Meme ($MEME) is a cryptocurrency that was spawned in a Telegram channel dedicated to a joke about the degenerate side of DeFi (Decentralized Finance). It is also referred to as a Yield Farming experiment. The former chief product officer of Totle, Jordan Lyall, created "the Degenerator" on August 14th 2020, which was a parody mock UI showing functionality that allowed clone certain portions of governance contracts from projects like Compound (cryptocurrency) and Aave (LEND), staking contracts from Synthetix and yEarn, as well as rebase contracts from Ampleforth (Cryptocurrency) and Based Money. The whole thing was just for kicks, but as the associated Telegram (software) channel filled up the community collaborated to kickstart a new token called $MEME. ^[1][9][16]

In November 2020, during the Rug Pull Auction, the Meme team auctioned off 12 identical Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that represent artist Simon Wan’s painting of film director Alfred Hitchcock holding a magnifying glass. Embedded inside the code of one of the NFTs was the key to a whole Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).^[25]

On August 14th 2020, $MEME (Not to be confused with Mimetic token which also has the ticker symbol $MEME) was launched by a group of collaborators working from the Degenerator Telegram group. When they realized the Degenerator UI presented by Jordan Lyall wasn't real, discussion quickly turned to launching their own token. After a bit of talk, they decided on a total supply of 28,000 that would be airdropped to members in the Telegram channel. ^[2]

$400 in gas costs later, $MEME was deployed and airdropped to around 50 participants who each received 355.555 $MEME.

The person who actually deployed $MEME was given 2,000 tokens.

1,000 of those tokens were put as liquidity into Uniswap and the LP tokens were given to Vitalik Buterin.

An ETH/MEME pairing can be found on Uniswap where the token pumped from around $6 to more than $40 in only a couple of hours. Around 3 am, only a few hours after launch, the token had a Market cap of over $1,200,000. ^[4][5][6] The project was posted on 4chan shortly after launch which helped rapidly expand the community. ^[7]

Many prominent names within the crypto space started to take note of the protocol, as special cards were being made in honor of them.

Andre Cronje, founder of yEarn, took notice when a card called "Legendary", which displayed Cronje, sold for 48 Ethereum. He mentioned on Twitter,

On September 18, 2020, Meme Protocol announced its first collaboration with LA-based digital artist Sven Eberwein.

The drop included 4 fine art collectibles 'with multiple levels of supply.' Users are able to stake a maximum of 5 $MEME to earn exclusive pineapple points, which can be redeemed to mint collectable artwork from Eberewein.^[13] Following on September 21, 2020, the token doubled in price, reaching a high of $1,963.98 giving the token a market cap of over $44 million.

^[21] The 60% boost comes around the time that the token was listed on crypto exchange Poloniex.^[14]

A day after the launch of $MEME, Decrypt wrote an article about the project called "How an anti-meme coin joke backfired into a $1.2 million meme coin". In the article, Jordan Lyall isn't so sure if what he did was a good thing:

$MEME token is represented as a pineapple, a play on the short-lived Yam token which crashed and burned spectacularly only days before. Yam itself came in the wake of TENDIES, a chicken nugget themed meme coin that did over $10 million in daily trading volume at its peak.^[8]

$MEME holders with 100 or more tokens have access to the "Meme Citadel" a Telegram group that only members with skin in the game can access.

^[3]

The group is essentially the DAO/governance model for $MEME which allows holders with more than 100 tokens to vote on ideas and participate in the direction of the project.

It is purely run by the community.

In November 2020, the MEME team announced they would auction off 12 identical Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that represent artist Simon Wan’s painting of film director Alfred Hitchcock holding a magnifying glass. Embedded inside the code of one of the NFTs is the key to a whole Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), worth about $18,800. There’s no way to know which NFT holds the Bitcoin until a customer buys NFT and “unlocks” it.^[22][23]

The project is called the Rug Pull (a nod to a pervasive scam tactic that can render tokens worthless), and the value of the NFT art itself, minus the Bitcoin, will ultimately be determined by the buyers at auction.^[22][25]

The auction started on November 23, 2020, and after 24 hours, the countdown timer reset for 12 minutes after each bid.^[25]

NFT 76, one of the 12 $MEME NFTs sold for 29 MEME (~$5,900) on OpenSea several hours after the auction ended.^[26]