1. Project Overview
1.1 Business Summary
PEPE is a MemeCoin issued on Ethereum on April 17, 2023, relying on pure meme drive and positioning itself as "the people's token." The creation of PEPE aims to pay tribute to the popularity of MemeCoins such as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, and to establish itself as a top MemeCoin in the industry, inspired by the Pepe the Frog internet meme created by Matt Furie.
In its market operations, PEPE has attracted a lot of attention from the cryptocurrency community by implementing tax-free policies, a redistribution system that rewards long-term stakeholders, and a destruction deflation mechanism to maintain the scarcity of PEPE tokens.
1.2 Team Background
Zachary Testa, the founder of PEPE, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, USA in 1997. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2018 with a degree in marketing and is also a landscape photographer. He has a record of illegal activities in various wilderness areas, sacred indigenous areas, and other drone-restricted areas.
Matt Furie is the original creator of PEPE the Frog. As an American comic artist and illustrator, he is known for creating the frog Pepe, a character from his "Boy's Club" series first introduced in 2005. It was initially designed as a green humanoid frog, which later evolved into various memes and spread widely on the internet in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
It is worth noting that in August 2023, the price of PEPE plummeted by 20%, and founder Testa faced scrutiny. Reports indicated that he and team members had stolen over $15 million worth of PEPE from the project's multi-signature wallet. Other PEPE team members included the Telegram handle @billyoptions, @zerozevia, and @ekim222 (all since deleted).
1.3 Product/Technology
The birth of PEPE positioned itself as "the most easily remembered MemeCoin" but according to the official website, PEPE has no intrinsic value or product technology content — "PEPE is a MemeCoin with no intrinsic value or financial return expectations. There is no formal team or roadmap, it can be said to be completely useless, only for entertainment."
However, in the crypto field, this is not uncommon, as many MemeCoins in the past have made no claims and directly warned users that they have no value.
1.4 Development Roadmap
In the first phase, PEPE was listed on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko to drive community growth, conduct marketing activities, increase visibility and influence.
In the second phase, PEPE was listed on major centralized exchanges to expand trading volume and liquidity, increase market value and ranking, and attract more investors and partners.
Currently, it is in the third phase, being listed on various top-tier exchanges and launching the team's "Meme Era is Coming" plan to build a meme coin ecosystem, including NFTs, games, and charity.
2. Market Data
2.1 Official Website Data
From February 2024 to April 2024, the official website data shows a total of 990.13K visits, with an average monthly visit of 330.04K and a bounce rate of 72.42% (medium, simple website structure). User visit data across regions is relatively even, and direct and shared visits account for over 75%, possibly indicating a low percentage of dirty data in the user visit data, and most are the result of community interaction and dissemination.
2.2 Social Media Data
3. Competitive Analysis
3.1 Market Size
MemeCoins typically have no practical use and rely mainly on emotions and cultivating community stickiness. From 2020 to 2021, meme coins such as $DOGE and $SHIB established their positions, demonstrating the unique charm of the meme coin market. Currently, the total market value of all meme coins is approximately $60 billion, with Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Dogwifhat, and PEPE among the prominent cryptocurrencies in the top 50 by market value, but this figure is still lower than the nearly $100 billion peak driven by Dogecoin in early 2021.
Initially, MemeCoins were mainly concentrated in the ETH ecosystem. With the rise of high-performance networks, the Solana network has become an important network for trading MemeCoins, and its community's enthusiastic participation has made it the center of a vibrant meme coin market. After the Denchun upgrade, the Base Chain has also become a major platform for trading MemeCoins, benefiting from significantly reduced trading fees on DEX.
3.2 Current Competition
According to Coingecko data, in the first quarter of 2024, MemeCoins became the most profitable crypto track, with an average return rate of 1312.6%, with the top 5 being DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, WIF, and FLOKI.
In the ETH ecosystem, PEPE, as the top MemeCoin project, leads by a wide margin in trading volume compared to other popular MemeCoins such as the TOP 2–4 TRUMP, PORK, and FLOKI. However, compared to SHIB, the TOP 3 PEPE, although still having about three times the space, is developing much faster, and its expected growth and market value performance are more promising. For example, SHIB took 90 days in 2021 to reach 100,000 holder addresses, while PEPE took less than 30 days to surpass 100,000+ holders.
Observing the development patterns of top MemeCoins, when the consensus demand for Meme narratives reaches saturation, it will shift towards pursuing substantive functional exploration to expand users and support market value, such as DOGE announcing the launch of ecosystems like ShibaSwap, NFTs, etc. In other words, the first phase is the financial flywheel, and the second phase is the narrative landing. In the later stages, PEPE will continue to explore new application scenarios in the roadmap's third phase to support its market value growth.
3.3 Differentiation Advantage
Compared to other MemeCoins, PEPE has natural artistic and communicative qualities. PEPE originates from "Pepe the Frog," which is the original creation of artist Matt Furie. The character has been popular on the internet since 2005, with a deep cultural foundation and recognition.
