Crafting the Next Meta with User-Generated Assets

Memecoins are having a moment. But what we’ve witnessed over the past four years of crypto, is the same idea instantiated in new mediums. Social tokens, NFTs, or memecoins--they all enable the financialization of a shared idea, asset, or message. To participate in these markets, is to participate in the constant creation, dissemination, and evolution of the next meta. 

The current state of memecoins is highly controversial, due to its culture of celebrating gambling-like mechanics. But mimetic online behavior is a storied engagement tool on the internet. If you squint, you can see how this might evolve into deeper forms of engagement, ownership, and monetization for creators and users.

In this previous piece, I claim that user-generated content is a form of native currency on the internet. User generated content, such as memes, are primarily distributed by technology’s biggest aggregators like Meta and X. With crypto, we see this taken a step further. User generated assets are distributed on digitally-native exchanges, and as we’re starting to see play out, new age publishers. Memes are just another way to capture attention as it’s distributed across web3 platforms.

Memecoins as part of the creator toolkit

Although it's rudimentary, and not in its final form, a toolkit is emerging for creators in web3. Mechanisms like points and airdrops reward usage on protocols. The airdrop design space continues to have significant room for maturity, with constraints like allowlists and vesting, to potentially create a more concrete rewarding mechanism. Growth is further driven through existing communities, onchain referral rewards, and “social proof of token.” 

Memecoins can also be used to bring together adjacent communities or capture a moment in time. For example, Seed Club recently launched $ENJOY on Zora in a fully permissionless manner. They bootstrapped attention via the Zora network for their broader ecosystem. Their memecoin specifically targets users that have engaged with both Zora and Seed Club authentically in a variety of form factors.

With the power of onchain addresses and wallets, $ENJOY can specifically reward behavior that’s demonstrated greater engagement than simply minting once. Holders of $ENJOY represent a unique set of wallets that have demonstrated (to a degree) loyalty and engagement with both Zora and Seed Club. Memecoins can be ephemeral in nature but they are also an effective tool for gaining attention and marketing. 

We’re going to start seeing an increasing number of creators and brands rewarding and engaging their users with onchain mechanisms . Your favorite newsletter writer might open up referral rewards for a subsect of their readers. An influencer might airdrop their own memecoin based on active participation on a channel. Below are some examples of tools that creators can use to acquire users and grow their assets.

Social consensus and narrative building plays a critical role in this. We’ve seen virtually every form of content aggregation occur on the internet. To this day, the crypto community largely relies upon traditional social media platforms to build narrative. We finally have the first few instantiations of onchain publishers with protocols like Lens and Farcaster, and applications building on top like Warpcast, Drakula and Orb. 

With these platforms, memecoins are part of the experience. You can comment on a cast, and be rewarded with $DEGEN directly to the wallet tied to your FID. Orb recently saw the first bootstrapped memecoin on Lens, $BONSAI, where holders have access to specific collectibles or groups. We are also seeing this social behavior congregate on new types of marketplaces - whether its a wallet frontend or a telegram trading channel. Publishers can use this data to provide contextual experiences for users of a particular protocol or application. 

Until now, our primary mechanism for monetizing internet memes and content relied on advertising and sponsorships. With onchain assets, we’re witnessing a new set of behaviors and mechanisms usher in the next internet meta. We’ve only just begun to crack open the design space - if you’re thinking about this DM me!

Thanks to Denise Shaefer, Anay Simunovic, Sterling Campbell, and Jess Sloss for reviewing this post