The next big thing in the currency circle may start with popular meme coins.

One emerging Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy is to leverage the current popularity of meme coins. While traditional marketing strategies involve first establishing a product and then using marketing and memes to build a community around it, this new approach revolves around identifying a vibrant user community around a meme and then building a product containing the token.

By launching a project integrated with a popular meme coin, new applications/infrastructure can mobilize meme holders, who can derive more utility from their tokens.

Here are some examples:

• BONKbot is a Telegram trading bot on Solana, originating from the $BONK token, a Solana meme coin airdropped to users at the end of 2022. An independent team then launched the trading bot, which uses a portion of trading fees to buy and burn BONK tokens, aligning economically with token holders. The bot's recent daily trading volume exceeded $200 million (in comparison, Base's daily trading volume is only about $200 million).

• This strategy also applies to infrastructure projects. For example, $SHIB introduced the Ethereum Layer 2 Shibarium, a platform that uses transaction fees to burn SHIB tokens as part of SHIB's token pool. By integrating tokens into L2, this strategy activated the existing holder community to overcome the cold start problem of the new L2.

• Berachain is a bear-themed EVM-compatible blockchain that launched its testnet in 2021, originating from an NFT-type meme. SmokeyTheBera initially launched an NFT project called Bong Bears in 2021, and over time, it built a community and attracted active developers and users.

Given the high engagement and tribalism of top meme communities, I believe that using meme coins for marketing strategies will become increasingly popular throughout the market, enabling projects to gain attention. For those developing cryptocurrency consumer applications, adding utility to meme coins can activate token holders, who naturally seek new ways to utilize their tokens. Drakula is a short video application, and Perl is a prediction market game, both accepting $DEGEN as payment, attempting to leverage the popularity of the holder community (as of March, the community's wallet count exceeded 44,000). The increase in token usage and potential value growth could drive a virtuous cycle, increasing interest in both the token and applications integrated with the token.

We also see some projects taking the opposite approach, starting with a product and then launching (or closely associating with) a meme to bring more attention to the project. For example, contributors associated with the decentralized trading aggregator Jupiter on Solana launched the $WEN meme in January 2024, airdropping it to 1 million wallets that exchanged over $5 on Jupiter. As the first token launched through Jupiter's LFG Launchpad, it also sparked interest in the platform.

For projects exploring this marketing strategy, some considerations include the issuance potential of different meme coin communities, the complementarity between meme coin holders and the project's target audience, and the existing integration and saturation within the ecosystem (once a meme is accepted in 100 applications, will the 101st application receive the same amount of attention?).

It is worth mentioning that all of the above benefits meme coins themselves, and meme coin teams have reasons to encourage and collaborate with projects to integrate their tokens.

Using meme coins as a marketing strategy is similar to other web3 growth strategies involving tokens, including airdropping tokens to members of specific communities or users of competing products. These strategies are feasible because of the open data of blockchain, which can be used for precise targeting. This strategy can also be likened to strategies in the web2 world, from community-driven growth and brand cultivation of their customer base to cross-brand collaborations and cross-promotion of complementary user bases, such as the collaboration between Lyft and Delta. Unlike offline collaborations that are difficult to execute due to isolated data and systems, cryptographic technology enables permissionless integration, allowing any developer to build around meme coins. Additionally, token holder communities also want to see the value of their tokens grow, which may promote the development of more partner projects.

While many consider meme coin trading to be gambling or a peculiar form of financial entertainment, their increasing popularity and intense community may mean that they become a viable component of marketing strategies. For users, the new development is meme coins as assets, allowing anyone to invest and own a part of marketing strategies, grassroots communities, internet culture, and community currencies.

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