Review and Analysis of the Development History of Meme Coin

Meme coin is one of the most unique existences in the field of cryptocurrency, embodying both cultural attributes and financial characteristics. Looking back at the history of meme coins is essentially a reflection on the collision between internet culture and financial speculation.

From the initially ironic jokes to the virtual currencies that now hold a place in the market, meme coins are telling us through their experiences - in today's era, perhaps cultural resonance and community belief are more capable of driving value creation than technical white papers. While the traditional financial world is still trying to create new value, meme coins have already reshaped people's perception of "value" itself.

In an era dominated by social media, the speed and manner of information dissemination have undergone fundamental changes. A meme that becomes popular on Reddit or Twitter can garner hundreds of millions of exposures worldwide within a few hours, and this viral power is now directly translated into financial value. As a perfect vehicle for this transformation, meme coins have written their own stories and legends on the timeline.

1. Groundbreaking/Foundation Phase (2013-2016)

This period witnessed the original innovative journey of meme coins from zero to one, presenting a unique ecology where wild growth coexists with natural selection. Marked by the birth of DOGE in December 2013 and culminating in 2016 with the maturity of Ethereum smart contract technology, it constitutes the purest and most authentic "Genesis Era" in the history of meme coin development.

On the technical level, with a few exceptions, meme coins from this stage are almost all based on forks of Bitcoin or Litecoin code. In terms of market performance, the average active cycle of meme coins born during this period is only 11.7 months, but survivors like DOGE demonstrate remarkable vitality.

The foundational significance of this stage cannot be underestimated. True innovation often emerges when rules have not yet been established, and the experimental field from 2013 to 2016 preserved the most precious rebellious genes and innovative spirit of the cryptocurrency world.

1.1 Ephemeral Project

Mooncoin(MOON)

As an entertainment-type meme coin with the slogan "登月(To the Moon)", its somewhat short life has failed to carry the ambition of this grand narrative. Mooncoin, aside from its name, has no actual use cases related to space or moon landing.

Looking back at its development trajectory from 2014 to 2018, Mooncoin's early performance can be described as stunning: it set a record for a single-day increase of over 300% in its launch year; the Reddit community r/Mooncoin saw over 5000 posts in a single month; it collaborated with the gaming platform Moonrocket; and it was even referred to by Coindesk as the "most serious joke coin."

However, after the highlights comes a long silence: in 2015, the delisting by mainstream exchanges led to a market value drop of over 90%; the following year, members of the anonymous development team announced an "indefinite hibernation"; it wasn't until 2018 that the project experienced a brief resurgence.

Unfortunately, Mooncoin failed to seize this last opportunity. The development team claimed to create a "Lunar Base" metaverse game, but in the end, the white paper did not materialize, and the so-called "metaverse game" was merely a Unity demo video. After that, with Bitcoin plummeting 60% in April 2018, market enthusiasm waned, and Mooncoin completely faded from the stage.

Fedoracoin(TIPS)

FedoraCoin(TIPS)was born on December 22, 2013, and its core is not aimed at the mass market, but rather precisely targets the "Fedora-wearing neckbeard"( and the "keyboard warrior") subculture on Reddit. This highly vertical positioning allowed it to quickly gain popularity within specific communities in its early days, but it also sowed the seeds for limited development in the future.

On the technical level, TIPS adopted the relatively common Scrypt algorithm at the time, and the design supporting GPU mining made it quite user-friendly for ordinary users. This simple and practical architecture helped it quickly accumulate a group of loyal supporters in its early stages.

At the same time, just two months after its launch, the r/Fedoracoin subreddit on Reddit set an astonishing record of over 2000 discussions in a single day, making it one of the most active meme coin communities for a time.

However, the good times were short-lived, and TIPS soon encountered a predicament similar to that of Mooncoin. Due to a lack of practical application scenarios, this project, which is based on subcultural memes, has always been unable to break through the limitations of cultural symbols. Starting in 2015, as mainstream exchanges like Cryptsy and Bittrex gradually delisted TIPS, its liquidity experienced a drastic decline.

Between 2014 and 2016, FedoraCoin gradually lost market attention. By the end of 2018, TIPS's GitHub repository stopped at version v1.8.0, with the last on-chain transaction record remaining in November. In 2019, this once-prominent project was officially listed as "dead" by Deadcoins.

Nyancoin(NYAN)

As the second meme coin after DOGE, Nyancoin gained the unique identity of "the first officially licensed cryptocurrency in history" within a month of its release on January 6, 2014, but its market influence is far behind that of the former.

In terms of the essence of the project, this gap is primarily reflected in the differences in cultural genes: the "rainbow cat" ( Nyan Cat ) meme that Nyancoin is based on has far less reach and cultural penetration compared to the DOGE "shiba inu" Doge meme.

In addition, in the fields of application scenarios and development directions, the direct manifestation of this cultural awareness gap is that Nyancoin lacks some breadth and depth compared to DOGE. DOGE has built a multi-dimensional application ecosystem covering payments, tipping, charity, and more, while the application scenarios mainly for trading of Nyancoin are relatively singular.

