Crypto community launches new strategy: leveraging memes for marketing, delivering dual benefits for users and products
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Crypto community launches new strategy: leveraging memes for marketing, delivering dual benefits for users and products
The growing popularity and intense community engagement around memes may mean they are becoming a viable component of marketing strategies.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Li Jin, Partner at Variant
Translation: TechFlow
The next big thing in crypto may start with popular meme coins.
An emerging go-to-market (GTM) strategy leverages trending meme coins. While traditional GTM strategies involve first building a product and then using marketing and memes to build a community around it, this new approach starts by identifying a vibrant user community centered on a meme, then building a product that incorporates the associated token.
By launching a project natively integrated with a popular meme coin, new applications or infrastructure can incentivize holders, who gain additional utility from their tokens.
Here are some examples:
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BONKbot is a Telegram-based trading bot on Solana, originating from $BONK—a Solana meme coin that was airdropped to users at the end of 2022. An independent team later launched the trading bot, which uses a portion of transaction fees to buy and burn BONK tokens, aligning its economics with token holders. The bot recently surpassed $200 million in daily trading volume (comparable to Base’s daily trading volume of around $200 million).
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This strategy also works for infrastructure projects. Take $SHIB, which launched Shibarium—an Ethereum Layer 2 platform that burns SHIB tokens using transaction fees as part of its tokenomics. By incorporating the token into an L2, this strategy activates the existing holder community and helps overcome the cold-start problem typical of new L2s.
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Berachain is a bear-themed, EVM-compatible blockchain that launched its testnet in 2021, with origins rooted in NFT-based memes. SmokeyTheBera initially launched an NFT project called Bong Bears in 2021, gradually building a community and attracting active developers and users over time.
Given the high engagement and tribalism within top meme communities, I believe leveraging memes as a GTM strategy will become increasingly common across the market, enabling projects to quickly generate attention. For instance, developers building consumer crypto apps can activate token holders by adding utility to meme coins—holders naturally seek new ways to use their tokens. Drakula, a short video app, and Perl, a prediction market game, both accept $DEGEN as payment, aiming to tap into the热度 of its holder community (which had over 44,000 wallets as of March). Increased token usage—and potentially rising value—could create a virtuous cycle where interest in both the token and the integrated applications grows simultaneously.
We’re also seeing some projects take the reverse approach: starting with a product, then launching (or closely associating with) a meme to generate more attention. For example, contributors linked to Jupiter, a decentralized exchange aggregator on Solana, launched the $WEN meme in January 2024, airdropping it to one million wallets that had swapped over $5 worth of assets on Jupiter. As the first token launched via Jupiter’s LFG Launchpad, it also drew significant attention to the platform itself.
For projects exploring this GTM strategy, key considerations include: the distribution potential of different meme coin communities; alignment between meme coin holders and the project’s target audience; and the level of existing integration and saturation within the ecosystem (once a meme is accepted in 100 apps, will the 101st receive similar attention?).
It's worth noting that all of the above clearly benefits the meme coins themselves—giving meme coin teams strong incentives to encourage and collaborate with projects integrating their tokens.
Using meme coins as a GTM strategy resembles other token-based Web3 growth tactics, such as airdropping tokens to members of specific communities or users of competing products. These strategies work because blockchain’s open data enables precise targeting. This approach is analogous to Web2 strategies—from community-driven growth and brands cultivating loyal customer bases to cross-brand partnerships that share complementary audiences, like Lyft and Delta. But unlike offline collaborations, which are difficult due to isolated data and systems, crypto enables permissionless integrations—any developer can build around a meme coin. Moreover, token holder communities have a financial incentive to see their token’s value rise, further encouraging partnerships with new projects.
While many view meme coin trading as gambling or a form of quirky financial entertainment, their growing popularity and passionate communities suggest they may become a viable component of market promotion strategies. For users, the exciting development is that meme coins—as assets—allow anyone to invest in and own a piece of grassroots communities, internet culture, and community-driven currencies.
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