Opinion: Does DeSci Need Meme Coins?
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Opinion: Does DeSci Need Meme Coins?
Meme coins don't need positive externalities; their first principle is the cyber lottery of the 2020s.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: NingNing
Does DeSci need Meme coins? Do Meme coins need DeSci? Can DeSci truly become a disruptive innovation like DeFi?
Lately, I've been diving into the unconscious abyss of on-chain PVP, observing👀 how the DeSci narrative has unfolded and evolved in the realm of phenomena:
From Pump Science—a Pump.fun clone—launching longevity-themed meme coins $RIF and $URO for on-chain duels, to @0xAA_Science igniting an attention war around Sci-Hub-related memecoins, followed by OG DeSci projects like Bio Protocol, VitaDAO, and ResearchHub blooming anew, and finally today, just when the market thought the DeSci narrative was fading into obsolescence, Andrew Kang raises his voice and coins a new thesis: 2024 DeSci = 2019 DeFi.
Fantastic new narratives such as "open-source scientific papers" and "reinventing the paradigm of scientific research" visibly excite those straddling both academia and the crypto world. To us old-school leftists who’ve long absorbed leftist ideology without even realizing it, Meme coins with positive externalities feel morally justified when they take off.
But here's the problem: do Meme coins really need something like DeSci’s positive externalities? I largely agree with Toly and Jia Zhengwei (Weituo): Meme coins don’t need positive externalities. At their core, they are 21st-century 2020s cyber lotteries—selling extreme volatility to young dreamers hoping to get rich overnight, offering Gen-Z “P-generals” a rare chance to participate in wealth distribution.
Attaching lofty values and meanings to a lottery ticket is exactly what China’s state-run sports and welfare lotteries do. This approach ultimately attracts clueless, innocent participants who pay an intelligence tax, only fattening the wallets of directors (the house), without generating any real positive externality.
Yet another truth remains: Meme coin trading is a classic example of attention tokenization, thus subject to the laws of communication. A good narrative—whether based on positive externalities or cult culture—is essentially a viral social media meme. From this perspective, DeSci isn't bad at all; it represents an honorable market collusion.
Then again, does DeSci need Meme coins? More precisely, does DeSci need the get-rich-quick effect and market attention that Meme coins bring? The answer is yes.
Despite endorsements and investments from institutions like Coinbase, Binance, Pfizer, and figures such as Brian Armstrong, CZ, and Vitalik, DeSci has long been seen as a niche sector—a social currency among elite circles (used for flexing), not taken seriously by mainstream capital or included in major portfolios. (Does anyone remember Celo’s ReFi narrative during the last cycle?)
Finally, can DeSci become a disruptive innovation on par with DeFi? There's a glimmer of hope. Let’s borrow Karl Popper’s philosophy of science here: science isn't just about truth—it's also about power, specifically a religious-like authority within the scientific community that deeply values orthodoxy and academic lineage.
Whether it’s research DAOs, Pump Science, or the pirate-style raids described in Toly’s tweets, these efforts challenge and attempt to reshape the existing power structures of the scientific establishment through novel organizational models, new fundraising and donation paradigms, and innovative collaboration frameworks.
It may be just a spark, but it brings warmth and hope in a cold winter night.
That said honestly, DeSci lacks the high financialization of DeFi and misses two key weapons: composability (“Lego-like stacking”) and recursive leverage. Without them, DeSci will struggle to create, out of thin air, hundreds of billions in new assets the way DeFi once did.
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