Celebrity Meme Coin Guidebook | Vitalik: Celebrities mindlessly promoting meme coins makes me very unhappy
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said: "So far I am extremely unhappy with 'the celebrity token experiment.' 'Financialization is a means to an end,' if the end is worth it (healthcare, open-source software, art, etc.), I can respect. Financialization (as an end product) (disgusted face emoji). Stoner Cats by Ashton and Mila is way more honorable than anything we've seen in the 2024 celebrity meme coin era, at least a real show got funded. How do we push things in a better direction?"
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Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stated: "So far, I'm quite unhappy with 'celebrity coin cycle.' 'Financialization is a means to an end,' and if the end is worthwhile - healthcare, open source software, art, etc., I can respect it. Financialization as an end product is 🤮. Stoner Cats by Ashton and Mila is way more honorable than anything we've seen in the 2024 celebrity memecoin era, at least an actual show got funded. How do we push things in a better direction?"
A quick summary of what celebrity crypto projects need to have in order for me to be more willing to respect them:
1. Have some kind of charitable goal, not just making celebrities and early adopters richer. Ideally, if not an art project, then a charity that celebrities like, or both.
2. Have some interesting mechanism, not just trading tokens. While I'm not a fan of token-voting DAOs, they at least give people 'something' to do and organize. DAOs should not fully dictate the agenda, but they can generate some influence.
3. Make something that lasts for 10+ years, not just bubble for a few months and then be forgotten.
The right goal should be: Have a project where even if all the tokens involved go to zero eventually, regular people who participate are still glad they did. Regular companies and charities have been achieving this goal! It's a low bar, but something we build should also meet that bar.
In short, this is basically the same as what I suggest in "What else could memecoins be?"
Vitalik comments on the chaos of memecoins: Respecting the memecoin hype, also looking forward to witnessing higher-quality projects.