When I turned 18, I went on my first trip overseas. Southeast Asia was a bit more wild back then and I was warned about taking help from strangers. Especially where I was headed, which was notorious for street scams of every kind.
“No matter what,” I was firmly told, “when someone asks for help – or tries to help you in any way – just say no.”
No to the ceremonial tea party at someone’s house in the countryside; no to the free bottle of Arrak your tour guide’s cousin brewed in their backyard; and certainly no to the well-dressed man on the street corner who speaks pretty good English and happens to have a sister going to school in the same country you’re from.
It all seemed a little counter-intuitive to any real adventure, but Eat, Pray, Love was still a decade away. There was no dreamy look in traveler’s eyes to find themselves just yet, only a worried gaze from them as they passed you by on the off-beaten path, trying to survive.
“For every 1,000 ‘noes’ you give, there will always be one ‘yes’ you could have taken,” they said. “But in the end, it’s not worth the risk of all the trouble you would’ve gotten yourself into.”
On October 22nd, 2023, a not yet mass-known but well-traded coin on Solana named Bonk broke out of consolidation. Having been in a brutal downtrend since its inception at the beginning of the year, its rise could have easily been another well-whaled fake out. But little did we know, it was the exact beginning of a mainstream Solana meme season, along with a new and – thanks to ultra low fees and high liquidity – even more aggressive memecoin cycle than we’ve ever seen before.
Hundreds of dog coins came out of the woodwork, with pet metas like Myro and the like dominating for months on end. And just when we think we’ve thought of everything, a simple countertrend to all the AI generated memecoin logos were completely blown away by one dumb photo of a shiba inu in a knitted pink hat. New, yet strangely familiar, dogwifhat melted faces with its meteoric rise, turning any mfer who bought just $100 worth of it in the beginning into a cool millionaire.
That is, if you had the balls to hold on that long...
Ever since this cycle’s memecoin mania began, I started searching for protocols that offered a good blend of crazy and security when I stumbled upon pump.fun. Now – I would advise anyone who wants to keep their pants and kidneys still to stay as far away from this site as humanly possible. The closest thing I’ve found in crypto to smoking a pack of unfiltered darts while drinking a pot of Vietnamese coffee at the same time, Pump offers any mfer the ability to make a coin and score volume through early investors with the aim of auto-locking liquidity once a certain marketcap has been reached, and then being posted to Raydium for trading. Ever wonder where all the wif derivatives come from lately? Along with every other cat coin doing an unexplainable 10,000x out of nowhere?
It’s Pump.
Recently, I watched Shark Cat, Theory of Gravity, and The Epik Duck rip through ceilings on DEX Screener post liquidity locks while in the same breath spawning hundreds of copycats simultaneously on Pump. They spew out so fast you can’t even tell what the original originally was. And honestly, at this point in the cycle, it doesn’t matter what works for the degens on there. If it prints it prints, no questions asked. Doesn’t matter the meme or intention behind it.
It’s moments like these that are ripe for a countertrend.
A little less than a week ago, I was casually watching Pump, when Day of Chicken bumped up. A photo of a real baby chicken with a small, bright-green sliver of plastic stuck on its head like a hat was its logo; the ticker $DAKEN.
In the dev notes, he had created the token as a way to record the chicken’s growth day-by-day. He had all his socials lined up very well, as well as a simple but clear website. The whole idea seemed genuine, personal, and something that many people might just walk by and think nothing of.
It reminded me a lot of Ghozali Everyday, an NFT project where a college student from Indonesia uploaded a photo of himself everyday – partly as a joke, partly as his journal. It went viral in early 2022 once it caught wind, and is still considered a landmark NFT collection within its category during last cycle’s run.
My reaction to Day of Chicken was almost instinctual. It’s a real person with a real intention doing a very simple thing: record the growth of his chicken. I knew it was going to lock liquidity quick, so I bought a small bag and went to bed.
Early that morning, as predicted, Day of Chicken was on Raydium. And like most projects that end up there from Pump, promptly dumped afterwards. I went into the Telegram to have a look and found the dev active, but not in the way you might expect after a coin launch.
...He was asking for help with his wallet.
After asking his community, he quickly got an “are you kidding me bro?” from one degen, while another berated his broken English. I was messaging something in the chat when he dm’d me. I’m used to getting scam dms from people imitating devs, but it was actually him. He was confused on how to setup up multiple wallets in Phantom. I helped him out, and he was really appreciative. I was very curious about his project, and we got to talking.
