Memecoins have consumed the attention of degens in the space in a way that isn’t too different than NFT projects from a few years ago. Just as NFTs have evolved in their approach to build and retain community, memecoins have as well.
One memecoin that has caught my interest recently is Pacmoon, which launched a couple weeks after the Blast Layer 2 network went live.
As of this writing, the memecoin has a circulating market cap of $61 million, which is no small feat considering it’s 2.5 months old and has steadily onboarded new holders in a space that doesn’t have an attention span.
What has Pacmoon done that makes it stick out?
Pacmoon’s initial claim
The initial airdrop allocation was provided to Blast wallets based on referrals and the amount deposited onto the Blast network. Simple, straightforward, and a great way to maximize holder distribution for a memecoin.
Rewarding social activity
After this initial phase, the Pacmoon team had to sustain and increase the ephemeral attention towards the memecoin after the initial claim phase. The team employed a similar social farming mechanic we’ve seen elsewhere (ahem Portalcoin).
Create content about Pacmoon and tag the Pacmoon account. The more views the posts get, the more PAC the creator earns. The twist is that there was a subjective element to it.
This tweak did a few things:
Disincentivized low-quality content from spammers
Encouraged high-quality creators to participate because they had less competition
Gave the Pacmoon team more leverage in rewarding creators that were aligned with the goal of creating high-quality content. The Pacmoon account can repost the content, driving incremental views from their account and signal to the X algorithm to drive incremental views on top of that.
Increased the perception of Pacmoon thanks to the two points above (contrast that with Portalcoin which had a negative perception from many, although it ultimately was a lucrative opportunity to participate in)
Creators that were involved early with this initiative were rewarded, even if they didn’t have a large following. The most notable example of this is with Jenndefer, who received 1.17 million PAC (~$250k today) for creating Pacmoon-approved content that received over 500k views.
Pacmoon V2
Last week Pacmoon launched V2, a new initiative that took the social farming concept and took it a step further. How does it work?
V2 has two roles: Creators and Social Validators. People can participate in one or both roles and earn points by participating in v2.
Creators create content about Pacmoon. Creators earn points by receiving likes from Social Validators.
Social Validators participate by liking Pacmoon posts from creators. Validators need to hold at least 10k PAC for their likes to count.
Social Validators need to like at least one Pacmoon post per day, and earn points at a rate of 1 point per 100 PAC held.
The simple visual for Pacmoon V2 is this:
As a result, this aligns incentives across different parties, gets holders involved (like myself), and helps scalability (team had to manually review content in V1). What does this look like in action?
I hold 10,045 PAC (from the initial airdrop) so I qualify as a Social Validator, barely made the cut! This equates to 100.5 points per day if I like at least one post per day. I’ve interacted for 3 days, so I’ve earned a total of 301.4 Validator points so far.
Progressive and retroactive Validator value
I’ll admit, I’m not the most discerning Social Validator. I just go to the Pacmoon account and like several posts that they’ve reposted 😅. As a result, my paltry daily allocation of 100.5 points are distributed among those Creators.
But when I looked at my Pacmoon dashboard, the total daily allocation of points was more than 100.5. Today I liked 15 posts, and each Creator earned 20.09 points, resulting in a total of 301.4 points distributed.
Things got a little more interesting. Time to double-check the stats:
3 days of validating, 100.45 points per day, 301.4 Validator points
June 2: 8 posts liked, 37.67 points per post, 301.36 points distributed
June 3: 18 posts liked, 16.74 points per post, 301.32 points distributed
June 4: 15 posts liked, 20.09 points per post, 301.35 points distributed
So what’s actually going on here is that the impact of the Validator is retroactive and progressive.
Progressive: The more engaged (liking at least 1 Pacmoon post per day) the Validator, the more value their likes have.
Retroactive: The points retroactively increase. The Creators that get a portion of the points for that day remain the same, but the value allocated to each Creator increases with consistent engagement from the Validator.
Additional notes on Pacmoon
The Pacmoon team has likely taken some inspiration from DEGEN with the tipping mechanic, and it’s cool to see it working outside of Farcaster
The team created a Creator Handbook to help creators jumpstart their content efforts. Smart.
Lamboland from the Pacmoon team illustrates the funnel for non-holders in a simple and elegant way. Not holding ≠ Not participating.
Kudos to the Pacmoon team for continuing to engage their community and aligning incentives creatively. This isn't easy to pull off 👏
Other interesting things
Consensus was last week and they uploaded 250+ sessions from the conference that are free to watch. All you need to do is create a CoinDesk account.
The Head of Social at a16z Crypto shared how the team grew the account from 0 to 100k followers
Jack Butcher announced his newest artwork on Bitcoin, ‘1 of 1’ and ‘1 of ?’ ‘1 of ?’ was an open edition Ordinal with 35,262 minted. ’1 of 1’ was auctioned off at Sothebys for $36,000 and came with a physical piece that included 1 signature for each open edition. The physical piece is 81.5 feet long. ~$167k was donated to St. Jude in the process.
See you Thursday! 🫡
