As the ETH mainnet's market gradually quieted down, degens have once again become active on Solana. However, it's hard to pinpoint a main trend on Solana. If we were to summarize, perhaps "a tug-of-war between community resurgence and attention PvP" would be a fitting description.
Attention PvP
Since the Trump meme coin era, the meme coin market has long relied on celebrity shills, hot events, and speed contests.
Everyone is used to it, so even if liquidity is poor, people still follow this playbook to find opportunities, thus forming the inertia of this play.
$JOTCHUA, a dog meme that became popular in the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking communities in 2021. On January 24, 2021, Instagram user @_kingorange uploaded an inspirational poster featuring a rough dog picture with the text "JOTCHUA," which received over 29,000 likes within three months.
At its peak, the coin reached a market cap close to $9 million. There is significant community controversy over whether this coin was "organic" because the coin's launch did not occur after the meme's creator, @_kingorange, claimed it, making it almost impossible to say that the claim was a direct cause of the price increase.
Many players believe this coin was another "ruse," or it was due to KOL Ansem claiming his first return to purchasing Solana meme coins on June 9, causing speculation that his purchase was related to the coin.
Same concept, even the same ticker, but your coin just won't rise. The ETH mainnet's $JOTCHUA was deployed back in December 2023 with continuous content and community, but it couldn't compare to bringing the creator over to click a few buttons for a claim.
A similar situation occurred with the World Cup concept. Solana's $WORLDCUP broke through a market cap of over $12 million from about $5 million due to bonkguy's acquisition and lengthy analysis. Meanwhile, the World Cup concept project $PITCH on Base dropped from a peak market cap of about $7 million to nearly $700,000.
Although $PITCH indeed has its own issues, mainly on the communication front. The project is not inactive, updates have been ongoing, but the devs rarely speak up, and X issues have not been resolved even now. However, it must be acknowledged that without any shilling, similar concepts and gameplay just lose in the battle for attention.
pump.fun recently launched a new feature called pump fun GO, allowing anyone to create incentivized tasks on pump.fun.
This has indeed attracted the attention of the mainstream media, but unfortunately, it has once again portrayed in a negative light to the public.
$Bountywork, the coin that at one point neared a $2.5 million market cap. The coin's developer, @ayushquantt, focused on consistently posting new tasks on pump.fun to generate buzz around the coin.
He certainly succeeded—by offering a reward of 40 SOL for someone to tattoo $bountywork on their forehead.
An Indian man actually went through with the tattoo, and he strictly followed the dev's description, including a typo—an extra "n," mistakenly writing the ticker as $boutywork.
Initially, his reward application was rejected due to the tattoo's misspelling of the word, with the dev requesting him to correct the tattoo. Then, someone sent him another $boutywork, essentially creating a new coin using the incorrect tattoo as the ticker.
In the end, he received the 40 SOL reward, and the creator of the new coin also rewarded him, totaling approximately $48,000 in earnings.
Subsequently, as the hype died down, $boutywork practically collapsed, and the dev of $Bountywork continues to post new rewards on an ongoing basis, attempting to replicate this "success," such as having people wear clothing with $Bountywork printed on it and eat 3 worms in front of a camera.
The tattoo tasks on pump.fun still have many participants, with some individuals earning up to 200 SOL for tattooing their faces.
To be honest, this is not much different from the past when people on Kwai (a Chinese video-sharing app) had others eat raw eggs or chug liquor in exchange for virtual gifts...
Return of the Community
Following the discussion of pump.fun's new feature, almost all bounty tasks are related to creating some buzz for a specific token. The only task that may not be taken as a joke is this bounty task for $neet - organizing a rally resisting work in New York.
The reward for this bounty is paid in $neet, with the reward amounting to over $15,000. Previously, the $neet community had spontaneously organized 2 offline "do not work" rallies in the U.S. If this bounty is completed, it will be the 3rd.
Although it is unknown what pump.fun's intention is in supporting community meme coins, their official Twitter account always features promotions of community-based tokens. While the performance of these tokens varies, such as the stagnant price of $chillhouse, the tokens selected by pump.fun are generally quite community-driven and organic.
