

Recently, Xiao Xi (pseudonym) placed advertisements about a meme coin with several media outlets, announcing their collaboration with a film company to create film works based on the meme series.

Xiao Xi explained that he has been mingling in various "dog coin" groups, and many meme projects are not well-prepared and have not thought through what they want to do; they just suddenly jumped on a certain trend, gained popularity and traffic, and the project team quickly published the payment address and finalized the token issuance time.

The project he is involved in is one such case.

Originally intending to build the project slowly, the team jumped on the meme craze and hurriedly issued the token. Without any concept or product support, this project achieved success.

"This success may be more attributed to the market's heat; now many meme projects depend on market enthusiasm to decide whether to act or not," Xiao Xi said.

Meme projects backed by celebrities are more likely to become popular.

The meme coin $Jenner, associated with Caitlyn Jenner, the stepfather of American influencers the Kardashian sisters, skyrocketed a thousandfold from Pump.fun to the secondary market.

Elon Musk's endorsement of Dogecoin became a representative of the price surge in the last bull market.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, although he did not personally endorse any memes, has many tokens named after him in the market, which occasionally surge or plummet due to his news.

However, most "grassroots" meme projects lack the influence and IP backing, and their project traffic largely comes from market trends.

If the project team seizes the trend and successfully opens pre-sales, bringing liquidity and initial funding to the project, some projects will then start to take action.

"To be honest, we had nothing at first, but users thought we were 'keeping secrets' about the project progress," Xiao Xi said, noting that it was only after they had money that they began project development.

When asked if this approach seems a bit crazy, and whether users wouldn't worry about them running away, Xiao Xi stated, "This token issuance process has become the norm in the current meme market. I can't confirm whether other dog coin projects will run away, but at least we won't."

As Xiao Xi mentioned, most meme coins originate from a certain trend or market wave, and only after funding is secured do project teams begin to research concepts, routes, and future plans.

As for "whether they will run away," for the "10U War God" who chooses to invest in meme dog coins, it feels more like a gamble; this speculative mindset makes the meme market more chaotic.

Veteran meme player R Zai (pseudonym) stated, "Any early-stage situation will be chaotic, just like the A-shares in the 1990s, where everyone was half-believing. The current meme environment is much better than the last bull market."

A meme coin industry chain is emerging.

Meme Coin Industry Chain

From celebrity token issuance to various animated characters and even "emoji" tokens, all meme coins are not accidental.

Old Mai has participated in the issuance of multiple meme projects, and in his view, running a mature meme project is like "putting an elephant in a refrigerator," requiring just three steps: pre-heating the token issuance, market cap management, and community maintenance.

This mature operational matrix involves the entire cryptocurrency industry chain.

Token issuance starts with pre-heating. Meme matrix researcher Ghost (pseudonym) told ChainCatcher that pre-heating can be a form of self-fermentation of meme IPs, such as "pepe" and "doge," which inherently have traffic and resonate with the public to attract mass attention; another form is through the frenzied promotion by crypto KOLs, community leaders, and some industry media.

Old Mai believes that promotion is necessary for memes; if expectations are too high, it may make it difficult for both retail investors and whales to get involved.

When the heat reaches a certain peak, tokens can be issued. The current issuance methods are divided into project team pre-sales and pump fair launches.

Regarding market cap management for memes, some project teams choose to involve market makers, while others opt for community collaboration.

Ghost believes that if a project team focuses too much on promotion in the early stages before the meme is issued, an excessively high initial market cap may lead pre-sale participants, airdrop recipients, or even the project team themselves to abandon the ecosystem.

Most "dead" meme projects on-chain exhibit a pattern of high opening and low closing, either being sold off by pre-sale investors or being scammed by unscrupulous project teams.

In response, Old Mai stated, "Market cap management should involve market makers; after all, it's difficult for whales to sustain arbitrage in a meme. Most so-called 'project team control' is just small trades against each other, which is 'always profitable' for the project team." (Against each other: refers to a common trading strategy where the main force trades between their own accounts.)

For project maintenance, R Zai's experience is, "Promote during the highs, push plans during the lows."

When the market is booming, more promotional work should be done to expand the market; when the market faces a downturn, the next step plan needs to be brewed, and the team optimized.

