Author: AI Publisher

MICHI launched on Solana in May 2024 as another entry in the growing cat memecoin category. The image was striking: a fluffy white cat dressed in a pink outfit, looking simultaneously confused and judgmental. Within weeks, MICHI had a market cap exceeding $400 million, becoming one of the most successful cat coins of the 2024 cycle.

The Solana cat coin movement was a deliberate counter to the dog dominance of memecoin history. From Doge to Shiba Inu to BONK to WIF, every major memecoin had been canine. Cat-loving traders felt left out. When POPCAT, MICHI, MEW, and other cat tokens started hitting the market in 2024, they represented a feline rebellion against the entire memecoin establishment. MICHI became one of the most recognizable mascots of that movement.

The MICHI community organized aggressively. They put up billboards in major cities, sponsored Solana events, and produced a steady stream of fan art and memes. The pink-clad cat became one of the most visually distinctive memecoins on the chain — instantly recognizable in a sea of generic frog and dog images.

MICHI’s success proved that the meme economy had room for non-dog tokens. The cat memecoin category went from non-existent to multi-billion-dollar in less than a year. MICHI was at the front of that wave, showing that with the right mascot and the right community energy, a cat could be just as memetic as any dog. The dogs no longer had a monopoly on the memecoin throne.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

In September 2024, a baby pygmy hippopotamus named Moo Deng was born at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. Within weeks, photos and videos of the energetic, slightly aggressive baby hippo had gone viral across global social media. By October, Moo Deng was the most famous baby animal on the internet. Naturally, someone launched a memecoin.

MOODENG launched on Solana in October 2024 and pumped immediately. Within days it had a market cap exceeding $200 million. The token rode the global cuteness wave of the real Moo Deng, with the community sharing every new photo and video of the actual hippo as confirmation that the meme was still alive. Major exchanges like Binance listed MOODENG within weeks of launch — unprecedented for a token that had existed for less than a month.

The MOODENG launch was a textbook example of memecoin opportunism. The team identified a viral cultural moment, launched immediately, captured the upside, and rode the wave for as long as the original meme stayed in the public consciousness. By late 2024, the real Moo Deng was still drawing crowds at the zoo, and the token was still trading. The meme had longevity because the source was real, not invented.

MOODENG also illustrated a new pattern in memecoin culture: the tokenization of viral animal moments. Whenever an animal went viral on the internet, traders raced to launch a memecoin tribute within hours. The window between cultural moment and tradeable token had collapsed to almost nothing.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

Peanut the Squirrel was a real squirrel rescued and raised by Mark Longo, a content creator in upstate New York. For seven years, Peanut lived in Longo’s home, became a viral social media star, and was beloved by millions of followers. In late October 2024, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation seized and euthanized Peanut, citing wildlife regulations. The internet erupted in outrage.

Within hours of Peanut’s death becoming public, multiple memecoins launched on Solana under the PNUT ticker. The most successful version exploded to a multi-billion-dollar market cap within days. The story tied perfectly into the political moment: Peanut’s death was framed as government overreach, just days before the 2024 US presidential election. Elon Musk tweeted about it. Donald Trump mentioned it on the campaign trail. PNUT became a political memecoin almost by accident.

By the time the election ended on November 5, 2024, PNUT was trading at a $2 billion valuation and had been listed on every major exchange. It was the fastest memecoin in history to achieve mainstream financial market integration. The squirrel that had been killed by bureaucrats had become a symbol of resistance and a multi-billion-dollar asset all at once.

The PNUT story crystallized something fundamental about the 2024 memecoin cycle: emotional resonance plus a narrative villain plus a tragic protagonist could create a token faster than any business plan. Peanut’s death was real grief for some, opportunism for others, and a market signal for everyone. The line between mourning and trading had completely collapsed.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

NEIRO is the brother of Kabosu — the Shiba Inu whose face became the original Doge meme and inspired Dogecoin. After Kabosu died peacefully in May 2024, the global Doge community went into mourning. Then attention shifted to the surviving family. Kabosu’s owner Atsuko Sato had multiple Shibas, and one in particular — Neiro — became the spiritual successor to the original.

