BTC
$106,976.03
+
0.51%
ETH
$2,538.78
-
0.11%
USDT
$1.0002
+
0.02%
XRP
$2.3619
-
1.60%
BNB
$651.59
+
0.05%
SOL
$168.56
-
0.85%
USDC
$0.9997
+
0.05%
DOGE
$0.2273
-
0.36%
ADA
$0.7453
-
0.48%
TRX
$0.2688
+
0.71%
SUI
$3.8551
-
1.21%
LINK
$15.71
-
2.40%
AVAX
$22.55
+
0.23%
XLM
$0.2876
-
0.04%
HYPE
$26.52
-
1.29%
SHIB
$0.0₄1463
-
0.86%
HBAR
$0.1947
-
0.91%
LEO
$8.7629
+
0.72%
BCH
$394.53
-
0.68%
TON
$3.0681
+
0.83%
Logo
  • News
  • Prices
  • Data
  • Indices
  • Research
  • Events
  • Sponsored
  • Sign In
  • Sign Up
Opinion
Share this article
X iconX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmail

The Memecoin Grift and How It Threatens Ethereum Culture

If Ethereum is to grow it’ll have to mature beyond the antics of those shilling the token-of-the-moment, says CoinDesk columnist Paul Dylan-Ennis.

By Paul J. Dylan-Ennis
Updated Jun 14, 2024, 7:17 p.m. Published Jun 9, 2023, 6:35 p.m.
The Pepe the Frog meme has been appropriated by memecoin traders. (Pepecoin's Twitter account)
The Pepe the Frog meme has been appropriated by memecoin traders. (Pepecoin's Twitter account)

The ceaseless and cynical pumping of tokens devoid of value is an existential threat to Ethereum’s reputation.

This memecoin culture is populated by the most chronically clout-addled people in the crypto industry, who exist in the Influencer Pit of Despair. This is a deep, dark hole where grifter influencers clamber over one another to rob the nearest retail tourist. You can locate the Influencer Pit in the form of a Twitter Space. But not just any Twitter Space. More like Twitter Spaces experienced as a debilitating K-Hole in a Prague dive-bar. And you’ve lost your wallet.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Node Newsletter today. See all newsletters
By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

It’s a fundamental paradox that since anyone can use the Ethereum blockchain, anyone can use the Ethereum blockchain. If Ethereum were a local park, the memecoiners would be an unruly gang of teenagers listening to music on some god-forsaken Bluetooth speakers.

Paul Dylan-Ennis is a CoinDesk columnist and lecturer in the College of Business, University College Dublin.

Imagine you’re working on Eigenlayer or zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs or you’re an Arbitrum delegate. And while you’re valiantly working away on something useful you can’t help but grit your teeth to hear some braindead dolt just made a cool million by tweeting.

Memecoins will always be part of an open source network like Ethereum, but for cryptocurrency to be widely adopted the industry needs to find a way to collectively address its worst forms of valueless profit seeking.

There is something hopeless about how little is offered by the memecoin grift.

When pepe (PEPE) was created the team outright admitted that the project was pure memeology, propelled along by our favorite rehabilitated frog. There is, at this stage in the industry’s cycle, something quite empty about returning to the meme well, eking out a living as bottom feeders on some anon team’s larp. Its mindless algorithmic churn, like we invented the wheel but only used it to go in circles.

And those Spaces! My word. Memecoin Spaces seem to be required by law to have the most obnoxiously loud host, for no apparent reason. At least three of the speakers, sporting equally terrible NFT (non-fungible token) investments as their PFPs (profile pictures), will admit to several misdemeanors over the course of an hour. At least 75% of the audience has bought something from Supreme and made a loss on it.

Before you feel bad, let’s remember what the Influencer Pit does. It sucks in retail investors, selling them on the concept that financial nihilism is the truth. It contributes to the idea that blockchain (or crypto or Web3) is merely about speculation. It stipulates your only option in life is to hustle fast enough and hope you don’t end up as fodder for a CoffeeZilla video.

