The Development of Meme Coins: From Marginal Jokes to Mainstream Assets

This article systematically reviews the development of meme coins, analyzing typical cases and revealing their unique value logic: different from traditional financial assets, the core value of meme coins is expressed as "cultural dissemination power × community consensus", rather than relying solely on technology or practical value. Based on their evolutionary characteristics, they can be divided into three key development stages:

1. Breaking Ground / Land Development (2013-2016): Barbaric Growth, the Sands of Time

This period witnessed the original innovative journey of meme coins from zero to one, presenting a unique ecology where brutal growth coexists with natural selection. Marked by the birth of DOGE in December 2013 and culminating in 2016 with the maturity of Ethereum's smart contract technology, it constitutes the most pure and authentic "Genesis Era" in the history of meme coin development.

On the technical level, with few exceptions, the meme coins of this stage are almost all based on forks of Bitcoin or Litecoin code. In terms of market performance, the average active lifespan of meme coins born during this period is only 11.7 months, but survivors like DOGE have shown remarkable vitality.

The coins in this stage can be roughly divided into the following categories based on their lifecycle, community activity, market capitalization changes, and other aspects:

1.1 Ephemeral Type

• Mooncoin: An unfinished "moon landing" dream
• Fedoracoin(TIPS): A niche "gentleman" recognition
• Nyancoin: a brief "rainbow" light and shadow

1.2 Always Winning General Type

• Dogecoin(DOGE): An Unexpected "Grassroots Carnival"

2. Dormancy / Eruption ( 2017-2021): In the era of smart contracts, meme coin welcomes a qualitative change

In the past five years, the market has witnessed the transformation of meme coins from a fringe subculture to a mainstream financial asset. With the popularization of the ERC-20 standard in 2017 as a technological turning point, and the historic market value set by SHIB in 2021 as a hallmark, meme coins have undergone a qualitative change from "internet jokes" to "phenomenal investment targets."

From a technical perspective, the maturity of smart contracts has fundamentally restructured the issuance logic of meme coins. According to data on the Ethereum chain, most meme coins born between 2017 and 2021 chose to adopt the ERC-20 standard or rely on other protocols, reducing the issuance cost to less than one-thousandth of ( compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars ) required for independent chain development. This kind of technological democratization, akin to a double-edged sword, has spawned a craze of "everything can be a meme", but it has also buried the hidden dangers of homogeneous competition.

At the same time, on the market narrative level, in December 2017, DOGE's market capitalization first broke 1 billion USD, while during the peak period in 2021, the overall daily trading volume of the meme coin sector exceeded 30 billion USD, accounting for 12.3% of the entire cryptocurrency market. It is worth noting that the meme coins born during this stage had a significantly improved lifecycle compared to the previous period.

According to the classification criteria mentioned earlier, the coins in this stage can be divided into the following categories:

2.1 Meteor Shining Type

• Useless Ethereum Token(UET,2017): The most honest scam in cryptocurrency history.
• Hoge Finance(HOGE,2021):A community-driven deflationary experiment

2.2 Stellar Long-lasting Type

• Shiba Inu(SHIB,2020): A transformation from meme frenzy to ecological ambition.

2.3 Transformation Breakthrough Type

• Floki Inu(FLOKI,2021): A struggler trying to shake off the "Dogecoin" label.
• SAMO(Samoyedcoin,2021): A "mascot" of the Solana ecosystem

3. Precipitation / Reconstruction ( 2022-2025 ): The Rise of New Narratives, Market Begins to Reshuffle

After the refinement and selection of the previous two periods, the meme coins in this stage are clearly more systematic and mature, but they still face new challenges. Their issuance relies more on public chain ecosystems ( such as Solana and Base ), and new narratives have emerged, including political finance ( PolitiFi ) and AI. They can be mainly divided into the following categories:

3.1 Short-term speculation type

• Trump(TRUMP,2025):A ridiculous marriage of politics and cryptocurrency

3.2 eco-driven

• Dogwifhat(WIF,2023): A "absurdist" carnival of meme coins.
• BONK: A "market-saving dog" in the Solana ecosystem.

3.3 Narrative Innovation Type

• Goatseus Maximus(GOAT,2024): an AI frenzy "packaging" in cryptocurrency

3.4 cultural symbol type

• MOODENG(2024): A viral hippo that has entered the crypto world

Looking to the future, in the face of the upcoming new era, the essence of attention economy meme coin still cannot be abandoned by the times and the market. Technically, earlier platforms like PumpFun have continuously contributed to low-threshold and low-cost coin issuance and trading; while the latest BlockMiner project launched in 2025 has brought a renaissance to this market dominated by the PvP model.

In terms of innovation, the popularity of "AI+meme" has continued to rise since the advent of GOAT, promising to incubate an infinite number of new paradigm shifts---the rise of DeFAI has further elevated the value and narrative of AI memes to new heights. The rapidly developing AI Agent technology is also continuously expanding application scenarios, laying the foundation for the large-scale popularization of AI and providing support. Although AI projects still face key challenges such as technology implementation and user trust, their core position in the future crypto ecosystem is undoubtedly assured.

From a non-technical perspective, the development of meme coins has always relied on community support and maintaining popularity. In terms of emotional value and traffic effects, the phenomenon of leveraging celebrity influence to create and issue cryptocurrencies has never ceased since the launch of Coinye West( in 2014, despite initially having no relation to the individual), and peaked after Trump issued a coin in 2025. This wave of celebrity-issued coins will continue to drive market enthusiasm, and to some extent, has even influenced the development momentum of AI meme coins. Although there are numerous celebrity meme coins with varying quality, the market will ultimately sift out the truly high-quality projects.

As the era and the market bid farewell to the past together, early meme coins are in urgent need of transformation, while the meme coins of the new era must solve more complex problems. This market is undergoing a necessary transition from barbaric growth to rational development, and what ultimately remains may not be the craziest memes, but the survivors that best balance hype and substance.