MEME hype involution: Community takeover becomes the deciding factor amid frequent Rug incidents

Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, various MEME coins named "CTO" have been hyped by the market, and have further aroused the attention of CTO (community takeover) culture. The rise of CTO (community takeover) projects stems from the prevalence of various Rug phenomena in the MEME market. Under the banner of "community autonomy and collective decision-making", such concept projects have been increasingly sought after by investors, especially some successful "turnaround" cases have stimulated the market's participation sentiment, and have also evolved into a new means of profit-making.

Being hyped by the project of the same name first, is the official MakeNow MEME also going to be CTO?

Following the popularity of Pump.fun, DEX Raydium has also launched its latest competitor MakeNow.Meme, and CTO is one of the official MEME coins. Under the market frenzy, CTO received about $30 million in funds within one day of its launch, and naturally there were smart money that made high profits. According to Lookonchain monitoring, a trader spent 50 SOL (about $8,500) to buy 256.8 million CTOs and made a profit of 4,771 SOL (about $811,000), with a return rate of 94 times.

Investment is not the same. Smart money makes a lot of money, but many investors get nothing or even suffer serious losses. Because MakeNow did not officially announce the correct contract address of CTO at the beginning, more than a dozen fake projects with the same name in the Solana market were hyped up by funds, but they instantly returned to zero after the real official project was announced.

Of course, this kind of zero-ending MEME coin with the same name is also a common sight. After the heat of the project with the same name is consumed, the price of the officially certified token CTO is difficult to support for a long time. It has begun to spiral down a few hours after it went online, and it is likely to be CTO. DEX Screener data shows that as of the time of posting, the highest decline of CTO is as high as 95.8%, and the market value is only about 600,000 US dollars.

Interestingly, Solana is not the first chain to issue MEME coin CTO. It has appeared on Base before. Last month, due to Solana's strong dominance, the MEME community on Base began to plan a related CTO movement to regain the heat, and then received a response from Base founder Jesse Pollak. The MEME coin CTO was born, and used this to ridicule the rampant fake CTO projects on Solana. DEX Screener data shows that the market value of CTO on Base is not as good as Solana, with a market value of only about US$400,000.

Community autonomy has become a value weapon for MEME coins?

In fact, zeroing MEME is also becoming profitable. As the dominant narrative that continues to be popular in this round of bull market cycle, MEME has become increasingly popular under the promotion of factors such as lower issuance thresholds and anti-VC sentiment, but behind it are more dopamine stimulation and survivor bias, and Rug events are becoming more and more frequent.

Targeting investors' desire for a comeback or eagerness to make a profit, CTO (Community Take Over) is becoming increasingly popular. In the eyes of these investors, even if the project runs away, once it becomes a CTO project, it can not only exclude the developer's insider trading, but also have more community cohesion and consensus. Especially after many projects have soared after being taken over by the community, this approach has become increasingly recognized.

For example, WIF has become the fourth largest MEME project with a market value of more than 1.8 billion US dollars after community autonomy; MOG, ranked ninth in market value, is also a successful example of community takeover; POPCAT is the first cat-themed CTO project, and its market value has ranked in the top ten of the MEME list. "In a sense, Bitcoin and Dogecoin are also OGs of CTO." Crypto KOL @neso once tweeted.

From the way the MEME project was rebuilt by the CTO, according to @neso's previous disclosure, some runaway projects were directly taken over by whale holders, and the CTO team would ask the original DEV for relevant project accounts, or more would start a new project, and only need to spend money to update the information on platforms such as Dex Screener and DEXTools. As the participation in CTO projects increases, monitoring tools such as special CTO project push channels have also appeared in the market.

However, CTO projects also have multiple risks. According to @neso, the actual situation of CTO is very complicated. Most CTOs are a phased operation, that is, someone runs out to take over the operation, and runs away again after a wave of market conditions. In addition, many project parties staged the drama of "real and fake CTO", and chose to direct and act in CTO after running away, which can be said to be "killing two birds with one stone". Not only that, many CTO scripts are also compared to drama, such as BILLY being operated by 9 CTOs at the same time, and DJCAT will be CTO again after the original community takeover due to pregnancy.

At present, the overheated hype of CTO projects is also being criticized by the community. This method is considered to be condoning the evil behavior of the project party, and it is impossible to know the true intention of the CTO, which will bring further damage to the interests of traders.