Memes Are Much More Than Speculative Instruments — A Deep-Dive With Prometheus of Pepecoin
As memecoins garner massive attention from users and investors across chains, I had the opportunity to chat with Prometheus, a team member of Pepecoin.
We discussed Pepecoin’s journey, the importance of meme culture and community empowerment, promising technologies, and more. Enjoy!
Welcome, Prometheus. Thanks for joining. Let’s begin with your journey through Pepecoin’s rich history.
I’m a dev building cool stuff for over two decades. Memelords, OG gigabrains, cypherpunks, bitcoiners, and crypto pioneers like Vitalik are my tribe.
PepeCoin was launched as a PoW blockchain in 2016, with two main goals. One is to bring creativity and purpose into crypto — most projects lacked that, as they still do. The other is to use emerging tech for community empowerment, not mere riches or fame.
But Pepe got caught up in political crossfire and the ADL unfairly labeled him as a ‘hate symbol.’ We had to rebrand as ‘Memetic’ and change our ticker from $PEPE to $MEME.
Then around 2023, the whole Pepe imposter fiasco happened, ending with fakers dumping on investors. That’s when we decided to go full-steam ahead to reclaim what’s ours.
Pepe won when the imposters revealed their true colors. Now we’ll dev our way to the top, changing crypto forever and delivering what it needs — memes with utility, not vaporware.
So what’s the vision behind Pepe’s XP-themed website? What can folks do inside the PepeOS Memetiverse?
The theme is mainly about nostalgia. Our vision is to build a user experience dedicated to memes and meme-based communities.
PepeOS or the Memetiverse is a seamless and fun ecosystem. You can send secure and encrypted messages using Pepe Messenger, create and mint NFTs on the fly with Pepe Paint, or access SociaFi with MyFrens.
Overall, the website is a memers’ paradise and one-stop-shop fulfilling their cultural and degens needs. It’s an interconnected, crypto-native world, with more features and applications to come.
Awesome! Now, zooming out, why is meme culture so big in crypto? Is it here to stay?
Meme culture is integral to Internet-based worlds in general. But crypto took it to new heights. Dank memes went from being a sub-culture to a speculative vehicle for mainstream, retail users. That’s good and bad.
Good from a ‘the more the merrier’ perspective. Memes were the biggest crypto narrative in Q1 2024, outperforming AI, RWA, and even L2s. It helped onboard thousands of new members to the memers’ community. And while most came for a quick buck, I’m hopeful that some of them will stick around and build stuff.
That brings me to the bad part. The excessive hype around memecoins somewhat diluted the community’s core vision and principles, at least from the outside. Amidst all the greed and bag-pumping frenzy, the idea that memes are way more than speculative vehicles was lost. At least for those on the outside.
So, are memes here to stay? Yes. But it’s critical to bring utility to memes, as we’re doing at Pepecoin. Though speculation will remain, which is alright, but OG meme communities and dedicated holders will get a stronger grounding.
Besides memes, what are the most groundbreaking inventions happening with the Web3/crypto tech stack?
From real-world tokenization to L2 scaling solutions, a lot is happening in crypto right now. But I’m particularly excited about Decentralized AI. It’ll be a game-changer for data security, ownership, and privacy.
We’ve built BasedAI, for example, using zk-LLMs, ‘Cerberus Squeezing’, and other inventions. Users own their prompts, which are also encrypted using Fully Homomorphic Encryption or FHE.
AI is on track to become a superpower. It’s dangerous to let a few centralized corporations control and use it to maximize their interests. Decentralized AI platforms like BasedAI will help put grassroots communities in charge of AI development. Users can finally benefit from the value they generate. That’s our mission.
Why does community empowerment matter? What’s next for the Pepecoin community?
Be it AI or memes or even money, users generate most of the value. They create content, supply data, build connections, and ultimately drive network effects. Big Tech presents a contrary picture, but users are the key agents in online ecosystems.
If no one’s using a given tech innovation, it effectively has zero value. None of your ‘big ideas’ or fancy white papers matter unless you have a community backing your product or service.
So naturally, it’s only fair that the community gets the biggest share of the profit pie, directly and indirectly. Contrary to the attract-extract model of Web2, we’re rooting for a more inclusive approach.
As for Pepecoin, we recently launched the Kek bot trading terminal with features like MEV blocking, in-depth charts, and more. We’re also revamping Kekdaq, the first-ever NFT DEX, where memers can buy, sell, and trade their treasures.
You can also earn staking rewards on BasedAI. And lots of exciting meme-based dApps, games, 3D worlds, etc., are in the pipeline. Pepe’s devs are deving so get ready for a ride.
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About The Author
Gregory, a digital nomad hailing from Poland, is not only a financial analyst but also a valuable contributor to various online magazines. With a wealth of experience in the financial industry, his insights and expertise have earned him recognition in numerous publications. Utilising his spare time effectively, Gregory is currently dedicated to writing a book about cryptocurrency and blockchain.
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Gregory, a digital nomad hailing from Poland, is not only a financial analyst but also a valuable contributor to various online magazines. With a wealth of experience in the financial industry, his insights and expertise have earned him recognition in numerous publications. Utilising his spare time effectively, Gregory is currently dedicated to writing a book about cryptocurrency and blockchain.
