Cultural Change & The Memecoin Attention Economy

Things to Know:

— Memes are a defining characteristic of crypto culture, fostering a sense of belonging & expressing shared values — Memecoins tokenize memes, making the ideas behind culture tradable — The Solana blockchain is the biggest marketplace for memecoins, given its exceptional speed, scalability, and the developer-friendly SPL ecosystem — With the addition of SPL tokens, Ledger Live empowers you to trade hundreds of memecoins, like $WIF, $BONK, and $PENGU, without compromising control

Written by Ariel Wengroff, VP Communications

What’s In a Meme?

Though today, memes are recognized as a cornerstone of online culture, the term meme goes back decades, before the dawn of the internet. Evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, first coined the term ‘meme’ in 1976 to describe ideas representing a symbol, practice, or phenomenon, that are shared between individuals in a culture.

Memes as we now know them today, still operate like the units of culture that Dawkins described, focusing on music, humor, and current events, but the seismic shift in technology has enabled individuals to create immediate, global virality. More interestingly, memes allow the exploration of different ideas that are harder to pin down in a formal sense, more like a sideways glance at the internet and culture. 

We’re all creators and critics now, working outside the traditional norms of language and location, building a constantly changing library of whatever we can imagine to ‘make the joke’.

The History of Memecoins

From classic internet memes, repurposed for a niche crypto audience, to community-specific terminology, memes have been a primary tool that communities have used to build and strengthen culture since the beginning of crypto. 

Peer-to-Peer Culture for a Peer-to-Peer Currency

Bitcoin was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, with early adoption fuelled by the institutional disillusionment that followed. So, the early communities forming around Bitcoin were decidedly anti-institutional and countercultural – an orientation that still largely permeates crypto culture today.

As these communities were, and continue to be, predominantly online, they adopted the irreverent, often self-effacing attitudes commonly used in online forums, chatrooms, and social media. 

Naturally, this included a healthy use and creation of memes, from slang like FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and HODL to the adoption of memes like Pepe The Frog as unofficial mascots. 

It All Started With A Joke: The Digital Tokenization of Memes

As blockchain technology evolved, it made entirely new decentralized token economies possible and brought on new groups of users, sharing and adapting their ideas in memes. As with any technical innovation of its sort, the number of people viewing crypto as a vehicle for speculative investments also began to grow, arguably outpacing users who were more ideologically tied to Bitcoin’s founding principles. It’s this environment that led to the creation of the first-ever memecoin, Dogecoin, in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer.

Though creating a cryptocurrency based on nothing more than the image of a cute dog was a joke in the nihilistic tradition of crypto, the real genius was that it was at the expense of financial norms. Dogecoin created an economy out of attention. It cut through language, noise, and platforms, creating a lasting tribe, because it was the first meme that understood that feeding an economy of attention can gain real value over time. Today, Dogecoin consistently ranks as a top 10 cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Memecoins as a Vehicle for Speculation and Counterculture 

Thanks to its strengths as a speculative asset and its endurance as a meme, Dogecoin set the standard in many ways for today’s memecoins. 

It is a feature, not a bug, that the overwhelming majority of memecoins don’t last for much longer than a single hype cycle. Even so, memecoins are extremely popular among crypto traders seeking short-term volatility. 

Most social platforms don’t allow people to outwardly say what we know is true: community building on social = cultural and brand currency. Memecoins create a flywheel for users to get in on that value, putting the cultural currency back in control of the users who propagate the value. 

This puts a potentially different spin on pump and dump, so long as it’s about who is involved at the start, and who is laughing at the joke. Not about the amphitheater laughing from the cheap seats. In the attention economy, there will always be more opportunities to join in.

Memes and the Crypto Attention Economy

Though memecoins have been around in crypto for some time, they hit a new level of market and cultural relevance in 2024, with the Solana blockchain emerging as the primary network for memecoin trading activity.

Meme culture thrives on three pillars: speed, virality, and creativity—all of which align with Solana’s capabilities. The network’s fast execution allows it to keep up with viral trends, while its low costs enable creators to experiment with multiple ideas. 