The latest trend is painfully banal. It’s such a low-brow grift I’m embarrassed to even write about it. Influencer grifters, often double-dipping from prior shilling of memecoins, will simply post an Ethereum address and ask people to send ether (ETH) to it. One can only hope the IRS does not ENS. The wink and nod in this scam is the explicit promise of no return. You would, and I mean this quite literally, be just as well setting fire to your physical wallet than sending a transaction like this.

In Ethereum there are no police. In a decentralized, permissionless culture there is nobody who can sanction you like the law might IRL

I’m not sure what the appropriate punishment should be for these crimes against humanity. First-time offenders might have to attend Bitcoin Miami wearing an Ethereum T-shirt. Serial offenders will need harsher punishments, perhaps trapped in a dark room with a Richard Heart monologue on repeat, for up to two years. We might instead decide to capture all the grifter influencers on an island somewhere. Perhaps we could create a fake conference, NFT Pitcairn Islands, and then create a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) whose only purpose is to ensure no flight ever leaves, spending treasury funds on bribing the islanders to distract the influencers with shiny objects.

There is a real problem here. Influencer grifters tell us upfront "you will get nothing" and you will be happy. But underlying is a much darker message: We can do nothing. This is the paradox of permissionlessness intrinsic to blockchain communities. Permissionlessness is a red line, non-negotiable topic in Ethereum culture. Without wishing to get all esoteric, if you lost the property of permissionlessness you wouldn’t have Ethereum at all.

With technical solutions verboten this leaves us only with social options. Imagine Ethereum as a cosmopolitan city. It has its Municipal Hall of developers, organizers and researchers. It has its finance district with decentralized finance (DeFi). It has its bohemian quarter of NFTs. It has its Average Joes living on Main Street. But it also has its shady downtown where the grifters live.

Downtown is not as bad as Skid Row where you’ll probably find people plotting to social engineer Bored Ape owners. Like any city you can silo yourself in the safe areas and hope the police might deal with it. Except in Ethereum there are no police. In a decentralized, permissionless culture there is nobody who can sanction you like the law might IRL (of course governments can outside Ethereum).

This means you have to create an atmosphere, a cultural context, where the message of long-term regen culture overshadows short-term degen culture, relegating it to an immature phase. The regens are those within Ethereum culture dedicated to ensuring the technology does not generate negative externalities, but instead positively impacts society over the long term. How do we, in the words of Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki, funnel more Ethereans into regen than degen?

Here I advocate for something a little unorthodox. I believe Ethereum should introduce a Citizen’s Assembly. In my home country of Ireland, citizens are randomly selected to convene and discuss important issues relating to the Irish Constitution. In Ethereum, we don’t have a Constitution but there could be value in an annual forum where various stakeholders in Ethereum meet to discuss important concerns.

See also: Paul Dylan-Ennis – Who Is Building Ethereum's Public Goods? | Opinion

Similar to the open-source concept that many eyes can fix a problem quicker than a single pair can, the Ethereum Assembly could consider pressing issues (e.g. what to do about Lido, a decentralized service that is said to be dominating Ethereum staking) but also how to encourage people away from degen into regen with active efforts. Citizens from each stakeholder group, from validators to developers to application builders to Average Joes could come together and hash it out.

And the most important effect? I believe it would encourage a sense of responsibility over the protocol across the community spectrum, introducing social matters as important as technical ones.

Or we could just keep sending the grifters ETH…

Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.

OpinionMemecoinEthereumCultureScams
Paul J. Dylan-Ennis

Dr. Paul Dylan-Ennis is a lecturer/assistant professor in the College of Business, University College Dublin.

