Ethereum Leads the Market, Meme Coins Welcome a Revival

As multiple bearish factors have been digested, the cryptocurrency market is gradually rebounding from the bottom, and undoubtedly the most outstanding performer in the past week has been Ethereum. This blockchain, which was criticized not long ago, has achieved a triple boost of capital recognition, technological advancement, and ecological prosperity through the Pectra technology upgrade, continuous capital inflow into ETFs, and the success of the Virtual new token issuance model, driving the coin price to continue rising, while also revitalizing the Meme token market on Ethereum.

In contrast, while the established secondary Meme coins and AI sector on another blockchain platform have generally risen, the primary market rhythm has become increasingly tight due to a lack of sustainable narrative support, while facing continuous selling pressure from large addresses. The underlying market is also affected by liquidity absorption. Currently, only the BONK ecosystem continues to produce new popular tokens, but it is difficult to support the overall market on its own. Besides the upper-level funds, ordinary participants are finding fewer opportunities to profit in the ecosystem.

The Revival of ETH's Meme Coins

Matt Furie Concept Return

Pepe is undoubtedly a leading project in the Ethereum Meme market, having cultivated a strong community base during the last ETH meme boom. As one of the most well-known meme coins, it plays a major role in this round of ETH meme rally, regardless of market capitalization, capital inflow or increase. UNLIKE SHIBA INU CONCEPTS SUCH AS SHIB AND FLUKI, WHICH HAVE CHANGED ON MULTIPLE CHAINS, FROG MEMES SEEM TO BE PARTICULARLY FOND OF EVM SYSTEMS, ESPECIALLY ETHEREUM, BECAUSE THE BINDING OF MAT'S WORKS TO EVM HAS BEEN DEEPLY ROOTED IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE, AND THE LIKES OF ANDY AND BRETT HAVE DEVELOPED CONSIDERABLE MARKET CAPITALIZATION AND COMMUNITY BASES.

With the strong rise of Ethereum, even affecting the discussion heat on mainstream social platforms, senior Ethereum traders naturally will not miss the opportunity to reactivate the concepts related to Matt, bringing this long-dormant "Meme chain" back to life.

RATO

First and foremost, it is worth noting RATO, which is the tokenized product of the character "Rato the Rat" from Matt Furie's new book. Its image is essentially a gray "Pepe" with added mouse nose and ears, but it is fundamentally a mouse representation. The token's market capitalization once reached 36 million USD, and it has currently retraced to around 15 million USD.

BERRY

BERRY stands for "Strawberry", an image that appears several times on Matt's Instagram account, and can be seen as a female version of "Pepe". According to well-known industry sources, behind the project is the team of the former Eth $mstr. The token once reached a market cap of $55 million, and at the beginning of its launch, a number of influential industry opinion leaders promoted it almost simultaneously, making its price action quite stable before reaching a market cap of $10 million, and has now recovered to about $3.4 million.

FROGGER

In addition to the Pepe derivatives of the Matt series, other frog concept tokens have appeared on the market, such as FROGGER, which is named after the classic arcade game developed by Konami (Konami) in 1981. The project, which was founded 12 days ago, has suddenly skyrocketed 10 times in recent days after trading sideways for two weeks, and the largest holder is currently a well-known address that has received 15% of the tokens. The maximum market cap of the token reached $2.8 million, which has now recovered to $2 million. Despite the adoption of the frog concept, it remains to be seen whether its narrative will continue to work in the current market.

A well-known trading robot project shared its views on social media, stating that "Matt's series of characters have a unified and easily recognizable style. If Ethereum really starts a new round of increase, it will definitely produce a leading project that is worth paying close attention to."

According to the industry data analysis panel, tokens such as MOG, APU, PEPE, and SPX in the Ethereum ecosystem have shown good growth performance. Although the inflow of funds for established Ethereum tokens is not as high as some other platforms, investment options are more concentrated.

Large Capital Inflows into Old Meme Tokens on Layer 2 Chains

When the on-chain market picks up, investors often see certain platforms as the preferred power point. In the past month, the number of active addresses on the platform has soared, and although the proportion of users who can make a profit has decreased, the trading volume and liquidity are an order of magnitude higher than that of the Ethereum Meme market. In terms of the primary market, the ecosystem has been dominated by PumpFun for a long time, but the counterattack launched by Raydium-based LaunchPad, led by BONKFUN, seems to have paid off, and the number of transactions and transactions on non-PumpFun platforms has reached the level of the same period last year.

