How to Leverage Memecoin Communities to Launch and Build Sustainable Web3 Projects

For most of 2024, the crypto markets' liquidity has been kept up through trading memecoins. According to a CoinGecko report, memecoins were the most

The crypto market liquidity was largely maintained by memecoins in 2024. According to a CoinGecko report, memecoins were the most popular narrative in Q2 2024, capturing 14.3% of the market share. The numbers were very similar in Q1. These cryptocurrencies largely rely on fun communities and a brand of humor known as memes to attract users and traders. Through these memes, people from all walks of life can come together for a shared goal of banter and jokes with the promise of financial reward by trading the memecoins.

The market capitalization of memecoins — more than $50 billion as of Oct. 8 — shows how enormous and fast meme-inspired communities can grow. The lack of centralization in the niche makes the communities unique proponents of blockchain technology. These communities, riding on the backs of their representative tokens, go viral in minutes with loud hype as the fuel that powers them. Most of these tokens get inside-traded, which results in massive pump-and-dump. And as the hype reduces, the communities begin to quieten down.

In the last couple of years, the influence of meme-inspired communities has grown in leaps and bounds. And they highlight the clear power of a vibrant community behind projects. If a crypto project with real-world utility has a strong community like the ones in the memecoin ecosystem, its chances of going viral are relatively high.

The best crypto companies and projects should be built on the back of meme-inspired communities and projects. In the next paragraphs, I'll explain how this strategy can work.

Leveraging the meme hype for growth

At the heart of meme-driven communities and their rapid expansion is the presence of heavy humor, herd mentality, celebrity endorsements, and massive FOMO. Communities like those of Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and recently PEPE have experienced huge growth because of these features. The fear of missing out on an opportunity to make quick gains after an influential figure publicly endorses or highlights a memecoin often produces a blanket-like effect of investors thronging the project. These endorsements give these memecoins and their communities a layer of legitimacy and excitement, creating and sustaining a meme-inspired hype.

Influencers and celebrities also leverage their popularity via social media to get memecoins they are interested in pumping in value. Elon Musk repeatedly tweeted about Dogecoin, which caused the price to reach its all-time highs. In February 2024, Elon tweeted “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto”, and this saw the price rise by 50%. This year we've seen celebrities like Iggy Azalea, Jason Derulo, and Hulk Hogan talk about MOTHER, JASON, and HULK to their followers. In most cases — as with all of these mentioned — these memecoins end up as pump-and-dumps. Take the ORC coin for example, a memecoin endorsed by crypto celebrity Davinci Jeremie, widely known for his early endorsement of Bitcoin when it was still priced under $1 in 2011. ORC had such a big community but lacked any substance to it. No utility, no real lore. As a result, the project has remained stagnant for some time.

Celebrity endorsements lead to strong meme communities which does wonders for the project, especially in the short term. As the community grows, the visibility increases, and other investors and fans/supporters get to join. The larger the number of people in the community, the higher the number of users who would eventually invest in the project. At its peak in 2021, about 3.6 million addresses were holding DOGE. In just over a month since its launch, SUNDOG has garnered about 150,000 followers on its socials, with a market cap of $339 million. The project has a 99% positive vote in the Community Trust section of decentralized research and trading platform DEXTools. This represents the trust of the community in the project. NEIRO is another such project with an impressive community. Above all of this is brand loyalty. In no time, even without any real utility, these memes cause a user-to-meme connection beyond just being in it for profit. This kind of brand loyalty can not be bought.

Turning memecoin communities into strategic launchpads using vampire attacks

I know the obvious question here is: What’s a vampire attack?

A vampire attack is a technique used by a new crypto project to snatch users and liquidity from a project that's dominating its niche. In most cases, the latest project is usually a fork of the existing project and it will attract users to it by offering a better user experience, improved product/service, higher financial incentives, and better benefits all around. This attacker project can then develop growth strategies from a position where it can leverage competitive advantages.

Examples of some popular protocols that have faced vampire attacks include OpenSea, Uniswap, Cream Finance, etc. OpenSea was the