With meme-coins achieving market caps into the billions, the meme-coin market’s expansion is undeniable. Now large meme-coins are evolving beyond their origins, exploring utility and partnerships that could redefine their roles in the crypto ecosystem.
This meme-coin season is a bit different from those we have witnessed in past cycles, due to the unprecedented number being launched daily across various chains, each one aiming to be the next big meme.
Though most of these so-called “memes” end up being outright scams, surprisingly, some that initially had no utility, roadmap, team, or promises for growth, have managed to eclipse some of the market’s best projects in market capitalization.
Indeed, the meme-coin market has expanded significantly this cycle, with CoinGecko currently reporting a staggering market cap of $63 billion. Around $9 billion in meme-coins are traded daily. What started out as fun and games doesn’t seem much like a joke anymore.
Top 6 Memecoins by Market Capitalization
However, as popularity and value have soared, some of the larger projects, initially without declared utility or roadmaps, have begun to pivot towards a more “utility approach.”
Dogecoin is one. The largest, first, and currently most successful meme-coin, a top-9 coin in the whole crypto space with a staggering market cap of $9 billion, despite stating on its website that it has no utility, has clearly developed ties with Elon Musk, its largest unofficial ambassador.
This partnership has provided utility; people can now pay with Dogecoin in the Tesla Shop, and in the future, Dogecoin may even be used to pay for Tesla cars. There's speculation that Dogecoin could be integrated with Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which would significantly increase its utility and be a complete game-changer for the meme-coin’s future.
The Dogecoin team has plenty of plans for this year, as outlined in their recently published roadmap. They will continue to develop the infrastructure that supports Dogecoin, a key focus being the gigaWallet, the project’s premier backend service for Dogecoin transactions, which is slated for significant upgrades. Additionally, the team has announced its support for RadioDoge, a project designed to extend Dogecoin’s accessibility to under-served regions lacking reliable internet connectivity.
Shiba Inu, the second largest meme-coin by market capitalization, has also been looking for a path to utility. Its team, one of the most productive in the space, has built the Shib Metaverse and multiple Web3 games for its ecosystem. Furthermore, the team has launched Shibarium, its own Layer 2 blockchain within the Shiba Inu (SHIB) ecosystem.
Most recently, the WoofSwap decentralized exchange (DEX) launched on Shibarium and currently dominates 65% of its on-chain liquidity. While the overall daily trading volumes are modest at around $2 million, the DEX has significant growth potential as the project's ecosystem continues to expand. Given the Shiba Inu team’s productivity, it is unsurprising that Shib has become the second project in space by market capitalization.
Another popular meme-coin from the previous cycle, currently 5th by market cap, Floki, has recently published a roadmap with a clear path to utility for its token. The roadmap includes plans for Floki Debit Cards, the University of Floki crypto education platform, a Floki Trading Bot, Floki Domain Names, and much more.
Furthermore, the roadmap reveals plans to launch a proprietary metaverse game, Valhalla. This play-to-earn NFT game will be powered by the $FLOKI token. The mainnet for Valhalla is also scheduled to launch sometime this year
Interestingly, popular meme-coins of this cycle, such as Pepe, Dogwifhat, and Bonk, are still promoting the “no utility” narrative. However, as with other meme-coins, it is likely just a matter of time before their communities push for more utility. Because utility means usage, usage drives demand, and the more demand a token has, the higher its price will be.
Although this goes against the meme-coin narrative where “utility is a joke,” it is a path forward for larger and established projects.