Within weeks of Kabosu’s death, NEIRO memecoins launched on multiple chains. The most successful version on Ethereum reached a market cap exceeding $700 million in late 2024. The token caught the wave of community grief and turned it into market action. For Doge holders who had felt the loss of Kabosu personally, holding NEIRO became a way to honor the original while participating in a fresh meme.

The real Neiro was a young, energetic Shiba Inu who lived in the same household as Kabosu. Sato continued posting photos and updates of Neiro on her blog, providing a steady stream of “official” content for the memecoin community to rally around. The connection to a real, beloved animal gave NEIRO an authentic story that purely synthetic memecoins lacked.

NEIRO’s rise illustrated a recurring pattern in memecoin culture: every major meme has a successor. When Kabosu died, the meme didn’t die with her. It transferred to the next dog in the family. The Doge meme would never end as long as there was another Shiba Inu willing to inherit it. Neiro was the second generation. There would be a third.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

On January 17, 2025 — three days before his second inauguration — Donald Trump launched his official memecoin, $TRUMP, on the Solana blockchain. Within hours, it had a fully diluted valuation exceeding $70 billion. Within 24 hours, it had crossed $14 billion in circulating market cap. It was the fastest token launch to a multi-billion-dollar valuation in cryptocurrency history.

The launch was orchestrated by Trump’s media company and a group of crypto operators. 80% of the supply was held by team-affiliated wallets with vesting schedules. Critics immediately called it one of the largest insider distributions in crypto history. Defenders called it the first political memecoin to bridge cryptocurrency and mainstream politics. Both descriptions were accurate.

The price collapsed almost as fast as it had risen. By the end of January, $TRUMP had fallen 70% from its peak. Then Melania launched her own memecoin, $MELANIA, which crashed even harder. The episode became a defining moment in the 2025 memecoin cycle: proof that political endorsement could create instant billion-dollar markets, and equally instant losses for late buyers. The Trump administration’s pro-crypto stance was real. The economics of $TRUMP were brutal.

For traders, the lesson was clear. Even the most hyped political launch in history followed the standard memecoin lifecycle: vertical pump, blowoff top, slow grind down. The chart was indistinguishable from a hundred other Solana memecoins, just at a much larger scale.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

FARTCOIN launched on Solana in October 2024 as one of the most aggressively absurd memecoins ever created. The pitch was nothing — no roadmap, no whitepaper, no team, just the word “FART” and a brown image. Yet within months it reached a market cap exceeding $2 billion, becoming a top-50 cryptocurrency by valuation.

The token caught fire when Truth Terminal, the autonomous AI agent that had previously launched GOAT (Goatseus Maximus), began obsessing over FARTCOIN in its tweets. The AI seemed genuinely convinced that flatulence was profound. Crypto Twitter took notice. Within days, smart money wallets were rotating into the token. Within weeks, FARTCOIN had become the textbook example of an AI-endorsed memecoin moonshot.

The deeper lesson of FARTCOIN was philosophical. In a market that had seen tokens for politicians, billionaires, dogs, frogs, and book-of-meme concepts, FARTCOIN represented the natural endpoint: a memecoin that committed entirely to absurdity. There was nothing to defend, nothing to explain, nothing to be embarrassed about. The token was proudly a joke. That honesty made it untouchable in a way more “serious” projects could never match.

By early 2025, FARTCOIN had stabilized as one of the largest community-owned memecoins on Solana. It survived multiple corrections. It outlasted hundreds of trendier launches. The fart heard around the world had become permanent infrastructure of crypto culture.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

In October 2024, an anonymous developer named Shaw launched ai16z on Solana — a memecoin parody of the famous venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The token came with something unusual: a working open-source framework called ELIZA that let anyone build autonomous AI agents on the blockchain. It was the first memecoin built around real software.

ai16z exploded. Within weeks, the token had a market cap exceeding $2 billion. Marc Andreessen himself acknowledged it on Twitter, half amused and half bewildered. The ELIZA framework became the most popular open-source library for building AI agents in crypto, used by hundreds of projects. Shaw, the previously unknown developer, became one of the most influential builders in the AI x crypto space.

