Is the meme craze peaking? Four key factors determine its future

On November 20, Google searches for [Memecoin] surged to an all-time high. Although it is still far from the popularity of NFT at its peak, it also shows that Memecoin's popularity is rising all the way, and it may even have begun to break out of the circle.

In 2024, Memecoin became the fastest-growing cryptocurrency track, with an astonishing average return rate of +1300%. This performance has led some crypto traders and analysts to speculate that the Memecoin market may be entering a super cycle. Compared with the short-lived craze of Dogecoin in 2021, Memecoin has not only ushered in a strong recovery, but has also been officially recognized as a track in the industry.

So, how is the Memecoin track developing at present? What are the key influencing factors in the future?

 01 Memecoin Market Statistics

The earlier Memecoin market fluctuated violently. In May 2021, the total market value of the Memecoin market once climbed to an all-time high of US$89.95 billion, but then fell below US$20 billion in 2022, a drop of nearly 80%. However, this year's Memecoin market has generally remained high.
According to CoinTelegraph, Memecoin has become the fastest growing cryptocurrency sector in 2024, and the best performing Meme has an average return rate of +1300%.

Year-to-date performance of different cryptocurrency sectors as of June 2024, source: Cryptonary

In fact, Memecoin outperformed all other crypto sectors by 10 times in early 2024. Although the RWA and AI sectors have also seen significant growth since then, Memecoin remains the best performing sector, with a year-to-date growth rate of 449% as of June.

 022024 memecoin boom

The attention on Memecoin is particularly evident on social media. According to Cryptonary, since December 2023, Memecoin has been gaining popularity on social platforms, especially on X. With more than 8 million interactions, X accounted for 75% of the total, far ahead of other social platforms. This is not surprising, as many Memecoin projects choose to release pre-sale announcements on X. In addition, Coingecko's survey shows that more than a third of cryptocurrency participants use X as their preferred platform for cryptocurrency news and updates.

Number of interactions related to Memecoin on major social media platforms as of October 2024, data source: Cryptonary

YouTube ranked second, accounting for 20.5% of all observed cryptocurrency content, which may be due to the increasing number of crypto analysis channels and videos on the platform.
According to the same survey data from CoinGecko, 23.4% of crypto participants mainly rely on YouTube for crypto news.

In addition to social media, search interest in Memecoin in 2024 also seems to have reached an unprecedented height, and the latest search trends also confirm this.

Source: Google Trends

Considering that most senior crypto users mainly get news through X (Twitter) and YouTube, this surge in search volume may be partly from new crypto investors.
This shows that the public's awareness of Memecoin is increasing during this cycle. In fact, we have also observed an increase in Memecoin adoption. The number of active PEPE wallets doubled during March 2024. Other top Memecoins such as DOGE and WIF may also attract a large number of new crypto investors.

 03 Record Number of Memecoin Projects in 2024

With the rise of blockchains such as Solana and BSC, and the rise of launchers like Pump.fun, a large number of new Memecoin projects have emerged in the past few years. Between April and August 2024 alone, more than 500 new Memecoins were added to CoinMarketCap, with an all-time high of 138 in April.
As of October, CoinMarketCap has listed more than 3,000 Memecoins. However, considering that Pump.fun has launched more than 1.7 million Memecoins to date, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This trend reflects the high level of attention currently paid to Memecoin projects, but it also exacerbates the fragmentation of market liquidity.
Since Memecoins often rely on attention and community support, the increasing number has led to fierce competition and the potential of new projects has gradually decreased - many of which have an average life cycle of only 5 days. According to the latest report from Web3 consulting firm BDC, 89% of Memecoin projects have a market value between $0 and $1,000, and 43% of projects have zero trading volume. More notably, only 5% of Memecoins will have a market value of more than $10 million in 2024 (this data is based on a sample analysis of 2,000 projects). In other words, market competition has reached an all-time high, and most Memecoin projects are doomed to fail.

