2024 is the Year of Meme Coins: Here's a Recap of the Top Meme Coins Narratives of the Year
We already know that meme coins are popular, and these projects have captured the attention of retail investors and an enthusiastic community. Even the leading crypto and tech personalities, like Matt Damon, Twitter/X's Elon Musk, and even President Donald Trump. But how popular are these crypto projects this year? Well, CoinGecko has offered a fascinating insight: according to its research, meme coins captured 31% of global investors' interest in 2024.
December 31st, 2024: Meme coins, or those speculative crypto projects inspired by jokes and memes, have been around since 2013. Dogecoin is arguably the first meme coin, initially introduced as an inside joke and quickly developed into a popular token thanks to its growing community. It also helped that Dogecoin has a few celebrity backers, including Elon Musk, whose social media posts influenced the investing public and even pushed its price. Since then, several high-profile meme projects have been introduced, including Shiba Inu, Dogelon Mars, BONK, Pepe, and Floki. Some of these crypto projects took off and found an enthusiastic following, but most of these projects faded into oblivion. But 2024 was a different story for meme coin projects and their enthusiastic communities.
According to CoinGecko Research, the meme coin narratives are "by far the most popular crypto narratives" for the year, besting other popular blockchain projects and trends. All meme coins-related narratives captured 30.67% of global investor interest, covering popular topics such as meme coins, Solana, meme coins, Base, and AI meme coins.
Among these narratives, meme coins top the charts with 14.36%, with AI getting the second spot with 12.58%. In short, almost a third of the industry's narrative interest was in speculative digital assets and less on fundamentals and real-life use cases.
In the same CoinGecko Research, the meme coin narrative was first, a 14.36% share of the narrative industry. This figure represents a 6.04% increase from the previous year, suggesting that investors' and enthusiasts' interest in meme coins continues to grow.
Next to meme coins, AI-related narratives attracted 16% of investors' interest this year. In this section, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) narrative is the top dog, with 12.58%, and it's joined by other AI-inspired topics like AI agents and AI meme coins.
Let's take a look at the top meme coins for 2024
The top dogs in the meme coin industry remain as the favorites of traders and investors. Here are the top five meme coins for the year, and reasons why they're on top.
- Dogecoin (DOGE). Dogecoin is arguably the top meme coin asset, and it continued to lead this year. This meme coin was launched in 2013 as a fork of Litecoin and was seen as an inside joke in the cryptocurrency industry. Since then, this crypto project has seen an impressive rise in price and popularity, and it's currently valued at $48 billion (which briefly touched over $80 billion), thanks to its fast-growing and very supportive comminity and the endorsements of top crypto personalities like Elon Musk.
- Shiba Inu (SHIB). Shiba Inu remains the second most important meme coin, which is also based on another dog breed.SHIB was launched on the Ethereum blockchain in 2020 by a developer named Ryoshi. Like Dogecoin, SHIB, the project also gained a loyal following called the "ShibArmy" who votes on governance proposals using the BONE token. In recent years, Shiba Inu has expanded its use case and ecosystem by integrating the metaverse, a decentralized exchange (ShibaSwap), an NFT collection called the SHIBOSHIS, and a layer-two blockchain network it calls the Shibarium. Recently, one of the project's developers teased about the features of their metaverse project, saying that the Shiba Inu's metaverse will run on a layer-2 Shibarium solution, and that it will serve as a venue for creativity, connection and ownership.
- Pepe (PEPE). Then, we also have a meme coin that's based on the viral meme of Pepe the Frog. The Pepe Coin was launched in April 2023, and it's a decentralized digital asset that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. This token was launched with a supply of 420,690,000,000,000 tokens, with the developers aiming to break away from the "dog coin" narratives for meme coin developments. Pepe Coin is currently the third biggest meme coin with a market cap of $7.6 billion.
- Dogwifhat (WIF). Dogwifhat is another popular meme coin that runs on the Solana blockchain. Again, we find a dog as the inspiration for the token, with a distinctive pink knitted hat. Unlike many top crypto projects that aim to expand use cases or innovate the blockchain, Dogwifhat offers playful approach to meme coin development. Even its name, "WIF", shows a deliberate mispelling of the word "with". Although this meme coin has limited use cases and doesn't add much to the innovations of the blockchains, it remains one of the popular meme coins in the market.
