CoinEx Introduction: Pineapple on the Advance! DeFi+NFT+JOKE=MEME
On August 15, 2020, a crypto project decided to airdrop its initial supply to 73 members in a Telegram group, each receiving 355 tokens. Since then, its price soared from $11.29 to $40.02, peaking at $2,800. In other words, the project airdropped more than $70 million worth of token supply. In that hot summer, this token by the name of MEME nearly swept the entire crypto market.
On a normal day in 2020, the quote “UNI airdropped iPhones, and MEME airdropped a building” went viral in the Chinese crypto community. While UNI remains popular, having beaten the profit margins of UNI’s airdrops, MEME which is nicknamed the “ace of airdrops” entered the spotlight.
What is behind this progressing pineapple? How come its airdrops are worth an entire building? The MEME story started with one tweet.
Back in 2020, on August 15, the Consensys developer Jordan Lyall tweeted:
We can read the tweet as Jordan’s mock of FoodCoin’s quick rise. The tweet also included a graphic model that described a project named the Degenerator. On the website of this project, users can start a new DeFi project in minutes through a few drags and drops. Jordan named this fictional project MEME.
“Spin up a new #DeFi project in as little as 5 minutes!” Although the tweet seemed fake, the Internet did not let go of such an interesting concept.
Within hours, the MEME token was born, including the associated website, Telegram account, and community. The trending MEME soon became the target of a scam team; however, their attempt was nipped in the bud.
No one has any clue about where MEME is headed. Driven by an active community, this project evolved into something completely different from the mockup model. Instead of generating DeFi projects within minutes, MEME has gradually become a combination of DeFi and NFT.
At the moment, MEME is a decentralized NFT platform where artists can apply to issue their works. Although the current review system of MEME is centralized, in the future, the platform will feature decentralized voting through MemeDAO (the future governing body of the MEME protocol).
MEME users can earn pineapple points by depositing MEME tokens on the platform and then use pineapple points plus ETH to get NFTs. Users can earn one pineapple point per day for each MEME token, and each user can deposit no more than 5 MEME. Once users have enough pineapple points, they can use them to acquire NFTs, which can be sold on SuperRare or Opensea. In addition to bidding through MEME tokens in auctions, users can also stake tokens of MEME’s partners (e.g. BadgerDAO’s bDIGG) for exclusive NFTs on those platforms.
It is worth mentioning that of the total supply of 28,000 tokens, except for the 26,000 MEME airdropped to the 73 early members, the remaining 2,000 will be allocated among contract builders and the initial liquidity pool on Uniswap.
Uniswap features two liquidity pools that support NFT mining. One is LP Genesis, which enables mining through UNIV2-LP deposits, and the other is Genesis, which allows mining with MEME deposits.
From this perspective, MEME is essentially a mining project. Yet unlike traditional DeFi mining, MEME users do not receive token rewards. Instead, they acquire limited NFTs by staking tokens. The return on MEME depends on a wide range of factors, including the type of NFT converted through MEME, whether the conversion is successful, and the secondary market price of the converted NFT, etc. Using MEME, investors can establish partnerships with famous artists and launch rare NFTs. Yet this is not the entire value of MEME. Holders of the token can also cooperate with non-digital-art projects, such as virtual land or game asset projects.
Like DOGE, MEME started out as a joke. However, unlike DOGE, MEME is now collaborating with many artists and has gradually transitioned from a fictional project to an actual art platform. MEME is one of the most classic cases for successful project repositioning. Another interesting fact is that the NFT cards issued by MEME record some real crypto events that folks are still laughing about.
The card on the left is a mock against Craig Wright, a Satoshi Nakamoto impersonator who is a subject of constant ridicule among members of the Bitcoin community. The card on the right records the twisted story between Sushi’s founder Chef Nom and FTX’s founder Sam (Chef was chastised by the community for going back on his words and selling Sushi. Then, Sam suggested his intention of taking over Sushi, and against everyone’s expectation, Chef did sell Sushi to Sam. In short, things got pretty ugly.)
This year, MEME released the second version, which offered a streamlined NFT mining process, a new user interface, and a more flexible backend. Additionally, the upgrade also gave back a certain percentage of platform fees to users. Furthermore, MEME also announced that it will partner up with the new NFT platform Niftys to meet NFT challenges together. At the same time, the MEME team is also working on Layer 2 solutions.
Right now, MEME has been listed on many exchanges, including Huobi, OKEx, and CoinEx. Although the target NFT group of MEME is still small, considering its plan for the future and the huge potentials of NFT, MEME remains a promising token.