 04 Market recovery and super cycle speculation

According to CoinMarketCap, the Memecoin market quickly recovered in the first quarter of 2024, with a total market value of over $60 billion.

Source: CoinMarketCap

Although the total market value has declined since the end of the second quarter, it is still higher than the level in 2022-2023. In October this year, the size of the Memecoin market stabilized at around US$50 billion and showed signs of short-term recovery. The current market shows that this positive trend has continued.
Some crypto traders believe that there is still a possibility of a new Memecoin super cycle this year. Compared with the huge gains of a few tokens in the past, more medium-sized tokens may perform well in this cycle. But it will not be as intense as when DOGE and SHIB first broke out in 2021. The main reason is that the number of Memecoins on the market has increased significantly since 2021.
While OG Memecoins like DOGE and SHIB are still performing well below their 2021 peaks, Cryptonary’s 2024 analysis shows that these assets have delivered nearly double the returns of mainstream crypto assets like BTC, ETH, and BNB in ​​this cycle. According to the same analysis, OG Memecoin performance has been relatively stable, while second- and third-generation Memecoins are expected to reach new all-time highs by the end of 2024.
In fact, while the market has been volatile due to continued price corrections across multiple tokens, top emerging Memecoins like PEPE, POPCAT, and BONK have performed strongly in Q2 and Q3.

POPCAT performed strongly from April to September 2024, data source: CoinMarketCap

Despite the overall bearish market sentiment in the middle of the year, we still saw a number of projects that performed very well. For example, as of October 25, POPCAT's increase this year was as high as +8900.77%.

05Memecoin drives the development of Solana

Overall, Solana has the largest number of Memecoins on the platform, and there are many outstanding tokens among them.
Solana seems to be the most popular Memecoin blockchain in the past few years, which may be closely related to its fast transaction speed, ease of use and low fees. Today, most of the emerging and fast-growing Memecoins like WIF and BONK are based on Solana, not to mention the numerous projects launched through Solana's Pump.fun platform.
According to the DEX aggregator data provided by BDC, these head blockchain platforms have an average of 40,000 to 50,000 new tokens per day, of which Solana accounts for almost half of the Memecoin projects. In comparison, BNB chain is Solana's biggest competitor, but its number of new tokens added per day is only 5,400.

Blockchains with the most new crypto tokens recorded as of March 2024, source: BDC

Editor's note: According to the latest CoinGecko data, compared with the first quarter of the study, the top ranking of the Solana ecosystem has not changed, and it continues to lead by a wide margin, but some other ecosystems have stepped up to attract more attention, and their share of investor interest is gradually shrinking.

For example, the BNB chain recently announced an initiative to support Memecoin innovation, aimed at helping users launch, migrate and increase the liquidity of new tokens. Given this, we are likely to see more BNB-based projects soon.
Base Chain also ranks in the top five in terms of the number of new projects, with an average of about 1,700 new tokens added every day. Given the recent popularity of Base Chain, especially with the explosive popularity of BRETT, it may soon become a strong competitor to BSC and Solana.
Even though the Ethereum chain with the highest market value adds an average of 1,600 new tokens per day, it remains highly active in the Memecoin field, with 95% of multi-chain Memecoins supporting Ethereum. In addition, about 40% of multi-chain Memecoins support both Ethereum and BNB. It is worth mentioning that the popularity of Ethereum native tokens such as SHIB, PEPE and FLOKI also proves that Ethereum is still one of the dominant forces in the Memecoin market.

 06 Latest Memecoin Trends

Since Q1 2024, we have seen the emergence of more and more promising Solana Memecoins, as well as some notable Base Chain Memecoin projects.
Among these projects, several Memecoin categories have been particularly popular in this cycle:

1) Animal Coins such as Dogs and Cats

Doge-themed coins are still the most popular Memecoin category. The world-renowned Dogecoin shows how animal-related memes can gain strong community support in the cryptocurrency space. The success of the two major OG Tokens, DOGE and SHIB, is a strong proof of this phenomenon. By 2024, this trend continues, and DOGE and SHIB remain the Memecoins with the highest market capitalization.
However, a number of other top dog-themed memecoins have emerged this year, such as WIF, FLOKI, and BONK, and the performance of these tokens cannot be ignored.
According to Cryptonary, by March 2024, dog-themed memecoins have accounted for more than half of the total memecoin market value, with a market value of approximately $36 billion, and a return rate of 2.5 times.

