Since the start of this bull market, many hot topics have emerged, such as AI, fully on-chain gaming, abstract connections, DePIN, Layer2, re-staking, and Bitcoin Layer 2, among others. These tracks possess certain technical capabilities, but their popularity and duration are very limited. In contrast, MEME has persisted for a long time, evolving from the initial inscriptions and runes in the Bitcoin ecosystem to WIF, BONK, and the recently hot Pump.fun and SunPump. It is noteworthy that the current MEME explosion is different from the past, as it is not merely a pure MEME concept.
Since the birth of Pump.fun, the MEME craze has been breaking boundaries, attracting numerous Web2 users and celebrities to join Web3. According to data compiled by Subin Alon, an analyst at crypto venture capital firm Hashed, over 1 million Meme coin projects have been created on the Pump.fun platform based on the Solana and Blast blockchains since its launch in January. Pump.fun has become the preferred place for retail investors to create and trade Meme coins, gaining popularity and generating an estimated revenue of over 50 million dollars in just six months. This year, Pump.fun has also attracted the attention of celebrities, including rapper Iggy Azalea, who launched a token named MOTHER on Pump.fun.
Recently, after the launch of SunPump, the market has sparked considerable discussion; it is similar in mechanism to Pump.fun and further connects DEX and CEX through Sun Yuchen's Tron ecosystem, essentially representing a further advancement in DeFi rather than simple MEME speculation. Taking SunPump as an example, its core functionalities include: one-click token issuance, binding curve mechanisms, instant market access, liquidity injection, and token destruction, among others. The realization of these functionalities essentially marks the further maturation of DeFi. Although it seems like just a MEME token, it involves many aspects, such as token issuance, token circulation, and the design of token supply and demand mechanisms. Therefore, platforms like SunPump and Pump.fun are effectively further upgrades to DeFi and a breakthrough application of DeFi + Meme.
Application is king. Sollong under the DePIN ecosystem is expected to ride the coattails of AI.
The crypto market has been weak recently, with the Meme track occasionally seeing explosive projects, while other mainstream tracks have performed mediocrely. I believe this might be an excellent opportunity to find quality assets. Overall, the DePIN (Decentralized Infrastructure) track, especially those closely related to the AI track, is particularly worth paying attention to.
The reason why DePIN related to the AI track deserves attention comes from two main aspects:
1) AI is a main track for future global development, a major investment direction for capital, and a development trend for a significant period to come.
2) DePIN has complementary aspects with the AI track, as many crypto projects in the crypto market already possess substantial computing power. Some crypto projects are dedicated to providing GPU resource integration for AI and ML companies, offering low-cost, high-efficiency cloud computing services, such as io.net. At this year's WWDC, Apple launched Apple Intelligence, its new suite of AI features for all devices. Among them, OctaneX, a 3D design software supported by Render Network, was showcased on the latest iPad Pro.
As a long-term development trend, major crypto players are also laying the groundwork in advance. Grayscale's decentralized AI fund is the first fund to invest solely in native tokens of decentralized AI protocols. Currently, this fund includes Filecoin, Near, Render, Livepeer, and Bittensor. Grayscale points out that there are concerns that the future will be dominated by centralized AI, while crypto technology is expected to create a fairer and more transparent ecosystem. Although the combination of crypto and AI is still in its early stages, the prospects are broad. By leveraging the power of crypto, a fairer, more transparent, and trustworthy AI ecosystem can be built.
In the development and deployment of AI, in addition to data, computing power is also a critical factor. In the past few years, large data centers dominated the development of deep learning and AI due to their exclusive access to space, energy, and hardware. However, with the limitations of physical resources and the development of open-source technologies, this pattern is gradually being broken.
The v1 phase of decentralized AI computing is similar to GPU clouds in Web2, but there is no significant advantage in hardware supply and demand. In the v2 phase, we see some teams starting to build more comprehensive tech stacks, including orchestration, routing, and pricing systems for high-performance computing, while developing proprietary features to attract demand and enhance inference efficiency. Some teams focus on optimizing cross-hardware inference routing through compiler frameworks, while others develop distributed model training frameworks on their computing networks.
In addition, an emerging market known as AI-Fi is forming, which transforms computing power and GPUs into revenue-generating assets through innovative economic mechanisms, or provides new avenues for hardware financing for data centers by leveraging on-chain liquidity. However, whether decentralized computing can truly realize its potential still depends on whether the gap between concepts and actual demand can be bridged.
In the later ecological planning, Sollong believes that embracing lightweight AI Agents and AI MEME community culture will become the optimal solution for reshaping the past project's 'technology, operations, community, market, brand' and other heavy asset development paths.
Many people dislike turning all value into MEME, cultivating a belief in practical application while scoffing at speculative FOMO, thus often missing opportunities. However, there are always those who enjoy capitalizing on every MEME value, engaging in the PVP game of financial nihilism, while coldly observing the technology and value fundamentals supporting this game, ultimately ending up with empty joys and exits.
If we accept the theory that 'attention equals value', then as the ability of agents to attract attention increases, their value will also rise. Currently, all of this is still in a very early stage, and future developments are full of uncertainties—future agents may be completely different from those now. However, it is certain that AI agents already have the support of the market and technology and are expected to become the next important category of crypto assets, which is also the field where Sollong is deeply engaged.