Review of the Apechain Launch Spectacle: MEME, Pumping, Automatic Earnings, Unveiling the Mainnet Marketing Combo

Author: Frank, PANews

In just a day and a half, APE surged by 135%, once again returning to the mainstream crypto spotlight, but this time driven by MEME.

At 4:27 AM on October 20, the official Twitter account of Bored Ape Yacht Club announced that the Apechain mainnet had officially launched. Just over ten minutes later, the market began to respond to this new L3, and the governance token APE started to rise. Meanwhile, as the one-click token creation platform Ape Express launched the CURTIS token and began to rally, the price of APE also increased. By October 21, the price of APE had risen from 0.748 to a peak of 1.758, with a maximum increase of over 135%.

Many people exclaimed that the king of NFTs had returned in a new way, while others were skeptical, believing this was merely a brief blind stimulus from the market, and the fate of Apechain remained uncertain. Regardless of how things develop next, the events of the past two days have indeed showcased Apechain's outstanding operational capabilities, presenting a classic Web3 marketing battle to the world.

A Combination Punch Tops the Traffic Charts

In the past two years, the presence of NFTs and the metaverse in the crypto world has been quite low, and the glory of IP seems to have long been sealed in the album of history. As one of the most well-known IPs in the Web3 space, the fate of Bored Apes resembles that of a retired superstar, watching as new players continuously emerge in the MEME arena, igniting various communities and cultures to launch new tokens. Meanwhile, the once most adept at creating IP and stirring up community engagement, Bored Apes, have genuinely missed out on the rising tide over the past year.

However, it is evident that the Apechain team seems not to be confined to their small circle. From the products and strategies launched this time, it appears that Apechain has utilized almost all of the most efficient strategies currently available in the market.

In summary, Apechain has launched a set of combination punches, divided into several segments: the launch of the Apechain mainnet, a token creation platform similar to Pump.fun, the new MEME king CURTIS, automatic earnings for APE holders, and price rallies. Any one of these combination punches, if released individually, might struggle to create the effect of APE returning to the top spot. But when launched together, the power of the combination becomes evident, even giving the impression that it is difficult to discern what is truly driving the action here.

Next, PANews will analyze this classic Web3 case.

ApeFest Fan Events Heat Up, Unintentionally Creating FOMO

The evening of October 20 marked the last day of the fourth ApeFest, where countless enthusiasts and holders of Bored Apes celebrated in Lisbon, Portugal. On social media, many Bored Ape holders shared videos and content related to the event that day, laying a solid foundation for the topic's heat around APE. Even BMW's official account posted related content about the event multiple times that day.

The launch of Apechain was not like the usual projects that coldly drop a long official announcement. The approach of Bored Ape Yacht Club was unconventional; before this announcement, the official account had released several tweets introducing the ApeFest activities. At the end of this series of tweets, they casually mentioned, "Oh, by the way, while we were tweeting… ApeChain has launched. Start visiting now to see real-time updates." This seemingly casual announcement not only created a light-hearted atmosphere but also seemed to carry an element of FOMO.

Simultaneously, there should have been a simultaneous announcement at the event site, where participants began tweeting to share this news. After this series of operations, at least on the news front, the heat around APE had already boiled over. On the other hand, as the price of APE began to rise, it further fueled this surge in interest.

Those following market dynamics would check the reasons for the rise, carefully studying Apechain to make investment judgments. Meanwhile, those seeing the news on social media would look at market performance to determine the importance of the news. This created a two-way cycle.

The MEME Wealth Effect and Automatic Earnings Add Fuel to the Fire

Of course, just the launch of Apechain would quickly dampen the enthusiasm of external investors, as it appeared to be merely a Layer 3 chain built on Arbitrum Orbit. Therefore, at this time, it was necessary to add some fuel to the fire, and two pieces of fuel were introduced to the market.

One piece of fuel is a MEME coin named CURTIS, which has been rising in price since its creation. Unlike the leading MEME coins that previously emerged on Solana and other chains, which typically experienced a pullback before rising, CURTIS has shown a rapid upward trend filled with FOMO sentiment.

The other piece of fuel is the "automatic earnings model for APE holders," which seems to have alleviated some concerns about the rise of APE. In fact, PANews research found that this automatic earnings model may not be as automatic as it sounds; users need to select specific apeUSD through cross-chain transactions to realize these earnings, and the specific return rate for these earnings is currently not calculable. Therefore, the actual effect of this automatic earnings feature remains uncertain, but from a performance perspective, it has indeed met expectations.

With the addition of these two pieces of fuel, more projects and tokens within the Apechain ecosystem began to attract attention. Among them, the most popular is a trading simulation competition called "Top Trader," developed by the Workshop team. This on-chain trading simulation game allows users to trade with 1000x leverage, with winners sharing a prize pool of $10,000. Although the prize for this game is not high, its greater purpose is to help the newly launched Apechain quickly accumulate on-chain trading volume and new users. As of October 21, the cumulative trading volume on Apechain had reached 1.3 million transactions (with 1.12 million transactions occurring on October 20).

Are There More Combination Punches to Come?

If a good start is half the success, Apechain has clearly achieved this half perfectly. However, whether there will be new combination punches to follow remains to be seen.

From the data performance on October 21, the skepticism on social media regarding APE being just another "flash in the pan" may not be unfounded. Firstly, regarding the MEME coin, the leading token CURTIS dropped from a peak market cap of nearly $30 million to $6 million, which appears to be a significant pullback. Additionally, there are only three tokens with a market cap exceeding $10 million, while the remaining tokens have market caps of less than $1 million. The number of tokens with trading volumes exceeding $1 million is also fewer than five. From this perspective, the MEME heat on Apechain seems to have struggled to maintain itself.

Other data also experienced a cliff-like decline, with active users reaching 83,000 on the 20th and dropping to 5,293 on the 21st. APE transfers totaled 93,000 on the 20th, falling to 15,000 on the 21st.

However, the price of the APE token has remained around $1.50, which is relatively positive. From the Apechain official website, the homepage banner features a racing game that has yet to be launched. Based on the current content displayed on the official platform, the game may still be a primary foundation for Apechain, while the MEME coin craze, amid fierce competition among various public chains, finds it challenging to compete with the mature MEME ecosystems of Solana, Ethereum, Base, and others.

Looking back to 2022, when Apechain was just announced, Yuga Labs completed the acquisition of CryptoPunks, and the floor price of Bored Ape NFTs once broke 100 ETH. Many believed that the Yuga Labs team could create a Web3 version of Disney. However, two years later, it is uncertain whether Yuga Labs still harbors the vision of building a Web3 Disney. The winds of NFTs and the metaverse have blown further away, and what Apechain can do now is merely to barely catch the last train of MEME. From this lively launch, it is clear that Yuga Labs' operational and promotional capabilities should not be underestimated, and it is worth anticipating what sparks might fly before the train arrives at its destination.

The return of Bored Ape Yacht Club also raises the question: when the dream of a Web3 Disney fades, is the only way forward for crypto the "casino" in the short term?