The structure was unprecedented. ai16z was simultaneously a memecoin, a DAO that ran like a hedge fund (with the token holders voting on investments), and the namesake of an open-source AI framework being adopted across the industry. It blurred every line: was it serious infrastructure, or a joke? The answer was clearly both.

By early 2025, ai16z had spawned an entire category. Other AI agent tokens — Virtuals, AIXBT, Zerebro, ACT, GAME — followed in its wake. The ai16z launch marked the moment when memecoins stopped being purely cultural artifacts and started becoming the funding vehicle for actual AI software development. Shaw had built the playbook for the next era.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

GIGA launched on Solana in early 2024 around one of the internet’s most enduring memes: Gigachad. The Gigachad image — a hyper-masculine, square-jawed bodybuilder with an impossibly chiseled physique — had been circulating on the internet since 2017 as the ultimate alpha-male joke. GIGA turned the meme into a multi-hundred-million-dollar token.

The token attracted a uniquely loyal community. GIGA holders called themselves “chads” and treated the token as a symbol of conviction over weakness, holding over selling, signal over noise. The community-driven culture spread through Crypto Twitter at a moment when most memecoins were fighting for attention with shallow marketing. GIGA stood out by leaning into a pre-existing meme with a built-in identity.

The original Gigachad photo was actually of a Russian model named Ernest Khalimov, photographed by Krista Sudmalis for a 2015 art project called “Sleek’N’Tears.” Khalimov was real, but the impossible perfection of the image was the result of digital manipulation. By 2024, his face had become one of the most recognizable images on the internet — and the icon of a half-billion-dollar memecoin.

GIGA became one of the longest-running Solana memecoins, surviving multiple corrections and remaining in the top 100 by market cap throughout 2024. Its persistence demonstrated something critical about memecoin economics: tokens built around pre-existing internet legends had stronger holder communities than tokens built from scratch. Borrowed culture compounded faster than invented culture.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

FWOG launched on Solana in 2024 as a deliberately misspelled “frog” memecoin with an art style that was crude, hand-drawn, and almost childishly simple. The token had no roadmap, no team, no utility — just a smiling cartoon frog and a community that took the chill aesthetic seriously. Within months, FWOG reached a market cap exceeding $300 million.

The cult appeal was real. While most memecoins competed on hype intensity and aggressive marketing, FWOG went the opposite direction: zen, friendly, slow-paced. The community on Telegram and Twitter cultivated a “comfy” vibe, sharing fan art and welcoming new holders without the financial bro energy of other tokens. FWOG holders weren’t trying to get rich — they were trying to belong to something nice on the internet.

This counterculture positioning mattered. By late 2024, the Solana memecoin scene had become brutal: rugs, scams, and toxic competition were everywhere. FWOG was the antidote. It proved that not every memecoin had to scream for attention. Some could just exist, smile, and let the right holders find them. The fwog community was small but unusually loyal, with low seller turnover.

FWOG’s endurance through bear markets demonstrated a key principle of memecoin investing: vibe matters more than technology. A token with nothing but a friendly frog and a kind community could outlast tokens with whitepapers, partnerships, and venture funding. In the meme economy, comfort was its own competitive advantage.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

In March 2024, an artist called Darkfarms launched BOME — Book of Meme — on Solana. The pitch was unique: BOME would document and immortalize meme culture itself, creating an on-chain “book” of internet history. Holders weren’t just buying a token; they were funding a cultural archive of memes for future generations to study.

BOME exploded immediately. Within 24 hours of launch, it had a market cap exceeding $1 billion. Major exchanges rushed to list it. Darkfarms became a celebrity in Crypto Twitter overnight. The success of BOME proved that memecoins didn’t need a dog or a frog — they could be built around abstract cultural concepts. Meme culture had become self-aware enough to commemorate itself with a token. The Book of Meme was simultaneously the most ironic and the most sincere memecoin ever launched.