The accumulation of the "Pepe the Frog" meme over the years is a core factor in PEPE's development. PEPE uses the cultural appeal of this meme to cleverly combine the advantages of blockchain technology with the communicative nature of the Pepe the Frog meme. By leveraging the collective power of internet culture and the unique attributes of the crypto community, PEPE has created a Memecoin with strong community consensus.
3.4 Risks and Issues
As a top 3 MemeCoin, PEPE, like other MemeCoins, faces the risk of high volatility and poor market stability. Once sentiment shifts, there can be significant price drops. While PEPE may have brought high returns to many investors, investing in MemeCoins still requires caution and patience.
Additionally, the previous incident where PEPE team members stole over $15 million worth of PEPE from the project's multi-signature wallet has had a significant impact on the community. Although this event seems to be in the past with PEPE's soaring market value, there may still be lingering risks that could cause community unrest and token value fluctuations. It is advisable to closely monitor these developments.
4. Token Valuation
4.1 Token Model
PEPE has a total supply of nearly 420.7 trillion, a number that pays homage to the popular meme numbers 4:20 and 69 (which have specific cultural meanings). The official website claims that PEPE tokens were not presold, are tax-free, LP has been burned, and the contract has been abandoned.
4.2 Valuation Analysis
The valuation model for MemeCoins differs significantly from traditional financial asset valuation models. This is mainly due to the fact that the value of MemeCoins depends on factors such as the size of their narrative, the frequency of emotional arousal, and celebrity effects, making it difficult to precisely quantify using mathematical models. While some MemeCoins have found innovative ways to integrate NFTs, decentralized finance (DeFi), or community-driven initiatives, many projects primarily focus on the emotional value of humor and satire, which lacks fundamental technical value and limits the MemeCoin valuation model.
Firstly, in the Memecoin track, DOGE, currently valued at $20.8 billion (peaked at $100 billion), SHIB valued at $14 billion (peaked at $50 billion), and PEPE currently valued at $3.9 billion, all have fully circulating supplies. PEPE's inherent communicative properties give it a greater comparative advantage in competition, with significant potential for upward movement and value creation.
Secondly, for MemeCoins, the narrative is the product, culture is the product, and the community is the product. Although it is difficult to precisely quantify the value of MemeCoins, some valuation formulas can be used for a rough assessment. The narrative is the product itself, and the numbers represent a deviation factor that includes multiple factors that are difficult to calculate precisely. Expanding on this, the valuation = narrative size (impact on the market's scope) + frequency of emotional arousal + celebrity effect (KOL recognition and influence) + SOV (Share of Voice: media share of voice) and other combined multiple factors.
Based on AI-generated token scores derived from market trends, historical performance, on-chain transactions, and Twitter and news content analysis, PEPE currently ranks second with a score of 63, reflecting greater potential opportunities for investing in the token in the next 24 hours.
PEPE has grown by 6.1% in the past 7 days and has received positive sentiment from some KOLs on Twitter in the past 24 hours. PEPE has been mentioned 8 times by 6 KOLs, with a total view count exceeding 208,947. Accounts mentioning PEPE include ColdBloodShill, cryptogems555, and ai_9684xtpa.
PEPE's valuation = narrative size (in the Memecoin field, 90/100) + frequency of emotional arousal (80) + celebrity effect (70) + SOV (50) = 290 (out of 400)
Finally, as of May 15, 2024, Coinglass data shows that PEPE's open interest contracts have surged by 24.43% to $139 million, and derivative trading volume has increased by 19.72% to $20.63 billion. This may further drive short-term volatility for PEPE. Coupled with the frequent trading by large whales and the continuation of the Meme market cycle, the market remains optimistic about PEPE's long-term prospects.
4. Conclusion
As a MemeCoin project, PEPE lacks substantive product and technical support. Additionally, the malicious cash-out history of the PEPE team and the potential legal scrutiny facing the founder add more uncertainty to PEPE's development, which is a risk factor that investors need to consider when investing in PEPE.
However, PEPE's inherent communicative properties give it a unique comparative advantage, and its success in the community and cultural narrative has secured its position in the MemeCoin market. The continued speculation by large whales also provides a growth foundation for PEPE in the long term.
In terms of current market value, compared to DOGE and SHIB, PEPE is relatively undervalued and has the potential for higher growth in the next market cycle. However, due to the overall weak market, it is advisable for investors to adopt a cautious and observant investment strategy, closely monitoring the project team's further developments, community activity, and changes in market sentiment to make timely adjustments to investment decisions.
References
[2] https://ai.0xscope.com/
[3] https://dune.com/wuligy/PEPE-metrics
[4] https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/Memelords
[5] https://www.coinglass.com/currencies/PEPE
[6] https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/30961
[7] https://www.rootdata.com/Projects/detail/PEPE?k=NDE0Ng%3D%3D
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
