DICTIONARY/TOPICS/Degen & memecoins

Degen & memecoins

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🏷 Topic challenge · Degen & memecoins edition

Have you seen it? Degen & memecoins only.

This is not the main game. Only Degen & memecoins records come up, and the desk hands out its own titles and badges, from Paper Hands to Deployed The Contract. Your main-game file is left alone.

Start the Degen & memecoins challenge ▶Records open on their real pages. Answer on each one.

Badges on offer5Five · gm10Ten · wagmi, allegedly25Twenty-five · few understand

All Alive Dying Dead Undead Fossil

A–Z Newest Oldest Shortest life Longest life Most entries

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Red laser eyes added to a profile picture as a pledge — the eyes stay on until the price hits a number — worn by senators, athletes and a lot of people who quietly removed them in 2022. The record's entry for a promise made with an image filter.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2022

● Aliven.✎ 4

The smaller, cheaper sibling collection to Pudgy Penguins: 22,222 little penguins minted in December 2021 as an add-on, then folded into the brand after the project was bought and rebuilt in 2022. Entered the record separately because its fate diverged from its parent's for a year and then rejoined it: the toys, the licensing and the Walmart shelf covered both.

▸ 2021peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Eight thousand text files — a list of eight fantasy items in white monospace on a black background, 'Divine Robe', 'Dragonskin Boots' — released free by the Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann in August 2021 with no game, no art and no plan. Within a week the floor was above 20 ETH and dozens of projects had been built on top of the bags. The record's entry for the collection that was only a prompt.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

The marketplace that became the front door of Solana NFTs within months of launching in September 2021, and the one that survived the chain's 2022 collapse by spreading to other chains and, in 2023, to Bitcoin Ordinals. A launchpad, a marketplace and a wallet by 2024, and the closest thing to a Solana institution that the NFT era produced.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

A tool that let artists deploy their own smart contract rather than mint on a marketplace's shared one, launched in 2021 and adopted by most of the well-known crypto artists within a year. The record notes it as the point at which 'owning your contract' became something artists said, and as the invisible plumbing behind a great many 2022 drops.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Twenty thousand blocky 3D characters from the makers of CryptoPunks, launched in May 2021 with a claim for punk holders and a Dutch auction for everyone else that raised a reported $80 million. The reveal was marred by an exploit in which one buyer reminted until they got a rare one. Yuga Labs acquired Meebits with the punks in 2022 and reportedly sold them on to Sentient Labs in 2025.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Melania Trump NFT

A watercolour of Melania Trump's eyes, 'Melania's Vision', sold in December 2021 at $150 each, followed in January 2022 by an auction of a hat and a sketch from a 2018 state visit. Bloomberg and Motherboard reported that the winning bid came from a wallet funded by the project's own creator; the Trump office said the bid was on behalf of a third-party buyer. The record files the reports as reports.

▸ 2021peak 2022†2022

● Aliven.✎ 3

The information attached to an NFT — its name, its traits and, crucially, the address of its image — held in a file the token points to rather than in the token itself. The word became public when people learned that a project could change it: a 'metadata update' after a reveal swapped placeholders for pictures, and, in a few cases, swapped pictures for worse ones after the money was in.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Ten thousand and twenty-one stick figures at a computer, drawn from the 'are ya winning, son?' meme, released by the pseudonymous Sartoshi with a CC0 licence and no roadmap, which was the roadmap. In June 2022 Sartoshi announced they were leaving, handed the contract to the community and deleted the account. The floor followed the market; the figures stayed at their desks.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

A coin with a tiny market value, in memecoin usage anything from a few thousand dollars to the low millions, and the natural habitat of anyone hunting a large multiple. A term borrowed from equities, where it means a small listed company, and repurposed for tokens that may have existed for twenty minutes. The word makes them sound like a category of investment. That is the point of the word.

▸ 2021peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

A collection of ten thousand anime-styled avatars with a neochibi look and an internet subculture attached — part fashion, part in-joke, part something the record does not fully follow. Went mainstream when Elon Musk posted one in May 2023.

▸ 2021peak 2023still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Mutant Ape Yacht Club

Twenty thousand mutated apes: ten thousand created by Bored Ape holders exposing their apes to airdropped 'serum' vials, and ten thousand sold in a public auction that reportedly raised around $96 million in an hour. The Mega Mutant serums, thirteen of them, produced one-off monsters. The second-largest room of the Yuga house, and the one built to let in people who had missed the first.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

A receipt for a JPEG, sold as ownership. Trading volume fell 97 per cent in eighteen months; the apes remain, unsold, in their wallets.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2022

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

The person of 2021: hexagon profile picture, 'gm' in every reply, a thread about why your scepticism was ngmi, and a laser-eyed conviction that the pictures were the internet's next chapter. Nobody called themselves one. The type faded with the market, and the record notes that many of its members reappeared in 2023 in the AI replies, with the same energy and a different noun.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

◐ Dyingabbr.✎ 3

'Not gonna make it' — the verdict on anyone who sold early, doubted, or asked a reasonable question. The insult of the 2021 boom, and the record's note that most of the people who said it did not make it either.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

