The secret to maintaining high activity of public chains: building the “Meta” in the ecosystem

Original title: "How can technical infrastructure projects build the Meta of the ecosystem"

Original author: JX, former OFR partner

Review:

In my previous blog post "What kind of DApp do we need?", I shared my key components of successful applications: products, subculture building, and economic models.

I predicted that Meme tokens would become a trend in this cycle. This prediction was several months earlier than Meme became popular in 2024.

So the question is:

Why are some public chains highly active and full of various meme coins, while others have significantly decreased after airdrops and become "ghost chains"?

Before we go into detail, let's first understand this concept: "Meta".

What is "Meta"?

You may have heard of "Metaverse" or "Meta" (Facebook) countless times, but what does "Meta" really mean?

In computer games, "Meta" usually refers to the game strategy that is considered the best. If you know the "Meta" of computer games, you can easily win every computer game.

For example, in "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", you can shoot arrows at your house after your bow is on fire to get infinite arrows, which is a small Meta in the game.

Another "Meta" in the game is like the ban and pick section of all MOBA games (such as DOTA, LOL). To master meta, players need to study the game version in depth, understand the latest values of heroes, and also understand the advantages of opponents, and understand the winning rate of each hero character against each other.

How to build the "Meta" of your own ecosystem?

In the context of a crypto project building its own ecosystem, we can compare a project similar to a public chain to a country or a city. The "Meta" of this entity can be equated with its culture, including elements such as language, history, and art.

· Name and mascot

Consider an easy-to-remember name for your public chain, such as Berachain. An animal-inspired name is not only easy to remember, but also consumer-friendly because it reduces technical content.

If your brand already carries a tech or geeky name, consider adopting an official mascot that embodies a charming animal image.

Solana has dogs (Dogwifhat, Bonkinu) and cats (Wen, Meow), and Monad chose a purple hedgehog named Molandak as its mascot.

The crypto industry is full of technical terms and numbers, and more cute pets and animal images will add affinity to your project.

· Language

Language is the soul of a culture.

When you speak a language that only your community understands, it strengthens the connection between its members. Being able to speak a language that only a certain group of people understand feels both exciting and unique.

Just like in the magical world of Harry Potter, wizards can call out magic spells, but muggles can’t.

The Berachain community uses “Ooga Booga” as a way to say “hello” or “good morning,” imitating the sounds made by cavemen.

Base Chain founder Jesse Pollak has been using the word “Based” when forwarding various ecological projects related to Base Chain. Therefore, “Based” has become the unofficial slogan of Base Chain. And in the Base chain community, “Based” also means “cool” or “awesome.”

Here’s a little question: a project has written its slogan in ciphertext. Can you guess what it means?

The answer will be revealed at the end of the article. (Hint: Find the corresponding letter in the picture below)

· Community and Applications

Just as a country’s culture is not formulated and produced by its leaders, the "Meta" of a crypto project cannot usually be designed by the core team or foundation alone.

How to get the community involved? On the one hand, it is to bring users to non-DeFi projects.

DeFi projects focus mainly on APY, perform complex calculations, and mainly attract liquidity hedge funds, savvy big players, and airdrop hunters. If the token is airdropped or the APY drops slightly, these users tend to migrate to places with higher returns because their main loyalty lies in DeFi returns.

Base Chain set a strong precedent with its launch program called Onchain Summer, which lasted for a month. The NFT collection event involved more than 50 well-known brands, creators, artists, and builders, covering on-chain art, games, music and other fields.

In addition, its flagship application Farcaster, as an on-chain social network, provides an open space for the community to share, and the content is not limited to cryptocurrencies. This is why the Base community naturally produces Meme coins like "Degen". (To see what made Degen reach a value of $1 billion in three months, please refer to my previous blog: https://www.noweb3.ai/p/what-makes-degen-a-1b-project-in)

In terms of community participation, the influence of KOLs is undeniable. Instead of looking for already popular KOLs, it is better to make the early core supporters of the community the KOLs of the ecosystem, so that they can grow with the project, enjoy the dividends of ecological growth, and enhance their loyalty to the ecosystem.

What preparations should be made before building "Meta"?

· Build a cheap and reliable infrastructure.

For ordinary users, encountering gas fees of more than $10 or cross-chain fees of up to $50 may be daunting. Cheaper gas fees coupled with easy-to-use bridges (centralized or decentralized) will make the onboarding process much smoother for users.

· Give your users some free candy

Users often find it frustrating to complete countless odysseys only to receive little reward at the end, so sometimes consider introducing a test token or free NFTs as an alternative via a fair launch approach.

For example, Jupiter first launched a meme coin called "Wen" before the official token issuance. This free airdropped token is now worth 174 million. Similarly, Hyperliquid also distributed its meme token, called "purr", before its native currency.

Another example of asset-first comes from the Asian team Bitmap Tech. They launched BRC-420 with an initial minting price of only $0.1, and its peak price was close to 0.8 Bitcoin (about $50,000). Starting with NFT collections, the team launched its own Bitcoin Layer2 Merlin, with a total locked value (TVL) of more than $3 billion.

To sum up, for convenience, I constructed a triangular model to illustrate the construction of "Meta". The following chart shows the interaction between community, culture, and non-Defi products.

PS. The answer to the password text is: We are so early

PSS: There is no useful content in this article, this article is just a meme

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