I told him I really loved Daken and its look, especially the weird little "hat." He already had a few nice stickers setup when he launched the Telegram, but I told him I’d help out and make a few more custom ones for free. Some that were a little more degen.
The dev apologized that it may take a while to reply to me. That he was using Chat GPT and Google Translate to communicate with me and everyone else in the Telegram.
“My English isn’t good,” he said, “but I continue to learn everyday.”
I talked to him some more – about the project, about his plans. He said that his goal was to create something consistent everyday. That if I had any suggestions, that he was ready to try them out. And that he was glad to finally find someone who appreciated his project.
“Can I ask you what a meme token is?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t fully understand what a meme coin is,” he admitted. “I just watched what I could online and tried to put it into practice, but I don’t fully understand what a meme really is. But I do enjoy learning, if you could teach me.”
“My mfer,” I said, “then you are in the best kind of meme of all. A meme that doesn’t know it’s a meme, but is. You don’t need to think too hard about it. You already are a meme.”
I could feel the memeverse opening up its gates for Day of Chicken. I’ve seen 1,000 of these things come and go on Pump, all of them empty. But here was Daken, a real chicken owned by this guy, living on the blockchain now somehow. Since its release, he's been consistently posting Daken’s growth videos across all platforms – one chicken video a day, wearing the same silly green hat. A commentary on the fleeting nature of life, or the affects of plastic on one of the humanity’s greatest food supplies, who knows. But I’ve never owned a chicken myself, so it’s nice to see one grow everyday.
“Btw,” he said, “I want to explain the initial concept of Daken. May I share it with you?”
“Please do,” I said.
“I have a garden behind my house. There are many things that I look after. Monkeys, cats, birds, binturongs, chickens, ducks, ferrets. There are fish ponds, aquariums. It feels like a zoo. I want to give the best to all these pets. Give better cages, better food for all my pets, or add more animals, too. Initially, I wanted to make a YouTube for my personal zoo to raise money to help them, but I wanted to try something different to attract attention. I wanted to see if I could create a small crypto community, and found a video online to help me make a token. I finally did it," he said.
Then he went on to tell me about himself. That he’s from Indonesia and has been trying to utilize crypto more after the current vice president became an advocate for it, as well as blockchain technology. He said he and his small family live on the outskirts in his province. That he went to college but failed because of the costs.
He also mentioned he was around during the early days of crypto, and used everything he had earned to purchase some Bitcoin when it was around $400. Back then, crypto was very taboo in Indonesia, and he wasn’t sure of his future with it, so he sold it early on to protect his investment and support his family.
“I still have a Bitcoin Talk account, but I can’t remember the password,” he laughed.
He said his big target is to create a crypto class for the Indonesian community.
“Crypto investors are extraordinary,” he said, “I have big dreams myself, but most of all I want to be able to be trusted, make friends, and work together consistently [with the crypto community].”
Almost a week after its launch, Day of Chicken has been trending sideways. There are no major whales holding a huge supply, and the dev only holds a small bag of his own since creating the token, and never sold post liquidity-lock.
“I actually don’t understand much about trading,” he said. “I just want to hold it and see where it goes.”
Day of Chicken has posted a video everyday of the progress of Daken's growth since its launch, and will continue to do so everyday.
“I’m not sure what to do when Daken gets bigger,” he said. “But whatever happens, the green ‘hat’ will stay."
If you want to find out more about Day of Chicken ($DAKEN) feel free to check out the links below.
Website (w/ links to Twitter/Telegram/YouTube/Instagram/TikTok): https://dakensol.com/
Where to Trade $DAKEN
Contract Address: BfmftGM7W7nVicF3ccBTrGfh4RzS6xM4gQpDwJDjaZCt
DEX Screener: https://dexscreener.com/solana/6kcq6w1lvcj48gfa51xtjaljtwer5ml6mjo7edydxtrn
Pump: https://pump.fun/BfmftGM7W7nVicF3ccBTrGfh4RzS6xM4gQpDwJDjaZCt
Raydium: https://raydium.io/swap/?outputCurrency=BfmftGM7W7nVicF3ccBTrGfh4RzS6xM4gQpDwJDjaZCt
