On ICOs, NFTs, and Memecoins

CRYPTODAY 143

1. Every crypto cycle brings with it new buzzwords and new narratives to draw in a new generation of investors, and with the impending death of Pump.fun and Solana memecoin season, I thought it’d be interesting to reflect on past cycles and how we’ve seen similar trends crash and burn many times before.

2. But let’s take a step back and talk about what made all this even possible. For those of you who weren’t around yet back then, this all began with an Ethereum invention called ERC20, which is a protocol that allowed anyone to mint their own cryptocurrency token without needing to launch their own blockchain first. Remember that, prior to 2015, anyone who wanted to start their own crypto would need to somehow convince other people to operate independent nodes to power their blockchain — this was a basic requirement for blockchain security. Ethereum changed all that by simply letting you launch a token on their network, and immediately benefit from the existing Ethereum security. This is essentially how “blockchain ecosystems” began.

3. By 2017, we had already begun seeing how much of a gift and a curse this invention was. The ERC20 standard allowed for a new style of startup fundraising: the Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Blockchain projects could immediately create their token on Ethereum and sell that to the retail public. In theory, it allowed normal investors to get in on the ground floor, and it supercharged these young companies with more cash than they knew what to do with. The 2017 batch of ICOs include some blockchains that are still around now: TEZOS, TON, FILECOIN, and to a lesser extent, EOS. In total, close to $6B were collectively raised by about 1,000 ICOs that year.

4. Unfortunately, by 2018, the ICO industry had gone full-retard. Not only were there dozens of ICOs launching each week, but there were now opportunistic marketing firms, overpriced consultants, and desperate-looking roadshows specifically designed to promote ICO projects. The vast majority of tokens that launched during this period are now nowhere to be found: BASIS was an algorithmic stablecoin that raised $133M and disappeared later that year due to regulatory uncertainty. ENVION wanted to build a solar-powered crypto mining rig and attracted $100M in funding before evaporating the following year. DENTACOIN wanted to create a blockchain specifically for dental records and payments, and inexplicably raised $42M before shedding 99.9% of its token value. And then of course, BITCONNECT is from this era too — I guess I don’t have to explain that one.

5. After the dust had settled, the total amount of money raised by over 2,500 ICOs was in excess of $35B … nearly 5% of the entire crypto market cap at the time. By 2019, as the seasons shifted to crypto winter, the majority of them were already dead. But while ICOs were drawing their last breath, another narrative was shaping up from an unexpected corner of the crypto universe: NFTs. In many ways, the NFT wave was a direct response to the greedy corporate vibes of the ICO world — here was something that was instead built by the community to celebrate the culture of crypto. It was a breath of fresh air … until it wasn’t.

6. Like with ICOs, NFTs were also made possible by an Ethereum innovation: ERC721. This standard was literally the technological opposite of ERC20. Instead of minting a token where every unit was exactly the same (which is what you need for a currency or a stock), ERC721 described a way to create a token where every unit was unique. This paved the way for digital collectibles, which was pioneered by projects like Cryptopunks and CurioCards, and then later brought into the mainstream by Bored Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, Pudgy Penguins, etc.

7. By 2022, the NFT market was at its peak — $20B in size — with nearly every brand and celebrity attempting to launch their own personal NFT collection. I won’t bother listing all of the NFT projects that have failed since then, this happened recently enough that most of you still remember. But I will talk about Opensea, which was the leading marketplace for NFTs throughout most of this period (before they were overtaken by Blur). At the start of 2022, Opensea was a $13B company. Today, it is estimated to be just north of $1B — a drop of over 90%. I couldn’t find an exact number of NFT collections launched during this era, but I’ve seen some estimates in the 5 million range. Since most of these collections contained more than 5,000 pieces, there are literally more NFTs available today than there are humans in the world to buy them. The industry estimate is that about 95% are now worth zero.

8. The demise of NFTs in 2023 left many retail traders hurting. Few missed the colorful art of those collections, but many of them had grown addicted to the dopamine hit of watching your investment go up 10x or 100x in value overnight. Fortunately/unfortunately, crypto already had their fix ready and waiting: memecoins.

9. Remember that in 2023, the Solana ecosystem was in the doldrums. After having lost nearly 95% of its market price due to the FTX disaster the year before, morale was at an all-time low. But community-created memecoins like BONK and WIF sparked new interest in a struggling ecosystem. By early 2024, mainstream interest around the Bitcoin ETFs drove the crypto-natives to memecoins in anticipation of the coming bull run. (In a bull market, nothing moves faster than a memecoin investment.) It was somewhat premature — the bull run itself didn’t fully materialize, but memecoins on Solana became the hottest conversation amongst the existing community. Pump.fun became the leading platform for launching and promoting memecoins, because it allowed project owners to mint a new memecoin with zero smart contract knowledge.

10. Conceptually, modern memecoins are like the stripped-down version of NFTs — they do away with all the theater around branding, token utility, and roadmap, and simply focus all their energies on NGU (Number Go Up). A total of 6 million memecoins were launched on Pump.fun alone in 2024, with a combined market cap of around $25B. By January 2025, the frenzy was starting to subside, owing to an incredibly high rate of retail losses — 97% of buyers appear to have either lost money or barely broken even on Pump.fun. By February 2025, the three-hit combo of $TRUMP, $MELANIA, and $LIBRA decimated the Solana memecoin ecosystem — Pump.fun’s daily volume was now just under $100M, from a peak of over $3B/day.

11. I’ve spent the entirety of this newsletter describing the losses and failures of the last 3 cycles, so I’ll end with this. Crypto’s biggest narratives always involve some kind of breakthrough in making blockchain tech more useful or more accessible. ICOs allowed every founder to launch a crowdfunded startup. Opensea allowed every creator to launch and distribute their NFT collection. Pump.fun allowed everyone to launch and promote their own memecoin. On paper, all of these ideas sound fine: they democratized the technology so that literally everyone could use it. The problem of course is that literally everyone did use it. This caused over-saturation, which caused over-promotion, which caused over-investment. Basically, greed took over and our critical-thinking got thrown out the window.

12. These technologies are groundbreaking, but ultimately they are just tools. As we witness the demise of Pump.fun and the Solana memecoin ecosystem, it’s good to remember that it’s called a cycle for a reason. We’ve seen this movie enough times to know that this is the nature of crypto, and we can either avoid the wave or attempt to ride it. Let’s just try not to get steamrolled by it.