Recap of MEME Culture Fest
“Investment in value is futile, go all-in like a frog living in a palace.” In mid-April, a meme token named PEPE, featuring a frog character, quietly launched and skyrocketed in value by thousands of times within just four days. Although this quote is somewhat satirical, it reflects the current state of the market, where the overall market is stagnant, and investors are looking for new vitality and consensus within the community, making MEME tokens the best choice.
Apart from the recent popular PEPE, we are familiar with other MEME tokens such as DOGE and SHIB. MEME tokens can be traced back to 2013, when initially they had no specific purpose and relied mainly on social media promotion to attract users. Therefore, they did not gain widespread attention in the entire crypto market. It wasn’t until the emergence of DOGE that MEME tokens gained recognition in the crypto market, and now they are rapidly rising as a new type of crypto asset.
Fundamentally, the rise of MEME tokens owes much to community consensus. Strong community engagement increases the popularity of MEME tokens, stimulates more users to join the community, and thus enhances token liquidity and value. Therefore, even when the overwhelming wealth effect of MEME fades away, we still appreciate MEME culture for its ability to mobilize users’ enthusiasm and spread the Web3 culture beyond boundaries.
The YIBI Fourth Anniversary & MEME Culture Market held at MixC World in Shenzhen at the end of May, in association with iLoveNFT, showcased the sustainability and expansiveness of MEME culture.
The choice of hosting the event at MixC World broke the boundaries of traditional Web2 imagination. In Web3, MEME culture is highly creative and appealing, merging popular elements with crypto assets, which attracts the interests and attention of more young people and social media users. It perfectly aligned with the theme of MixC World. This event not only attracted various Web3 projects and users, but also stirred interest among Web2 newcomers towards MEME culture and better understanding of the Web3 world.
MEME Culture Market Highlights
MEME Gallery:
Chic Store Exhibition:
MEME Trend Forum — AMA Roundtable:
- Popular MEMEs, trending themes, and their connection to real life
There is a close connection between MEME trends and real life. They often reflect people’s emotions, sense of humor, concerns, and attitudes towards specific events or topics, influencing people’s language, behavior, and communication style through social media. Commercial utilization further integrates MEMEs and trends into real-life business and brand marketing.
As an example, let’s take the recently popular PEPE, which was already a well-known MEME character in real life before it became popular in the Web3 world. It originated from a comic character created by cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005, making its first appearance in his comic series “Boy’s Club”. Its popularity is mainly attributed to its diverse expressions and the ability to adapt to various contexts. PEPE can be depicted as happy, sad, angry, satisfied, or other emotions, making it a versatile emoticon.
The popularity of these recent MEMEs relies on their uniqueness in real life, combined with the Web3 market being in a relatively down state, creating a fit between PEPE’s attributes and the FOMO sentiment of crypto users. Additionally, crypto users are already familiar with the rapid growth of MEME tokens, starting from the initial period in 2021 with DOGE and SHIB. Being ahead of the curve can be profitable, and this self-reinforcing power attracts more buyers as the popularity of MEMEs increases.
2. AI and NFTs: Future trends in digital art creation
Overall, AI technology will play an important role in digital art creation, market regulation, NFT evaluation, copyright protection, etc. It will inject more vitality into the NFT market, as well as drive positive development across the entire Web3 industry.
ChatGPT has gained widespread attention, achieving over a hundred million active users in less than two months, making it the consumer application with the fastest user growth in history. The essence of AI lies in imitating human problem-solving abilities through large-scale data and algorithm training. The explosive growth of ChatGPT is due to its simplified and rationalized decision-making behavior, and it lowers the barrier to entry, allowing anyone to truly harness the power of artificial intelligence.
The application of AI in digital art creation: AI plays an important role in digital art creation through deep learning and generative models. AI can generate unique artwork such as paintings, music, poetry, and videos. It can imitate an artist’s style and techniques, creating novel and creative works that open up new possibilities for artistic creation.
The NFT digital art market: NFTs provide a unique way to sell and collect digital art, enabling artists to sell their works in encrypted form and provide ownership and appreciation value to buyers. This allows artists to have new sources of income while bringing greater transparency and liquidity to the digital art market.
AI-generated NFT art: The combination of AI and NFT is seen in the creation of NFTs using AI-generated artwork. These works possess uniqueness and innovation, verifiable and tradable through the blockchain. AI-generated NFT artwork showcases the artist’s style and creativity while presenting a unique perspective and creativity of machine learning algorithms.
The fusion of art and technology: The combination of AI and NFT blurs the boundaries between art and technology. Artists can create stunning artwork by utilizing AI technology and transform them into NFTs for sale and exhibition. This fusion also provides new ways for artists to interact with viewers and collaborate with digital communities.
Currently, there are already practical applications of AI+ in the Web3 industry, and the combination of AI and NFTs represents the future trend of digital art creation. On one hand, the development of AI technology provides more tools for innovation and expression for the NFT market and artists. On the other hand, NFTs offer more use cases for AI technology, enabling greater diversity in digital art presentation. Furthermore, the integration of NFTs and AI may trigger new business models, creating new art experiences and creative methods.
