When Meme and TON merge, what opportunities will these two top labels bring?

By Habib Rahman shaikh

Market fluctuations are primarily driven by BTC and ETH, which, after another price drop, quickly rebounded, establishing a new short-term bottom.

In this rebound, we noticed that various sectors in the entire industry showed some performance, whether it's the old concepts of public chains, L2, the Bitcoin ecosystem, Memecoin, or AI.

However, comparing the rebound extent of tokens across various sectors, it can be summarized that Meme or sectors with Memecoin attributes are the strongest. For example, PEPE, WIF, FLOKI, and even WEN, all these standout Meme projects of this cycle, have been rapidly rebounding.

Coincidentally, Forbes also released the list of the top 10 best-performing cryptocurrencies with a market value of over $1 billion in the first half of 2024, including WIF, PEPE, ASI, FLOKI, JASMY, AR, CORE, TON, BGB, and BONK. Among these tokens, Memecoin occupies four spots on the list, and three belong to the Solana ecosystem, reflecting the inevitable trend of ecosystem and Meme complementing each other in this cycle.

In the last cycle, the most successful aspect of the Solana ecosystem was DeFi, while at that time, Memecoin was mostly on BSC or Ethereum. In this cycle, Solana's high-speed public chain advantage is leading, with core team members and key ecosystem projects trying out Meme, making Meme almost as important as DeFi, or it can be said that Solana's achievements almost stem from Meme.

The next question to consider is that the development of Meme is highly competitive. Due to the characteristics of Meme, it can damage ecosystem liquidity and user enthusiasm. For investors, it is necessary to find the next public chain ecosystem that can provide a growth environment for Meme and replicate its success.

The answer is undoubtedly TON. So how can we find opportunities within the rules of both TON and Meme?

Memecoin is the Hottest Trend of This Cycle

The Meme sector began to emerge in the last cycle, when BSC started promoting high-speed on-chain DEXs. On public chains with fast transaction confirmation speeds, the permissionless nature of DEXs was fully utilized. Meme tokens, which often feature individual IPs or well-known animal images as project themes, became the most dazzling presence in the secondary market by leveraging Meme culture and the hype associated with cryptocurrency.

Although the "zoo" tokens became very popular for a time, after the hype faded, Meme tokens also became synonymous with behavior such as being ownerless, irresponsible, easy to run away with funds, and having extreme losses and gains.

When the potential of Meme needed to be revalidated, tokens like Doge, Shib, and People appeared. These tokens, through market hype, became projects with potential market value management, strong community culture, and operations, thereby solidifying the Meme sector in the industry.

In the new cycle, Memecoin has not only continued these previous characteristics but has also developed more mature ideas and operational methods. Taking Solana as an example, from the third quarter of 2023, the Solana ecosystem began to take off. Unlike the growth in the previous cycle, within two years, the DeFi infrastructure of the Solana ecosystem has become very complete. The development goals of the ecosystem have clearly shifted from the number of projects to ecosystem transaction volume and hype.

At this time, it seems that the entire ecosystem started to focus uniformly on Meme. Firstly, on Solana's DEXs, extremely complete processes for the issuance and trading of Meme tokens, liquidity supply, etc., spontaneously formed, including various liquidity sharing platforms and DEX market-making tools. Secondly, Solana's founders and team publicly supported certain Memes, and top projects like Jupiter practiced highly popular Meme token airdrops during the Meme boom, which subsequent Meme projects also eagerly imitated.

Under the combined influence of Meme's strong hype ability and the heat of the Solana ecosystem, Solana returned to the industry's peak. Tokens within the ecosystem, especially Meme tokens, achieved legends of tenfold and hundredfold gains, with most projects having very high valuations. Now, the expectations for such returns are gradually shifting in investors' minds to the next target—TON.

The Meme Gene of TON

In the growth experience of Meme projects and ecosystem integration, Meme has always been regarded as a thermometer of ecosystem popularity. For example, the continued high popularity and on-chain transaction volume of Solana can be attributed to the fact that, under the frequent fluctuations of BTC and ETH, Meme tokens can strongly rebound after BTC and ETH stabilize briefly. WIF is an excellent example of this.

Moreover, Meme creators continuously follow new trends to create new projects, using the strategy of "heating up the hype" to maintain the growth of tokens on DEX. Almost all early Meme projects achieve multiple growths, creating a continuous "myth" that attracts investors.

We can also observe that the complementary relationship between public chain ecosystems and Meme tokens concentrates attention and traffic on a particular Meme for a certain period. Therefore, the significant reputation of Memecoin is a result of joint efforts by public chain teams, projects, and users.

At this breakthrough point, the achievements of Meme on TON could be even more prominent in the future.

Memecoin focuses on strong community culture and widespread users. The enthusiasm and liquidity brought by these factors can quickly boost a project's market value. TON has a natural advantage due to its large user base on Telegram.

TON's Notcoin is a successful example based on Meme characteristics. Although Notcoin is fundamentally a GameFi token, its wide user base and viral spread have led users to widely recognize it as a Memecoin. Many tokens imitating Notcoin have also emerged.

We can say that Memecoin on TON has already merged into a new form—other types of tokens with strong Meme characteristics. This has successfully expanded the boundaries of the Meme sector on TON to include cultural, gaming, conceptual, and even utility-type Memes.

TON's official team is also continuously promoting the development of Meme.