Growth of different memecoin categories in 2024, source: Cryptonary

However, cat-themed memecoins have also achieved significant growth, becoming the fastest growing category in the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. By March 2024, the market value of cat-themed coins had soared from $50 million to $1.8 billion, bringing investors a 10-fold return.
The recent craze for pufferfish, goats, etc. seems to be far from over. In the future, we are likely to see more animal-themed tokens enter the Memecoin market.

2) PolitiFi Memecoin

As the US election was a hot topic, PolitiFi became one of the most active Memecoin categories in the first half of this year. However, as the dust settled on the election, this trend has cooled down.
According to Cryptonary's analysis, the market value of the PolitiFi category exceeded $1 billion at the beginning of this year, and some of the major Memecoins brought investors up to 27,000% returns at their peak.
However, many crypto assets have fallen sharply since then. As of October, PolitiFi’s market cap fell to $634 million, covering 133 listed tokens on CoinMarketCap.
It is important to note that the market caps of many PolitiFi coins are self-reported, so the actual data may vary significantly. Currently, ConstitutionDAO is the largest project in the space, with a market cap of over $400 million. On the other hand, many PolitiFi coins have fallen 80%–90% since their all-time highs.
Overall, PolitiFi coins have been volatile (more so than other Memecoins), and few tokens have been able to maintain lasting community support.

3) Celebrity-themed Memecoins

While celebrity-themed Memecoins have received a lot of attention in recent years, they have also attracted a lot of doubts and criticism.
Celebrity-endorsed Memecoins often spark a moment of heated discussion,but most projects have a very short lifespan. In addition, such tokens are often seen as tools for cutting leeks, or even as potential scams, as project owners often use investor funds as exit liquidity.
For example, TrumpCoin (DJT), which was launched in June 2024, has a single wallet address holding 67% of the token supply. This situation often indicates a rug-pull, and the asset will have difficulty recovering. In fact, as of October, the price of DJT has fallen 97.72% from its all-time high.

Celebrity-themed memes are often short-lived

This worrying trend of dubious projects has even sparked public criticism from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who made it clear that many celebrity-themed Memecoins have little real value to investors.
The failure of TrumpCoin (DJT) is not an isolated case. According to CryptoPotato's analysis, July 2024 data shows that since June, all new celebrity Memecoins launched on Solana have fallen by an average of 94%. Even the better-performing projects have generally seen their prices fall by more than 70%. Today, celebrity coins like JENNER and LILPUMP are still well below their all-time highs.
Despite this, a handful of projects remain active, largely due to ongoing discussions on social media. The most notable example is Iggy Azalea’s Token MOTHER, which is still up 192.8% as of 2024, despite a pullback from its all-time high.
However, like PolitiFi-type Memecoins, celebrity-themed Memecoins, while often generating hype, seem doomed to fail in the long run.

 07 What are the most popular Memecoins right now?

While most Memecoins have failed, some have stood the test of time with strong community support. In recent months in particular, some emerging Memecoins have been able to gain a foothold in the market with a solid community base.
Below are the top ten memecoins by market cap as of November 20, 2024.

1) Dogecoin (DOGE)

DOGE is the earliest and most resilient memecoin on the market, having survived more than a decade. DOGE was launched on the BNB chain in December 2013, and early adoption was slow. Although it reached an all-time high of $0.7376 between April and May 2021, the subsequent meme coin market fell sharply in 2022. It was not until this cycle that a major breakthrough was ushered in. This year, DOGE took the lead in rebounding, starting to rise in early February, and the price exceeded $0.2 in March, reaching its highest level since December 2021. Although the price has fallen back during the period, the increase this year is still considerable, and the market value is far higher than other Memecoins. As of November 20, it has reached about 57.62 billion US dollars, ranking first.