Counterattack of BONK

BONKFUN may be one of the most successful products currently against PumpFun. Thanks to the strong foundation of the BONK community, the proportion of large holders, and the professional team, the platform periodically launches popular tokens. Recently, the "BONKGUY", which has a strong appeal in both the primary and secondary markets, has also contributed multiple successful projects to the BONK platform.

Since BONKFUN announced a total reward of $5,000 for 5 "take-off" tokens in the following week on May 11, ecosystem members have begun to actively support various Meme communities, and a large number of Chinese-speaking users have participated in interactions. As a result, many "Chinese" narratives have appeared on the BONKFUN homepage.

The joint participation of users from both the East and the West has shown remarkable effects. According to reports, within 24 hours of the incentive program's launch, the platform created 6,911 tokens, generating approximately $500,000 in fees. Based on the reward of $5,000 per token, this is enough to reward 100 token communities. This means that in just one day, the economic benefits generated were 20 times the originally planned weekly rewards, making both the BONK ecosystem project team and market retail investors optimistic about BONKFUN's future launch of more quality Meme projects.

USELESS

USELESS originates from a tweet on social media: "This is a useless coin and should not be hyped up." This is similar to the emotionally charged concepts like "FARTCOIN", "SHIT", and "HOUSECOIN" that are popular in the European and American communities. Since the issuance of BONK, its market cap has soared to $34 million, showing a development trajectory similar to that of "HOUSECOIN".

HOSICO

HOSICO is a meme coin that has attracted much attention since the launch of BONKFUN, and it is also promoted by "BONKGUY", the "first" BONKFUN token continues to show healthy price movements. Since the launch of the platform, this Internet celebrity cat has been ahead of other tokens in the same period, and is regarded by the community as the most promising to become the first meme token in the BONK series to exceed 100 million market capitalization.

IKUN

A large number of Chinese-speaking users have entered the BONK ecosystem, among which the most representative work is IKUN. This "chicken" concept, familiar to almost all Chinese internet users, has reached a market value of nearly $10 million with the support of its main promoters, and is currently priced at around $6 million.

Tears of the Era: The Collective Eruption of Old Memes

According to the TREEMAP data from ARKHAM, half of the top 15 performing tokens in the past week are old Meme coins from a certain platform, with MoonDeng and PNUT being the most popular concepts. A well-known industry figure explained that his logic for buying these two tokens is "they are very similar to the early pepe and shib". Regardless, these two concept coins from the same period have performed excellently in this market cycle.

TITCOIN

Another standout is the COIN type "copycat" TITCOIN. This typical "strategic project" initially maintained considerable traffic data through "borderline" content, while the funds behind it built a community and created a price trend that was almost "only up and not down" during the bear market, accumulating a group of 22,000 holders from March to May.

What other secondary assets are worth paying attention to?

A well-known data analyst has organized multiple secondary asset data indicators on his analysis platform. Investors can analyze price trends by considering the potential large capital inflows of the tokens.

According to the data, the tokens that rank high in recent inflows are almost all old coins with an issuance period of over 150 days. Meme coins with a longer history, such as MEW, POPCAT, SLERF, and WIF, account for the majority of the inflows, while AI concepts led by the recently announced launch platform ai16z occupy another portion of the liquidity. On one hand, the impact of previous overreactions affects the market, while on the other hand, there have not been any new AI concepts emerging in the crypto market, which is why mature AI projects are also considered as targets for bottom-fishing by seasoned investors.

As the market shows signs of prosperity, a crypto poker player stated that he believes this round of the market lacks incremental funds, and the appearance of prosperity is actually a self-rescue of the main funds. He pointed out that "the idea that there will be another super meme like the last round of $shib and $pepe needs to be reconsidered." Indeed, with the industrialization of on-chain Meme projects, the emergence of large-cap Meme coins after $Trump has become increasingly rare.

The number of "diamond hands" that can continuously profit is becoming fewer, while many "paper hands" have achieved good returns through flexible operations. With the news from a certain social media platform founder revealing that "the Meme coin of Trump’s social platform Truth Social will be launched in the next 72 hours," the future market adds more uncertainty. In the increasingly short cycles of bull and bear markets, it's inevitable to recall the classic saying of the recently retired investment legend Warren Buffett: "When others are greedy, I am fearful; when others are fearful, I am greedy."