Blowing up luxury cars, issuing "blank" coins—why are memes getting more abstract these days? | Today's Meme Perspective Showcase
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Blowing up luxury cars, issuing "blank" coins—why are memes getting more abstract these days? | Today's Meme Perspective Showcase
It's all because they forced me to post it.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow
In the early morning hours, two unusual Pump.Fun memecoins on the Solana blockchain began surging simultaneously. These two memecoins shared a striking similarity—nearly identical launch times, and both featured blank names and blank icons. Within two hours of going live, they reached market caps of $4 million and $6 million respectively.
In the current meme coin market, such sudden price surges typically have unique backstories or underlying narratives.
So what exactly happened? After investigation, TechFlow discovered that both "blank memecoins" were linked to the anonymous artist @SHL0MS, whose past actions have consistently carried a strong flair for performance art.
Art Is Explosion
The main character of this story, @SHL0MS, may ring a bell for NFT OGs from the previous bull market. In February 2022, SHL0MS blew up a used Lamborghini Huracán and turned the act into performance art, minting an NFT collection titled CAR by SHL0MS. At the time, crypto art and NFTs still enjoyed significant market "recognition," and SHL0MS’s explosive artwork attracted enthusiastic buyers. The collection achieved a market cap exceeding 1,000 ETH (around $3 million) on its first day, with a current floor price of 0.169 ETH.
Regarding this artistic act, SHL0MS claimed it was intended as a critique of the greed-driven speculation rampant in the crypto industry—not merely a money-making stunt.
Afterward, SHL0MS gradually faded from public attention—until today’s unexpected emergence tied to these blank memecoins.
Criticizing Speculation, Only to Be Parodied With a Coin?
The wealth-generating frenzy around meme coins needs no elaboration, especially within the AI + Meme narrative where one legendary token after another has emerged.
In response to the current meme mania, SHL0MS—who has long been critical of speculative tendencies in crypto—has voiced consistent skepticism on Twitter. He stated, “I’m deeply bearish on the AI industry because many people are getting pulled into the meme coin game, which will either bankrupt them or make them so rich they lose interest in the actual industry.” He also added, “If some niche internet celebrity endorses a randomly issued token, you’re deceiving your followers without making any real profit, permanently damaging your reputation. That’s just stupid.”
Moreover, SHL0MS argues that simply promoting a meme because its price went up renders any theory meaningless. According to him, a valid theory of meme value should be able to:
-
Predict which memes will go viral
-
Or at least provide post-hoc explanations for why certain memes succeeded while others failed
If a theory fails both criteria, it holds no real value. He coined the term "tautological price apologistics" to describe arguments that merely justify already successful memes without explaining *why* they succeeded.
SHL0MS's passionate commentary sparked discussions among Twitter users. But beyond rational debate, some netizens stayed true to crypto culture’s roots and replied: “Talk all you want—where’s your coin?”
SHL0MS shot back, saying he had already launched a coin—one with zero intrinsic value, designed purely as satire against speculative behavior—and emphasized only invited individuals could receive his worthless token (“I’m too elite for you to touch”).
This stance inevitably came off as politically incorrect in today’s hyper-financialized environment. As SHL0MS gained traction online, playful community members swiftly created a parody token named $SHL0MS on Pump.Fun and posted the link directly under SHL0MS’s tweets.
Unsurprisingly, SHL0MS lost his cool upon seeing the mockery, retorting: “If you get rugged, you deserve it.”
Judging by the chart, the parody $SHL0MS token did indeed crash to near zero—but not before peaking at over a million dollars in market cap, allowing quick-fingered traders to cash in.
Too Angry to Stay Silent—So He Launched His Own Coin?
Perhaps fueled by growing frustration, SHL0MS decided to fight fire with fire—launching his own token on Pump.Fun as a form of protest against the parody. Soon after, he released the first contract address (let’s call it Blank Token #1).
It was reported that SHL0MS initially accidentally exposed his wallet address and had purchased a large amount of the token himself—but later burned all early holdings.
Shortly thereafter, SHL0MS published another CA for a second blank token (Blank Token #2), claiming the difference between the two lay in subtle variations of blank characters—essentially different types of whitespace formatting.
Unsurprisingly, the market interpreted SHL0MS’s retaliatory move as yet another tradable narrative. The blank tokens quickly surged, briefly pushing their combined market cap close to $10 million.
Some followers reacted with disbelief: “OMG, didn’t expect you to launch a coin too—you’ve put yourself in a tough spot now.”
SHL0MS quickly tried to save face, replying: “They forced me into this…”
Following this, SHL0MS refrained from aggressive promotion of his tokens. Instead, he continued posting cryptic, abstract tweets to explain or comment on his actions, sprinkling in meme jokes along the way. He also repeatedly affirmed that he was burning supply, stating most of the pre-purchased tokens had already been destroyed.
Summary
Perhaps due to rapidly shifting market attention, or because the entire event was rooted in short-term hype, both blank tokens have since trended toward zero as of writing.
Yet the price action is no longer the most intriguing aspect. The very premise—that someone launches a coin to denounce profiting from coin launches—is inherently absurd. Based solely on surface-level statements and abstract expressions, it's impossible to determine whether this was an accidental piece of performance art or a cleverly disguised money grab wrapped in righteous justification.
Maybe abstraction is simply ingrained in the artist’s DNA. Maybe launching a coin while verbally rejecting it can still be masked as “performance art.” But in the end, only the participants—and the balances in their wallets—know who walked away rich, and who simply paid dearly for front-row seats to the spectacle.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
深潮TechFlow