2) Shiba Inu (SHIB)

SHIB was originally a project on Ethereum, aiming to replicate the success of DOGE, and the result has also achieved remarkable results. Since its release, SHIB has accumulated a growth of hundreds of thousands of times. SHIB reached its historical high during the Memecoin boom in 2021, but then experienced a decline from 2022 to 2023. In 2024, SHIB also rose again. As of November 20, the market value is about 14.5 billion US dollars, and it is currently ranked 2nd on CoinMarketCap.

3）Pepe (PEPE)

PEPE was launched on Ethereum in April 2023, and its price has increased by hundreds of thousands of times so far. PEPE's sharp rise began in March 2024, and this round of growth was largely due to the Certik audit report released in December 2023, which gave its code security a high score of 91%. It has skyrocketed again in the recent Memecoin craze, and as of November 20, PEPE's market value is about US$8.54 billion.

4）Bonk (BONK)

BONK is one of the many Doge-themed Memecoins released last year, and its price has been steadily rising since October 2023. It is also one of the few Memecoin projects with extensive cross-chain interoperability, and can be transferred between the five major blockchains including Ethereum, BNB, Solana, and Polygon. As of November 20, the market value is about $4.1 billion.

5) Dogwifhat (WIF)

WIF is another emerging Doge-themed Memecoin that was launched on Solana in mid-December 2023.It began trading in March 2024 and quickly became the first top Memecoin to break $1. This news further boosted the popularity of WIF, causing it to reach an all-time high of $4.85 on March 31, 2024. At one point, WIF's market value even exceeded PEPE, but then the price fluctuated. The current price of WIF is around $3.4, and the market value is about $3.4 billion as of November 20.

6) FLOKI (FLOKI)

FLOKI is one of the earlier Memecoins and has recently seen a resurgence. Inspired by Elon Musk’s Shiba Inu Floki, the coin was released on Ethereum and BNB chains in mid-2021. Within 4 months of its release, the price reached an all-time high, but then entered a downward trend. In 2024, market enthusiasm was rekindled as FLOKI could become an NFT asset for the upcoming Valhalla game. In June 2024, the coin reached a new all-time high of $0.0003462, but the price subsequently fell back. As of November 20, FLOKI’s market value was approximately $2.32 billion, and it is still one of the top Memecoins.

7)Brett (BRETT)
BRETT is one of the few top memecoins on the Base blockchain and the second most popular Pepe-themed memecoin in 2024.The meme was released in March 2024 and performed poorly at the beginning of the year, but began to rise from mid-May and reached an all-time high of $0.193 in early June, with a market value of approximately $1.73 billion as of November 20.

8)Popcat (POPCAT)

POPCAT is one of the stars of this round of Memecoin super cycle.It was released on Solana in December 2023 and fell in the early stage until it began to rebound in early 2024. Since March, POPCAT has entered an upward channel and reached its first all-time high of $0.97 in July. Despite the volatility in the third quarter of 2024, it strengthened again in early September. As of November 20, the market value reached $1.67 billion, which is quite impressive for a Memecoin that was launched less than 12 months ago.

9)Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT)

PNUT is a Memecoin launched on the Solana chain in November 2024, inspired by a euthanized Internet celebrity squirrel Peanut.The incident sparked heated discussions on social media, driving the Token to rapid popularity. PNUT surged 800% within a week of its launch, with a market value of $1.6 billion at one point, and was listed on exchanges such as Binance and OKX, becoming a hot spot in the market. As of November 20, its market value was approximately $1.61 billion.