Starting in 2024, TON has been encouraging users to trade tokens and use DeFi applications by rewarding them with TON tokens through open leagues. After the third Open League (second season), since Memecoins accounted for over 30% of the final listed trading projects, the TON Foundation included Memecoins as an important category in its rules.

During the entire open league period, the foundation distributed about $40 million worth of TON, and in the final ranking, Memecoins accounted for over 40%. The participation of Memecoins and other types of tokens continues to rise. In the current fifth Open League Season, Memecoins account for nearly 50%.

On Solana, the rampant growth of Memes was due to multiple factors including ecosystem popularity, technical foundation, and user volume. The same applies to TON. Under the guidance of the TON Foundation, once the development of applications on TON becomes sufficiently convenient, Memes will also flourish. Additionally, due to the large number of small and medium-sized projects on TON, these Meme projects are also beginning to use ecosystem partners and utility and platform-type projects to assist in their operations.

The Pool of Meme Projects on TON

There are already many Meme projects on TON, but if we screen them based on the characteristics of successful Meme projects in the market, several main strategies can be used as screening factors:

First, those related to TON officials and major projects. Two weeks ago, an application based on the concept of the pet of the TON founder was launched, airdropping tokens to users based on their join time on Telegram. In the past, the pet Meme of the Solana founder performed brilliantly, and this time, the pet Meme of the TON founder seems to be leading a new wave of Meme popularity. Similarly, many project officials' Memes are the same, such as Jupiter's mascot cat Meme token WEN, which has had its moments of high liquidity and price performance after its launch.

Second, star projects in The Open League. Since Notcoin was launched, it has consistently ranked high in trading volume in The Open League, with few projects able to surpass Notcoin. Similarly, in the season competition indicators, those tokens with high growth and trading volumes are relatively excellent projects. For example, in the first open league, which was a test league before the official season, JETTON and Fish were typical representatives of Meme tokens among non-DeFi and non-GameFi tokens. JETTON's name is derived from TON's token contract, giving it a certain native advantage in ecosystem culture, while Fish is a well-designed Meme token. Both have performed well in price since the start of the season. JETTON has consistently ranked well in subsequent open league seasons. As the season progresses, JETTON's K-line performance has shown clear rotation characteristics.

Third, the ever-emerging newcomers. In a constantly growing ecosystem, new Meme projects have advantages that old projects cannot compare with, and new projects can quickly grow into season star projects. In other ecosystems, new projects show a trend of continuous forward momentum in both expectations and community enthusiasm, which confirms the characteristic of "heating up the hype." For example, recently, various Memes have emerged around the U.S. election, and price myths continue to be created.

In the current fifth season of The Open League, the top ten projects serve as an example. Among these, Notcoin is the hottest TON project recently, ranking 54th in cryptocurrency market value. Other tokens like JETTON, WALL, DFC, HYDRA, and COFE are star projects that have ranked high in recent open league seasons. These projects are relatively new and have shown good K-line performance recently due to attention and support in the league.

From a price perspective, TONG, ranking the third, has completed about a two-fold increase during the latest season. Its data promoting on-chain TVL and growth are also excellent. The community enthusiasm for TONG comes from the understanding of "pain" in Eastern culture, cleverly leveraging the international popularity of Chinese culture. Unlike other Memes, TONG was issued through an IDO and used some liquidity management functions of TON's DEX, such as allocating 30% for liquidity and using the 100,000 TON raised in the IDO to form the initial liquidity pool. 40% is linearly distributed to the liquidity mining plan on the DEX. For Meme projects, many projects have achieved excellent results by issuing through IDOs and then finely managing liquidity. For example, Jupiter's WEN, the first project on Jupiter's IDO, chose full circulation, directly managing liquidity with DEX and CEX. Additionally, projects like IQ50 and PUMP launched on Bakerswap follow similar allocation rules and provide early liquidity support and later liquidity management.

There are many Meme projects, constantly emerging, which means their volume cannot directly become like Doge. However, for Memecoins, hype equals value, and attention equals value. Any factors that help increase user purchasing power could be the best influencing factors.

Especially for projects participating in the league, it brings together all the driving forces in the ecosystem in a short time. Therefore, projects like TONG can maintain parity with early excellent projects like JETTON and WALL. With good competition results, they may break the spread threshold and become high-quality Memes.

Conclusion

The popularity of TON no longer needs validation; however, for the Meme sector, the unique characteristics of TON will enable Memes on TON to start afresh.

Under clear Meme sector rules, TON serves as an excellent ecological soil. Yet, in previous public chains, the explosion of Memes was closely linked to the chain's infrastructure. Memes require token issuance, liquidity supply, and wallet tools. On TON, they also need to integrate with Telegram's frontend, which is currently limiting the extensive development of Memes on TON.

TON's technology and development tools still require education and simplification for developers. However, we have already seen the presence of token contracts like Jetton, DEXs such as STON and Dedust, as well as launchpads like TonUP and middleware platforms like LayerPixel that provide token frontends and issuance services. By simplifying the overall difficulty of token operations, Meme projects can launch faster and reach the maturity stage of liquidity supply more quickly, creating more defined opportunities.

Therefore, if you are looking for Memes on TON just as you did on Solana, the above-mentioned methods are certainly feasible. However, always remember the viral spread and hype-driven characteristics of Memes. Under the heat of TON and the viral spread advantage of Telegram, you can find timely targets and seize opportunities for success!

Author LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/habibrahmanshaikh