Author: Eli Nuss

Compiled by TechFlow

In the past year, Memecoin has been the most outstanding zone in the Cryptocurrency field. Its total market value has now exceeded 1000 billion US dollars, making it larger than the Decentralization Finance (DeFi), and even larger than the sum of Decentralization Infrastructure Network (DEPIN), games, and the metaverse.

Given the scale and diversity of this asset class, we are attempting to depict its overall picture in order to discover potential investment opportunities.

We analyzed the top-performing Tokens for each quarter this year, and the results confirmed our speculation: Memecoin has dominated the leaderboard every quarter.

In the first quarter, $POPCAT, $WIF, $MOG and $MYRO performed outstandingly.

The top performers in the second quarter include $PONKE, $SPX, $TURBO, $GIGA, $WOJAK, $BRETT, and $MOG.

By the third quarter, $SPX, $GIGA, $FUD, and $MUMU became the best performing Token.

When trying to apply the methodology to Memecoin, you will quickly realize the importance of understanding the "meta-trend". This is a common phenomenon in the cryptocurrency field, but in Memecoin, its importance is greatly magnified. Here is an extended timeline designed to highlight some important "meta-trend" transitions and origins.

Before 2021, there was mainly Dogecoin in the market. Then Shiba Inu was launched and considered the first real Dogecoin killer. People naturally flocked to Shiba Inu, hoping to replicate Dogecoin's success. This desire to find the 'next hot coin' eventually formed a 'meta trend.' Shiba Inu's success sparked a frenzy of memes in 2021 related to dogs and Elon Musk, becoming the first real memecoin meta trend. In 2023, Pepe brought about memecoins related to frogs and the Boys' Club. By the end of 2023, the emergence of Bonk and Wif established Solana as the mainstream memecoin chain, ultimately giving rise to pump.fun. This triggered widespread memecoin frenzy in the first quarter, with new 'meta trends' forming almost every week or even every day. After reaching a milestone high in March, the market cooled off during the summer. The memecoin community and network effect framework proposed by @MustStopMurad became very popular, attracting a large influx of funds into 'cult coins' like SPX6900. Recently, as BTC finally started to break out, we have seen a resurgence of market frenzy, with new 'meta trends' forming around $GOAT from @truth_terminal, cute hippo $MOODENG, and $PEANUT. May he rest in peace.

Since there is a wide variety of "meta trends", we try to segment the market based on categories.

It can be seen that shitcoin is still the dominant zone of Memecoin, mainly due to the promotion of Dogecoin. A few weeks ago, when we started organizing the data, the Sentient AI category was almost non-existent, and the Martyr category had not yet formed (paying tribute to the earliest $Harambe). This indicates that this asset class is evolving rapidly.

Since Pepe was launched, the dominance of shitcoin has been declining, which is not surprising.

With the emergence of the new 'element trend', various fields are being pushed to the forefront, and this trend seems to continue.

For example, encryption currencies like $bitcoin received follow in 2023, when there wasn't much new capital injected into the market. However, later that year, the entry of some new capital gradually made encryption culture give way to a more widespread internet culture (such as $giga, $npc, etc.).

As we mentioned before, the rapid rise of $goat and $peanut is surprising. Although many AI Meme market caps have reached nine figures, it may still be too early to categorize them from 'element trends' into a new category.

Earlier this year, celebrity TOKEN and political MEME, among other categories, also experienced rise, but then gradually faded.

Over time, Memecoin may become a microcosm of the entire crypto market, where Dogecoin's status is similar to that of Bitcoin (BTC). Some 'cult coins' communities may hold for the long term, but most may be short-lived like the Non-fungible Tokens in 2021.

However, it is clear that there are huge opportunities in seizing the initiative in new Meme or meta trends.

I expect that Internet Culture and Sentient AI will be the fastest rising categories. Internet MEME has been widely accepted and has a rich cultural background, which gives them a natural advantage over other categories. And Sentient AI combines the most cutting-edge technology and the most volatile asset categories, seemingly poised to further expand its dominance in the MEME market.

In emerging areas, there is always an opportunity to introduce new animals - relatively few follow-ups on zoo animals (such as tigers, giraffes, zebras, etc.) in the market, which is surprising. As for brand new content, existing fan bases (such as superheroes, sports, etc.) may achieve tokenization in a creative way.

Nevertheless, I am happy to hear everyone's feedback or understand other perspectives on the market. Please note that this is by no means financial advice.