- Bonk (BONK). On the surface, Bonk is another derivative of Dogecoin. But during its launch in 2022, the crypto industry saw something different with its commitment to protecting its community. Bonk was launched when "predatory VC coins" became more popular and targeted unsuspecting retail traders and investors. In this arrangement, VCs would often advertise "pre-pre-pre-sale" offering tokens at discounted prices, then will then sell these to retail investors at higher prices. Critics say that this marketing scheme is both unfair and exploitative. The developers of BONK came up with an idea: they will airdrop 50% of the tokens' supply to the Solana ecosystem users, and the rest for community building initiatives.
What are the popular blockchains for meme coins?
There are two popularly used blockchains for meme coins' development: Ethereum and Solana. And majority of the meme coins we can buy and trade are minted in these two top blockchains.
Ethereum is the original playground for the developers of meme coins. Some of the early meme coins were minted on this blockchain, which paved the way for the popularity of this crypto niche. This blockchain is popular among developers for three important reasons: security, reliability, and its integration with DeFi. The three most popular meme coins on the Ethereum blockchain are Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe (PEPE), and Floki Inu (FLOKI).
However, in recent months, the Solana blockchain has captured the attention of more developers and traders of memecoins. Solana plays hosts to more than 200 tokens, and majority of these are meme coins. This blockchain experienced an uptick in the number of meme coin crypto projects in the last quarter of 2o23. Solana is currently the favored blockchain for developers thanks to its lightning-fast transactions, minimal fees, and a thriving community.
Solana boasts a large and growing community that's passionate about meme coins. Thanks to a friendly and vibrant community, it's easier to launch and promote these meme coins. Three of the top Solana-based meme coins are Bonk (BONK), Dogwifhat (WIF), and The Book of Meme (BOME).
What are base meme coins?
Another crypto meme narrative that's popular this year was base meme coins. Base meme coins are recent additions to the growing crypto community, and they leverage the features of the Base network, a Layer 2 (L2) scaling solution on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Although the Base network as a new kid on the block, many developers are adopting it as their platform for minting meme coins for several reasons.
The Base network offers faster transaction processing, which can be completed in seconds or milliseconds. Like Solana, the Base network also boasts reduced fees and scalability solitions. Finally, the Base network (and its users) benefits from the security and technology of the Ethereum blockchain which is more established and has already been tested. Brett, Degen, and Toshi are just three examples of Base meme coins.
AI meme coins- Blending AI with the meme culture
Then, we also have the AI meme coins, or tokens that were inspired by the generative Artificial Intelligence. These projects combine AI with the vibrant meme culture and the creativeness of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Most of these projects work on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), offering lower fees and faster transactions compared to other blockchains.
A popular example of this token is the MEMEAI that's built on the BNB Smart Chain, using the BEP-20 token standard. The token serves as the native currency in the Meme AI ecosystem, which can be used to create, share and trade AI-generate stickers and memes. Unlike other meme coins, the MEMEAI has a few use cases that benefit users and developers. For example, the token project integrates an AI image recognition technology to help in meme customozation. Once users and developers have the idea for NFTs, they can mint these in the platform's NFT marketplace. Finally, this popular AI meme coin can be traded in the market, allowing developers and holders to earn from these transactions.
So what's ahead for meme coins this 2025?
These are just some of the top meme coins-related narratives that dominate the conversations in the last 12 months. And according to the CoinGecko Research, the Top 20 crypto narratives indicated in the image above accounted to more than 78% of the global investor interest, from a pool of over 200 narratives that caught the attention of the markets. And from the list of crypto narratives, meme coins were the top dogs.
People can't seem to stop talking about meme coins, and we expect the trend to continue this 2025. And market commentators and analysts are now offering varying insights on what to expect from this niche, and what meme coins to watch out for this year. Some analysts see Pepe Coin on the rise, with Peanut the Squirrel from the Solana blockchain getting noticed, and Shiba Inu's support for DeFi. Whatever your interests or next steps in crypto, it's always best to research and practice due diligence. In crypto, nothing is set in stone, and anything can happen.