10) Goatseus Maximus (GOAT)

GOAT was officially launched in October 2024. The project was founded by Andy Ayrey. It was originally an AI funny experiment, but with the viral spread on social media, GOAT gradually evolved into an "AI doctrine" phenomenon with a cult-like follower culture. GOAT was initiated by the Pump.fun platform on Solana. After its launch, it was promoted by an AI account called Truth Terminal, quickly becoming popular and attracting a lot of attention. Its market value once exceeded $500 million, and it triggered a wave of airdrops for a large number of memecoins and related projects. It is another dark horse in the memecoin trend in 2024. As of November 20, the market value is approximately $1.1 billion.

 08 Main factors affecting Memecoin trends

The trend of Memecoin is affected by a variety of factors. The following are several key drivers:

1) High return potential

Compared with more mature cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH, Memecoin has attracted many investors with its high-risk, high-return characteristics. Traditional cryptocurrencies are high in price and low in volatility, and investors usually need to invest a large amount of funds to obtain significant returns. Memecoin is more attractive due to its low price, especially in the pre-sale stage, and has a lower investment threshold.
Memecoin has great return potential, especially in the first few months after the project goes online, when prices tend to rise sharply. For example, POPCAT has seen a +8900.77% price increase since its release in December 2023. In other words, a $2,500 investment in December could have yielded a return of more than $220,000 today (based on October data). 2) Social Sentiment Social sentiment is one of the key factors that influences demand and price movements for Memecoins. Simply put, the more hype and attention a Memecoin gets, the more community engagement it has, and the higher the token valuation will be. Take the 2023 Dogecoin resurgence as an example: just 15 minutes after Musk posted a photo of his dog Floki, Dogecoin’s market cap skyrocketed by $500 million. At the same time, FLOKI also soared, with a price increase of nearly 50% in an hour. Overall, Memecoin price fluctuations are closely related to community enthusiasm, and social media discussion heat is often the main catalyst for price changes.

This highlights the significant impact that social media discourse and mass support have on Memecoin trends. When there is enough hype around a token, it can cause dramatic market fluctuations in a short period of time.

3) Development of Practicality

A common criticism of Memecoins is that they are purely speculative assets with no real use. And because the hype fades quickly, many Memecoins have extremely short lifespans.
But not every Memecoin is like this, and some Memecoins have been integrated into the broader ecosystem. For example, Memecoins like FLOKI can be used as assets in crypto games, providing unique in-game purchases, rewards, or staking opportunities.
Similar utility developments in other crypto sectors such as gaming, AI, and DeFi could provide real-world use cases and help maintain active communities, extending the lifespan and relevance of these tokens beyond the initial hype cycle.
Indeed, we are already seeing continued integration of Memecoin in crypto games, with new Shiba Inu-style play-and-earn Memecoins on the rise.

4) Security and Safeguarding Issues

Memecoins are, of course, controversial for a number of reasons. First, their high volatility is almost a given, especially when these tokens lack real-world use. Many people compare Memecoin investing to gambling.
Add to this already volatile market and the prevalence of pump-and-dump schemes, and the risk of losing your investment seems to outweigh the opportunity for huge short-term gains.

The above image is an example of a pump and dump scheme seen in PolitiFi Memecoin. Unsurprisingly, many investors may avoid Memecoin for this reason. However, scams in the Memecoin market continue to emerge.
Although all cryptocurrencies have a unique crypto asset ID (UCID), criminals can still use the same code names and symbols to impersonate established memes in an attempt to deceive unsuspecting investors into buying into their category.

The above image is a story of two seemingly identical PEPE coins. Since smart contracts are easily exploited, accidentally investing in the wrong one means your crypto assets will be stolen.

 09 Summary

It is not difficult to see that the current Memecoin market is in full swing, surpassing the level before 2023 and outperforming other cryptocurrency fields.
Social media interactions have also reached an all-time high, indicating that overall market sentiment continues to be bullish. The success of new Memecoins this season has even sparked speculation about a potential super cycle. However, with thousands of new Memecoins pouring into the market, market fragmentation has increased, and many projects are destined to be cannon fodder.
Therefore, although the Memecoin market shows promising growth, given the current market dynamics, it is important to pay attention to the risks before investing in new projects, and DYOR is more important than ever.