X icon
Paul J. Dylan-Ennis
Latest Crypto News
Bitcoin (BTC) price on May 19 (CoinDesk)

Bitcoin Climbs to $105K; Crypto ETF Issuer Sees 35% Upside

May 19, 2025

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

JPMorgan To Allow Clients To Buy Bitcoin, Says Jamie Dimon

May 19, 2025

Consensus 2025: Paul Brody, Josh Stark

Bitcoin Is the Asset, Ethereum Is the Platform

May 19, 2025

(CJ/Unsplash)

XRP Futures Start Trading on CME

May 19, 2025

DOGE-USD 24-hour chart shows 4.91% drop, ending at $0.2221 on May 19, 2025

Dogecoin Finds Support After Sharp Drop as Bulls Regain Momentum

May 19, 2025

Russia, Moscow Ruslan Gibadullin / Unsplash

Binance's Former Russia Head, Blum Co-Founder Arrested in Connection to Fraud Case

May 19, 2025

Top Stories
hack keys

WazirX Creditors Back Restructuring Plan to Payback $230M Hack Victims

Apr 8, 2025

(Ryan Quintal/Unsplash, Modified by CoinDesk)

Ripple, BCG Project $18.9T Tokenized Asset Market by 2033

Apr 7, 2025

MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor (CoinDesk)

Strategy Didn't Add Bitcoin Last Week, Expects to Book $6B Loss on Holdings in Q1

Apr 7, 2025

Galaxy founder Mike Novogratz (Shutterstock)

Galaxy Digital Gets SEC Nod for U.S. Listing, Eyes Nasdaq Debut in May

Apr 7, 2025

President Donald Trump (Shutterstock)

The All-Important U.S. 10-Year Yield Is Moving in the Wrong Direction for Trump

Apr 8, 2025

The Cboe Global Markets Inc. building in Chicago (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Cboe Set to Debut New Bitcoin Futures With FTSE Russell

Apr 8, 2025

Only 1 article remaining this month.

Sign up for free

About

  • About Us
  • Masthead
  • Careers
  • CoinDesk News
  • Crypto API Documentation

Contact

  • Contact Us
  • Accessibility
  • Advertise
  • Sitemap
  • System Status
DISCLOSURE & POLICES
CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of the Bullish group, which owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish group equity-based compensation. Bullish was incubated by technology investor Block.one.
EthicsPrivacyTerms of UseCookie SettingsDo Not Sell My Info

© 2025 CoinDesk, Inc.
X icon
Sign Up
  • News
    Back to menu
    News
    • Markets
    • Finance
    • Tech
    • Policy
    • Focus
  • Prices
    Back to menu
    Prices
    • Data
      Back to menu
      Data
      • Trade Data
      • Derivatives
      • Order Book Data
      • On-Chain Data
      • API
      • Research & Insights
      • Data Catalogue
      • AI & Machine Learning
    • Indices
      Back to menu
      Indices
      • Multi-Asset Indices
      • Reference Rates
      • Strategies and Services
      • API
      • Insights & Announcements
      • Documentation & Governance
    • Research
      Back to menu
      Research
      • Events
        Back to menu
        Events
        • Consensus 2025
        • Consensus 2025 Coverage
      • Sponsored
        Back to menu
        Sponsored
        • Thought Leadership
        • Press Releases
        • CoinW
        • MEXC
        • Phemex
        • Advertise
      • Videos
        Back to menu
        Videos
        • CoinDesk Daily
        • Shorts
        • Editor's Picks
      • Podcasts
        Back to menu
        Podcasts
        • CoinDesk Podcast Network
        • Markets Daily
        • Gen C
        • Unchained with Laura Shin
        • The Mining Pod
      • Newsletters
        Back to menu
        Newsletters
        • The Node
        • Crypto Daybook Americas
        • State of Crypto
        • Crypto Long & Short
        • Crypto for Advisors
      • Webinars & Events
        Back to menu
        Webinars & Events
        • Consensus 2025
        • Policy & Regulation Conference
      Select Language
      English enEspañol esFilipino filFrançais frItaliano itPortuguês pt-brРусский ruУкраїнська uk