Currently, in terms of volume and price stability, in addition to $neet, there are $troll, $buttcoin, and $triplet. Here is a brief introduction to the survival and themes of these community-based tokens:
- $neet: Deployed 410 days ago, with a peak market cap of approximately $51 million and a current market cap of around $27 million. The community's mission is to make more people aware that dedicating most of their lives to work means losing themselves.
- $troll: Deployed 416 days ago, holding the copyright of the classic meme Troll, listed on Coinbase. The peak market cap was around $290 million, with the current market cap at about $65 million.
- $triplet: Deployed 107 days ago, it features the most popular character "Stickman Tung Tung Tung Sahur" from last year's viral "Italian Odyssey." The peak market cap was approximately $13.6 million, with the current market cap around $6.6 million.
- $buttcoin: Deployed 153 days ago, originating from a joke on a Bitcoin forum in 2011, playing on the homophonic pun Bitcoin to Buttcoin. The peak market cap was about $68.6 million, with the current market cap around $27 million.
When mentioning these tokens and discussing the return of community-based tokens, Ansem must be mentioned. He mentioned coming back to buy Solana meme, and after someone asked him to directly release the CA, as long as he did, they would aggressively buy 1% more.
And Ansem's response has sparked much discussion:
“Let me explain why I didn't mint a CA. If I buy some Solana meme coin and these coins already have strong holders, the market will tell you which coins are good through social media performance, trading volume, number of holders, and other data. You shouldn't listen to me, you should listen to the market. Meme coins that rely on holders who are ready to dump based on pump-and-dump schemes will not be good. Only coins with a large community, where community members are willing to endure losses and day by day promote the principles of their holdings, will be good. Coins relying on a single celebrity will not be good.”
In addition to the older coins with long survival times and relatively stable prices mentioned above, new coins have indeed emerged following Ansem's viewpoint, one of which is $KINS.
$KINS is a token of Kintara, and Kintara is a blockchain game. Interestingly, Kintara did not drive the blockchain gaming sector of Solana because its rise is not based on a highly polished game but rather on gradually gaining community trust through action.
First, let's briefly introduce the mechanics of $KINS. This is an MMORPG game that can be played in a web browser. To play, you need to have 1000 $KINS in your wallet. Once inside, you can chop wood, mine, fish, buy houses, fight monsters and bosses, and engage in PvP.
There are no additional fee options in the game, only a reward roulette. If players don't want to spin only once a day, they can spend $3 worth of $KINS to continue spinning. 50% of this revenue is used for token buyback and burn, and 50% is used for project maintenance and development.
The core gameplay loop of the game is roughly: gather resources -> craft items -> challenge tougher monsters. If players lack resources, they need to use the in-game currency "Gold" to buy from other players. Players can sell "Gold" in the game priced in $KINS, with 5% going to the national treasury and 95% going to the player.
It may sound unremarkable, and the data isn't very impressive either (so far, 0.5% of $KINS has been bought back), but the project's continuous delivery has built a strong trust. Perhaps it's because the market is too depressing, there are indeed many players diving in, and the number of players fishing in the game is increasing by the day. The project team has expanded the servers to 5, but there's still a queue...
A player successfully sold a rare mount obtained through fishing and received $1800:
The game's developers almost never promote gold farming but instead focus heavily on how to build network effects and player ownership. For example, integrating various Solana community meme coins or new trending coins into the game elements, such as auctioning mansions in the game.
For instance, promoting hosting World Cup watch parties in players' own houses:
When it was still inconspicuous, with a market value of less than $40,000 and 243 holders, this early "unheard of and unrecognized" was written on the game's main map stats board. Everyone watched as Kintara persisted in rapidly updating game content, slowly gaining more trust from an increasing number of people, gradually attracting KOLs like Gake and Ansem to also join the game as players.
So, no one would say this project is about "setting up a group."
"What we are constantly pursuing, is it a game of mutual trust or a game of mutual deception?"
This is the recent trench's self-interrogation.
Hopefully, such self-interrogation can continue, ultimately guiding towards a more benign market.
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