As for external empowerment, the community activity and external traffic of Nyancoin are not ideal. This vicious cycle - weak community support leads to sluggish project development, and stagnation in development further weakens community enthusiasm - ultimately leads to Nyancoin gradually declining.

The Nyancoin community r/nyancoins has only 1.5k subscribers, and the last active post was two years ago. This community disconnection has directly led to mainstream data platforms ( like CoinMarketCap and Coincarp ceasing to update Nyancoin's real-time data after 2019 - at that time, its 24-hour trading volume had long been below $10,000, and the lack of liquidity gradually led to its delisting from exchanges.

) 1.2 Generalissimo-type projects

Dogecoin###DOGE(

Launched on December 6, 2013, Dogecoin was originally just a parody of the Bitcoin craze created by programmers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, but it unexpectedly evolved into one of the most enduring meme coins in the history of cryptocurrency. Its iconic Shiba Inu image comes from the "Doge" meme that became popular on the internet in 2013, and this inherently high-profile internet IP allowed it to quickly gain popularity on platforms like Reddit.

In terms of design philosophy and founding intention, it does not emphasize complex technology like other cryptocurrencies, nor does it boast revolutionary blockchain technology or promise grand visions. Instead, it uses the image of a cute Shiba Inu meme as its logo, entering this increasingly fervent field in the most mocking way.

Looking back at the several market value peaks of DOGE, the first occurred in early 2021 due to a retail investor frenzy and strong community support, where its market value soared to 10 billion dollars; in May of the same year, under the continuous promotion from its number one fan Elon Musk on social media platforms and the effect of the Saturday Night Live )SNL( show, DOGE's market value reached 80 billion dollars.

In the following years, although the popularity and price of DOGE have both declined, even entering a downward trend, the overall market trend has remained relatively stable, maintaining a certain influence and popularity in the cryptocurrency field. Until November 12, 2024, when Trump announced that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would jointly lead the newly established "Department of Government Efficiency" )DOGE(, with the aim of cutting government spending. However, the official abbreviation of this new department, "DOGE," coincidentally matches the code of Dogecoin, which sparked heated discussions in the crypto community. Although Musk later clarified on the X platform that there is no connection between the two, given his consistent style of action and long-standing admiration for DOGE, the outside world generally believes that this choice of abbreviation is by no means a coincidence.

The development of DOGE perfectly illustrates the duality of meme coins: on one hand, it has created a financial miracle driven by ordinary internet users; on the other hand, it has also exposed the risk of such coins becoming speculative tools.

However, what is commendable is that even when the entire meme coin market is sluggish in 2025, DOGE still maintains a trading volume of over 1 billion dollars per day, with its market cap ranking consistently in the top ten. Moreover, its community engagement still demonstrates remarkable vitality, and it is believed that this advantage can always be converted into market momentum at critical moments, thereby feeding back and ultimately forming a virtuous cycle.

It must be admitted that this digital currency, originally created as a joke, has now become a unique and enduring presence in the world of cryptocurrency.

2. Dormant/Explosive Phase ) 2017-2021(

In the past five years, the market has witnessed the transformation of meme coins from a fringe subculture to mainstream financial assets. With the popularization of the ERC-20 standard in 2017 as a technological turning point, and the historical market value achieved by SHIB in 2021 as a hallmark, meme coins have undergone a qualitative change from "internet jokes" to "phenomenal investment benchmarks."

From a technical perspective, the maturity of smart contracts has completely restructured the issuance logic of meme coins. According to data on the Ethereum chain, most meme coins created between 2017 and 2021 chose to adopt the ERC-20 standard or rely on other protocols, reducing issuance costs to less than one thousandth of ) compared to the tens of thousands of dollars ( required for independent chain development. This democratization of technology, akin to a double-edged sword, has given rise to the frenzy of "everything can be a meme," but it has also buried the hidden dangers of homogenized competition.

At the same time, in terms of market narrative, in December 2017, the market value of DOGE first broke 1 billion USD, while in the peak period of 2021, the overall meme coin sector's daily trading volume exceeded 30 billion USD, accounting for 12.3% of the entire cryptocurrency market. It is worth noting that the meme coins born during this stage have seen a significant increase in their lifecycle compared to the previous period.

However, it should be noted that not all meme coins have a higher survival rate and longer lifespan. According to data from the Chainplay research report, meme coin projects experienced an average monthly death rate in 2020.

Throughout the entire history of cryptocurrency, the most profound transformation during this period lies in the reconstruction of value perception. When DOGE was listed on mainstream exchanges like Coinbase in 2021, and when the SHIB founder could leverage a market value of tens of billions anonymously, traditional finance had to re-examine the essence of meme coins - as revealed in the "Meme Assets and Attention Economics" report published by the MIT Digital Currency Initiative in 2021: "The value capture mechanism of assets like Dogecoin is essentially converting network attention into liquidity premium." This shift in perception laid a crucial foundation for subsequent social finance experiments in the Web3 era.

) 2.1 Meteor Shining Type Project

(# Useless Ethereum Token)UET###

As the most honest scam in the history of cryptocurrency, UET was launched anonymously by the developer "UselessEthereumToken" on June 17, 2017, during the craziest period of the ICO### bubble, directly stating on its official website: "This is worthless.