“If you’re going to do a memecoin, then you need to be on a platform where there’s certain trading infrastructure and it’s cheap because then it’s obviously much easier to do,” says  Solana Foundation President and Ledger Board Member, Lily Liu, when discussing why Solana memecoins have exploded on the network.

“When you’re looking at what infrastructure to use for a product you want to build today, with a couple of pretty straightforward and basic questions, I find that the funnel narrows pretty quickly to Solana much of the time.”

Now, thanks to Solana’s technological advantages, meme culture has unlocked a new paradigm in crypto, catapulting memecoins to the center of the conversation. As of January 2025, there are an estimated 40-50,000 memecoins created every single day, with more than 5.5M memecoins created via the popular Solana memecoin platform pump.fun.

Given the potential rewards for memecoins that catch a viral wave, the methods used by some creators to capture eyeballs in this new crypto attention economy have become extreme, but by its nature, decentralization has no boundaries.

By empowering creators to capitalize on virality and community-driven trends, Solana has become the go-to platform for innovation in both serious applications and lighthearted, meme-centric projects – the response from the memecoin community to Donald Trump’s election victory and inauguration being a perfect case in point. 

Beyond strengthening its position as a powerful and culturally relevant blockchain, memecoin trading also generates significant fees for the blockchain’s validators, which in turn helps the network to continue functioning.

“Through the middle of September 2024, something like $380M worth of fees were paid to validators, and a lot of that is people trading memecoins. So from that perspective, infrastructure providers think this is amazing.” – Lily Liu.

Self Custody Is No Joke: Secure The Memes  

Memecoins may have humorous and humble origins but securing them today is no joke. Indeed, many memecoins have gained significant value along with their popularity, which is partly why trading, swapping, and earning on memecoins has become so popular among crypto holders today.

Unfortunately, when a sector of the crypto market experiences significant growth, there also comes a rise in the number of malicious actors looking to take advantage of traders and creators alike.  Creator of the popular Unicorn Fart Dust memecoin (UFD), Basement Ron can bear testament to that, having recently lost 6.6M UFD tokens stored in his mobile wallet to a wallet drainer.

To complicate the issue, memecoins are designed to be easily shared and often use humor tied to current events and trends as they spread quickly on social media. The fast-moving environment that memecoins inhabit can therefore be an even more risky one when it comes to hacking events. 

That’s why we’re excited to announce that Ledger users can now send, receive, and swap their SPL tokens on Ledger Live Desktop, with support for Ledger Live Mobile soon. You can access hundreds of SPL tokens including JUP, USDC, BONK, and PENGU, seamlessly and securely, directly from within Ledger Live.

If you’re looking for the safest way to experience memecoins and other SPL tokens, the Ledger ecosystem provides a seamless trading experience, while keeping your assets securely in your custody and away from online threats. Plus, with Clear Signing on your Ledger device, you can be sure that when you’re trading SPL tokens directly in Ledger Live, what you see is what you sign. 

Ledger Live™: The Safest Environment to Explore The  Solana Ecosystem

As has happened in past market cycles focusing on initial coin offerings (ICOs) or NFTs, memecoins have grabbed the attention of mainstream retail investors. Thanks to their viral and community-driven nature, they seem similarly well-positioned to help onboard the next wave of crypto adopters. 

In the rapidly changing world of memecoins and SPL tokens, it’s important to be fully aware of both the opportunities and the challenges you may find when managing your assets. By securing your assets with a Ledger device and using Ledger Live to manage your SPL portfolio and make trades, you can explore this exciting new asset class while retaining the power of self-custody that only Ledger provides.

Of course, Ledger doesn’t just offer seamless management for memecoins and SPL tokens. Take control of your entire Solana portfolio via the Ledger ecosystem, from yield-earning opportunities when you Stake SOL, to spending your crypto IRL with the SOL-supported CL Card. 

Explore Ledger Live today and see what the thriving Solana ecosystem has to offer, all from the safety of your Ledger device.