Meme and public chains are an interesting symbiotic relationship and have many similarities. The most important aspect of MEME is traffic and reaching users; without value, there is no valuation system to bind it, and exaggerated rises and falls can reach users, with consensus determining price.
Public chains have never had an accurate valuation system; it is more based on user activity and benchmarks, ultimately leading to the initial price setting. For example, with APT and SUI, the expectation during the first wave of trading was to not break the VC's cost, and then hover around that cost for a while before rising with the market trend. This logic is something that anyone who experienced the exaggerated price increases of public chains in 2021 would buy into. In this process, the ecosystem is merely a target for sustaining traffic.
From this perspective, public chains and MEMEs are not much different; both are traffic businesses.
How to build a good public chain? Or how to buy into a powerful public chain? From this perspective, I think it is about finding three types of people: 1. Identify the core user group, who are willing to help buy the dip at low prices and will not sell at high prices.
2. Find ways to reach more users through exchanges/media/news during an upward trend.
3. Find Dapps and MEMEs that can accommodate new incoming traffic in the latter half of an upward trend; the former is the focus, while the latter is supplementary. In recent months, SOL has achieved rankings 1, 2, and 3 for large tokens, SUI has achieved 1, 2, and 3 for small tokens, FTM has achieved 1 and 2, and APT has achieved 2.
Next, let's talk about public chains that have not yet launched; Initia and Movement are two interesting examples:
1. The core user group is quite fixed, consisting of those who hope for the Move system and those who hope for the Cosmos system, both of whom utilize bridging ETH assets and optimize user experience through the moldability of the ecosystem's VM. The core user group should be users who have a strong belief in Move and Tendermint technology but are disappointed with the original ecosystem.
2. Both of these teams have a good standing in their original ecosystem (the Initia team comes from the Terra technology background, while the Movement team is from the APT core ecosystem.
During upward trends, there will be users who recall the exaggerated price increases of the original ecosystem through PR, and the technical advantages can also be spread again, creating a FOMO effect. Both teams are backed by Binance Lab and Western VCs; on one hand, there is an expectation that these VCs' tokens are less likely to break even, and on the other hand, regardless of whether they are launched initially or not, there is always an expectation of being listed on top exchanges.
3. Both projects are supporting their own ecosystems; Initia has Blackwing (DEFI) and Infinity Ground (AI), and is also related to a group of infrastructure on Cosmos. Movement has found the Thala team to incubate its own DEFI protocol and is very concerned about the MEME ecosystem, both of which can sustain traffic.
In the new era, whether public chains embrace the MEME ecosystem is not actually important; this is just one path to success, but it is more important to understand the principles behind the MEME ecosystem, which is an extreme traffic business.
How to acquire one's core users, reach more external users, and find ways to retain users is the key to success.