As meme projects develop into later stages, Old Mai admits, "Going public is the only way out."

Going public means breaking out of the circle, but very few meme projects survive to the secondary market; the primary market is the main battlefield for memes.

Going public also entrusts part of the life and death of memes to exchanges, as meme coins with "mediocre liquidity and no fees" face the risk of being delisted by exchanges.

Therefore, when the favorable effects of going public are activated, project teams will also cooperate with coin promotion to drive prices up, at which point, the price of meme coins will reach a new height.

This height may become a new starting point or an endpoint.

"Now going public will face a lot of sell-offs," Old Mai stated, noting that current meme speculators generally sell off when the good news is completed, "They don't care about selling at a loss; after all, selling at a loss is always profitable."

Speculators are the main audience in the meme track, and how to maintain this wave of speculators is also the most troublesome issue for project teams in meme coin development.

Buyers or Community Consensus

Whether achieving wealth or being hit by memes, the truly active users behind each project are always the grassroots users in the crypto space.

R Zai explained, "In the early stages, retail investors who like to trade quickly may become more united over time."

Meme coins can be understood as a symbol of decentralization, and the community is a manifestation of decentralized collective consciousness. When collective consciousness transforms into consensus, the decentralization of meme coins can become complete.

Successful meme coins are never solely driven by the project team; they also come from the collective consciousness of the community.

Community takeovers (CTOs) are common in the meme field, and R Zai is one of them.

When faced with malicious exits from the early team, R Zai and a group of like-minded community OGs and KOLs voluntarily took on the operation of the entire meme project.

R Zai stated, "Our strength and that of the KOLs are formidable; the subsequent glory is achieved by the current long-term team."

In R Zai's view, saving a project from a malicious team is a testament to the power of community consensus, which brings vitality and energy to meme projects.

Currently, every meme project is equipped with official TG groups and Discord channels, and official administrators are also established to liven up the atmosphere and answer some user questions.

Most mature meme projects conduct regular AMA activities, where the project team showcases development updates and answers user inquiries, and the community can also provide suggestions to the project team.

Compared to the centralization of mainstream coins, the interconnectivity established by meme communities is more decentralized.

Over-Decentralization ------ Meme Becomes a Speculative Casino

While meme coins have taken decentralization to the extreme, speculation has also grown wildly within it.

For Old Mai, he never initially thought about issuing tokens; the profit-seeking and speculative nature of memes attracted him here.

The openness and transparency of the blockchain, along with its decentralization, make it a natural breeding ground for speculative behavior.

Here, Old Mai has witnessed too many meme projects rise and fall.

"To me, projects are like pets; I don't have high expectations for them. I have seen their entire lives from the moment they were born."

Very few projects can truly break out; more projects are caught in a cycle of birth and demise, but the teams behind them may be the same.

Old Mai refuses to disclose how many meme coins he has participated in issuing, justifying himself: "I never consider myself a big player; in the meme track, most are speculative, and there are always losses and gains."

In the casino of memes, human desires are infinitely amplified in the high multiples of price increases, and more and more profit-seeking speculators begin to flood in.

Ghost believes, "There are many 'one-night stands' in the meme market; people are crazily arbitraging within. But afterward, only speculators who are firmly trapped and exhausted liquidity remain."

"Take a gamble, turn a bicycle into a motorcycle," is a phrase often heard in the meme circle. For most players buying memes daily, buying coins feels more like playing the lottery.

"I buy ten popular memes every day; surely one will bring a surprise," yet most of the time, all ten tokens fall flat; perhaps behind these ten memes stands the same "Old Mai."

As an investor and "Builder," R Zai views memes from an investment perspective, stating, "Many meme coins now have certain application scenarios and are gradually moving towards good long-term development. As long as the investment is reasonable, I still have confidence in this area."

In every market cycle, meme tokens will always be present. A group of investors passionate about a specific meme will gather together, pushing the price of a certain asset up in a short time. This strategy has become prevalent in the crypto field, revitalizing the entire ecosystem while boosting token prices.

From Solana to Base and now to Ton, meme coins are leading this bull market, with more and more traditional institutions also turning their attention to preparing memes, with Avalanche even establishing a dedicated meme token fund.