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When Vitalik Buterin dismissed meme coins as “unsustainable” on 12th September this year, the crypto elite nodded in agreement. After all, who wants to defend $Fartcoin when you’re building the future of decentralized finance?
I do. And after watching meme coins survive scandal after scandal while onboarding millions of retail users, I’m convinced Vitalik, brilliant as he is, misses the point entirely.
Meme coins aren’t undermining serious crypto projects. They’re subsidizing them. And the current wave of scams, far from killing the sector, is forging something stronger: community-governed tokens that could redefine decentralized ownership.
Let’s start with scale. As of October 2025, meme coins account for about $12 billion of Solana’s $124.8 billion market cap, that’s 10%, according to CoinMarketCap. Solana’s decentralized exchanges process $10 billion in monthly volume, with 30% coming from meme coin trades on platforms like Raydium.
This isn’t fringe activity. This is the engine.
One in ten retail crypto investors globally owns Dogecoin or Shiba Inu, per CoinMarketCap surveys. These aren’t degens gambling on Layer 2 gas optimization, they’re everyday people entering DeFi through tokens with dog mascots and absurd names. Once they’re in, they discover lending protocols, NFT markets, and yes, even Ethereum’s rollups.
“Meme coins are crypto’s front door,” Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at CoinShares, told me last month. “They make finance fun and accessible in ways whitepapers never will.”
Even institutional players are paying attention. Bloomberg analysts currently estimate an 80% probability that a Dogecoin ETF will gain SEC approval within 18 months. BlackRock is reportedly exploring meme coin exposure for future products. Love them or hate them, meme coins are forcing traditional finance to reckon with community-driven assets.
I’m not naïve. The meme coin sector is a minefield.
In recent weeks alone, $XPL collapsed after an alleged 800 million token dump through Bybit, wiping out retail investors while insiders cashed out. $ASTER hid undisclosed influencer payments. $CAKE faced wash trading allegations. $BELG’s promised charity donations vanished.
Even $TRUMP, with its $6.8 billion market cap, raises serious ethical questions about political figures launching tokens, now sitting at $1.56 billion.
CoinMarketCap lists over 2,000 active meme coins, with scams affecting roughly 10% of new launches in 2025. On X (formerly Twitter), threads on meme coin scandals like $XPL’s dump have amassed thousands of retweets in recent weeks, with influencers urging traders to ‘ignore the FUD’ amid $TRUMP’s ethical haze, reflecting both fury and engagement.
But here’s what critics miss: These scams aren’t unique to meme coins—they expose flaws in the entire token launch ecosystem. And unlike traditional finance frauds that hide behind corporate opacity, crypto’s transparent ledgers make every betrayal visible, traceable, and actionable.
When $XPL dumped tokens, the community didn’t just complain, they tracked wallet flows, identified the Bybit connection, and documented the mechanics of the rug pull in public threads with thousands of retweets. That’s not just outrage. That’s education in real time.
The most underreported story in crypto right now is how meme coin communities are demanding structural reform.
After the $XPL disaster, X threads calling for “standard operating procedures for launches” garnered over 10,000 retweets. Traders aren’t abandoning memes, they’re demanding escrow for team tokens, mandatory audits, and transparent vesting schedules.
Platforms are responding. Pump.fun, burned by association with multiple scams, has tightened presale requirements. Solana-based launch pads are implementing Chainlink oracles for real-time treasury tracking. These aren’t theoretical fixes—they’re live improvements born from community pressure.
Laura Shin, host of the Unchained podcast, framed it perfectly in a recent episode: “Meme coins expose greed in real time, but they also show us how to fix it faster than any regulatory body ever could.”
Here’s my pitch: Meme DAOs.
Imagine if $WIF holders, the community behind the dog-themed token could vote on token burns, charity allocations, or marketing budgets through on-chain governance. Shady developers couldn’t dump tokens because the community controls the treasury through multi-signature wallets and time-locked smart contracts.
This isn’t fantasy. The Sandbox ($SAND) already operates with community-led governance over its $1 billion ecosystem. ApeCoin DAO manages hundreds of millions through transparent proposal systems. The infrastructure exists—meme coins just need to adopt it.
Why haven’t they? Because most meme coins launch fast and chaotic, prioritizing virality over structure. But the next generation doesn’t have to. Projects launching with built-in DAOs from day one could eliminate the single point of failure; the anonymous dev team that enables most rug pulls.
The tools are ready. The demand is there. Someone just needs to build the first truly community-owned meme coin at launch, not after the fact.
Buterin’s critique assumes meme coins compete with “serious” projects for capital and attention. The opposite is true.
Solana’s explosive growth from $10 billion to $124 billion in market cap over 18 months coincided with its meme coin boom, not despite it. New users enter through $BONK or $WIF, then discover Marinade Finance for liquid staking or Jupiter for aggregated swaps. The meme coins are the marketing budget Solana never had to pay.
Ethereum could learn from this. While Vitalik dismisses memes as distractions, Solana embraced them and saw transaction volumes explode to $10 trillion annually. Culture matters in crypto, and meme coins create culture at scale.
Anthony Pompliano, founder of Pomp Investments, made this point bluntly on his podcast: “Meme coins are the internet’s rebellion against boring finance. You can either join the party or watch from the sidelines while Solana eats your lunch.”
Meme coins will keep ruling crypto’s cultural zeitgeist because they tap into something fundamental: community identity. People don’t just buy $DOGE for returns, they buy into a tribe, a joke, a shared belief system that transcends price action.
But to survive long-term, the sector needs structural change:
For developers: Launch with DAO governance from day one. Use escrow for team tokens. Submit to third-party audits before presales.
For platforms: Implement mandatory transparency tools. Raydium, Pump.fun, and others should require liquidity locks and vesting schedules for all new launches.
For regulators: The GENIUS Act’s stablecoin framework, passed in July 2025, offers a blueprint for balanced oversight. Apply similar principles to high-risk token launches without killing innovation.
For investors: Demand better. Verify token contracts on Solscan or Etherscan before buying. Join community channels that expose scams. Reward projects with transparent tokenomics.
The crypto community; traders, developers, and yes, even meme enthusiasts can pioneer this transformation without waiting for regulators to catch up.
Meme coins are crypto’s most honest expression of its core promise: permissionless value creation driven by community consensus rather than institutional gatekeepers.
Are they chaotic? Absolutely. Risky? Without question. But they’re also onboarding more retail users to DeFi than every Ethereum roadmap update combined. They’re teaching millions about wallets, gas fees, and liquidity pools through trial, error, and occasionally devastating losses.
The scams aren’t a bug in the system, they’re a feature of radical openness. And the market’s response, from community-led investigations to platform reforms, proves that decentralized systems can self-correct faster than traditional finance ever could.
Vitalik is right that meme coins in their current form are unsustainable. But he’s wrong about what comes next. The sector isn’t dying, it’s evolving into something crypto desperately needs: accessible, community-governed assets that prove decentralization works at scale.
The question isn’t whether meme coins will survive the controversy. It’s whether the rest of crypto will learn from them before it’s too late.