3. What is the next trend for Web3?
In 2022, the crypto industry experienced significant events such as the downfall of FTX, Luna’s collapse, Ethereum’s upgrade and merge, and the major boost from AI technology. Although the Web3 industry went through a low period, innovative forces continue to pour in.
Web1 was the information (PC) internet, Web2 was the service (mobile) internet, and Web3 is the asset (digital/blockchain) internet. Different from Web1 and Web2, Web3’s main characteristics include assetization, value rights, and interactability. Therefore, the next trend for Web3 will inevitably build upon these three points.
NFTs: NFTs have the potential to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3, with various applications. NFTs can expand into the realms of virtual properties, gaming assets, music copyrights, and the digitization of physical assets, providing users with more unique and personalized digital asset experiences. In the future, NFTs can also be widely adopted in the metaverse.
RWA (Real-World Assets): RWAs exist in the real world or offline as assets but are tokenized and transferred on-chain. These assets include real estate, precious metals, commodities, and artwork. RWAs are core elements of the global financial system, with significant amounts of capital, liquidity, and users. Currently, it is a lacking area in the Web3 industry, and the development of RWA could inject new vitality into the Web3 industry.
AI: The continued popularity of ChatGPT and the increased discussions combining blockchain and AI indicate a rising interest in AI among users. Blockchain can ensure data security without relying on third parties, while AI can learn from the data provided to it, becoming smarter over time.
The combination of two revolutionary technologies, blockchain and AI, holds immense potential. AI excels at large-scale intelligence, significantly improving productivity, while blockchain offers large-scale coordination, value exchange, and minimized trust, ensuring security and transparency.
The integration of blockchain and AI will unlock new application areas and bring higher security, transparency, and efficiency to various industries. The combination of AI and blockchain will have a disruptive impact on various industries. As more companies start using software integrated with AI technology to automate workflows, increase efficiency, and optimize business, AI models will enter more niche markets.
The future development of Web3 is an evolving and exploratory process, where trends and opportunities go well beyond the aforementioned. It primarily depends on the interaction of technological innovation, market demand, and societal factors. At this stage, Web3 is still in its early phase with rapidly changing market trends. We should maintain a watchful and explorative mindset to better comprehend ongoing developments, understand why they are happening, and their potential implications.
Web3 Project Exhibition:
YIBI:
YIBI is a multifunctional Web3 platform aiming to become the super gateway of Web3. It focuses on returning asset ownership using NFTs, reverting data ownership to creators and owners. Currently, YIBI offers services including NFTs, news, articles, and social functions to users from over 50 countries and regions around the world.
iLoveNFT:
iLoveNFT is a collectible-grade boutique brand primarily focused on trendy fashion. Based on the artistic characteristics of NFTs, each clothing product designed by the brand has a related story line. The love for NFTs and MEMEs is integrated into every design. During this process, iLoveNFT has gradually formed its unique communication style conveyed through pattern visuals. Its goal is to combine MEME culture, blue-chip NFTs, and fashion design concepts and lifestyle, using cutting-edge blockchain technology, high-quality materials, and globally leading craftsmanship to provide excellent fashion experiences for the ultimate fashion-conscious enthusiasts who possess the spirit of “collectors.”
LMC:
LITTLEMAMI is a company focusing on the Metaverse and NFTFi infrastructure, establishing an ecosystem of NFTs and Metaverse platforms with the club model at its core. Through the LITTLEMAMI platform, users can not only acquire different types of NFTs but also have the opportunity to participate in various NFT projects, making their digital assets more useful and exciting. As one of the important applications of blockchain technology, the LITTLEMAMI platform will provide industry users with a more efficient, secure, and transparent way to manage digital assets.
Debox:
DeBox is currently a popular Web3 social product in the Chinese-speaking community, serving as an all-in-one Web3.0 community management tool. It is dedicated to reshaping content monetization and community engagement, liberating the relationship between creators and communities, and reshaping the value of community-based economics.
Plugman:
Plugman uses visual creations to discuss various cultural dilemmas in modern life. It is a digital character made up of interchangeable components and represents a complete worldview in a series of NFT artworks. It functions as both an NFT collectible and the symbolic identity of future GameFi and virtual real estate creator DAO organizations.
According to Plugman’s creator, @Lain2501, modern life cannot be separated from entertainment, work, and life that are intricately related to “fiction”. In Plugman’s world, whenever people close their eyes, they enter a dreamland called the Fourth Quadrant. In the Fourth Quadrant, everyone transforms into people searching for plug-ins with cube-shaped heads, known as “plug people.”
MoonIsland:
Moonisland is a SocialFi platform that combines entertainment, social interaction, and investment, bringing users a new interactive experience. Through innovative gamification design, events, bounty tasks, competitions, and engaging content, Moonisland creates a fun and valuable ecosystem for users. Leveraging NFT and DAO technology, Moonisland will assist various industries in entering the Web3 realm for sustainable development.
Xbank:
xBank is an open NFT finance market that provides leverage to Web3 adopters through NFTs and offers a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service. It aims to enhance the capital efficiency of holders through collateral sales and upgraded trading. xBank is one of the 12 Most Valuable Builder (MVB) teams selected from 1,500 startups by Binance.