One pixel character with square glasses auctioned every day, forever, with the proceeds going to a treasury governed by the holders. Launched in August 2021 by ten pseudonymous founders; early Nouns sold for hundreds of ETH each and the treasury funded a Super Bowl advert and a sports team. A 2023 fork let unhappy holders leave with their share. The record's slowest-moving collection and its most durable.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

A remastered one-of-one of the Pop-Tart cat with a rainbow trail, sold by its creator Chris Torres on the tenth anniversary of the original GIF for 300 ETH, reported at around $590,000. One of the first meme sales of 2021 and the one that started the rush of old meme subjects selling their own pictures.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

● Aliveadj.✎ 3

Stored on the blockchain itself rather than pointed to from it: the NFT market's word for a picture whose data would survive the project's website. Most NFTs were not; the token held a link and the link held the picture. 'Fully on-chain' was therefore a boast, reserved for the few collections — Autoglyphs, Nouns, Chain Runners — whose art was written into the contract as code.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Overly Attached Girlfriend NFT

Laina Morris, whose wide-eyed face from a 2012 YouTube parody became the Overly Attached Girlfriend, sold the image as a token in April 2021 for 200 ETH, reported at around $411,000. She had retired from YouTube in 2019; the sale was, as she put it, a way to close the chapter with the meme paying for itself.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

● Aliveabbr.✎ 3

Profile picture, and by extension the whole category of NFT project — ten thousand variations of one character, generated from traits — designed to be used as one. The PFP was the format of the boom: the picture was an avatar, the avatar was a membership badge, and the badge was the reason to pay. When the badges stopped meaning anything, the pictures went back to being pictures.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

The opposite of diamond hands: someone who sells the moment it hurts. Coined during the GameStop week of January 2021 and used since for anyone who gives up on anything, from a stock to a sourdough starter.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

A science-fiction card game whose art sold as NFTs for three years before the game existed, raised a reported $50 million from investors in 2021, and eventually launched playable in 2024. The record's example of the 'art first, game later' order that most 2021 projects promised and few completed. The art was good. The game arrived. The prices did not come with it.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

The economics of a scheme that pays early people with later people's money, described with a portmanteau so that it sounds like a field of study. Used as a criticism and, in 2021, occasionally as a feature.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

Probably Nothing

'Probably nothing' — said about something the speaker clearly thinks is everything, as a way of hinting without claiming. The false modesty of the 2021 boom, and the record's favourite way to say 'buy'.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Round penguins in hats that began as avatars in 2021, nearly died in the crash, and came back as a toy line in Walmart and a GIF set used by people who had no idea they were avatars. The record's rare case of an internet mascot going the other direction: from the chain to the shelf.

▸ 2021peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

A number assigned to each NFT in a collection by how uncommon its traits are, computed by third-party sites in 2021 and then by every marketplace: rank 1 of 10,000 was the grail, rank 9,000 was the floor. The rank turned a picture into a score and the score into a price, and the record notes that the ranking formula was, at every site, slightly different.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

The moment, hours or days after a mint, when a collection's placeholder images are swapped for the actual pictures and every buyer learns which traits they got. A lottery result staged as an event: reveal day had countdowns, watch parties and a specific kind of Discord silence afterwards. The record notes that most disappointment in the NFT era happened at reveals.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

One thousand generative images of string wound around pegs by the Canadian artist Dmitri Cherniak, minted on Art Blocks in January 2021. Ringers #879, nicknamed 'The Goose' for the bird its loops resemble, sold at Sotheby's in June 2023 for $6.2 million from the seized collection of the collapsed fund Three Arrows Capital. The most expensive generative artwork on record at the time of that sale.

▸ 2021peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

The list of things a project promised to do after the mint, usually presented as a timeline with percentages: 25% sold, merch; 50%, a game; 100%, 'metaverse integration'. The roadmap was the sales document of 2021 and the graveyard of 2022. The phrase 'roadmap 2.0' meant the first one had been abandoned; 'no roadmap' became, briefly, the most credible thing a project could say.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Riding a coin all the way up and all the way back down without selling. A round trip ends where it started, in money terms, with the difference that the holder has also seen a number on a screen that they will describe, for years, as what they once had. Borrowed from equities. In the trenches it is confessed rather than announced.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Move-to-earn: an app that paid a token for walking or running, provided you first bought a virtual trainer as an NFT. For a few months in spring 2022 people bought shoes for thousands of dollars to be paid to go outside. The token fell through the summer, the app cut off users in mainland China in July 2022, and the pay for walking went back to being health.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

A token launched in March 2021 with a 10 percent fee on every sale, part of it paid back to holders, and the slogan 'safely to the moon'. It became the emblem of that spring's retail rush, with a reported market value in the billions at its peak. In November 2023 US prosecutors and the SEC charged three of its executives; the company filed for bankruptcy the next month.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2023

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

A white fluffy dog on Solana, launched in April 2021 and styled as the chain's ambassador, at a time when every chain needed a dog and Solana's was the one that smiled. It ran with the Solana boom of that autumn and sank with it, and was still on file when the chain's next dog season arrived in late 2023.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

● Alivephr.✎ 3

To buy without thinking about it. Borrowed from skiers and skaters, for whom it means committing to a jump, and used in the trenches for committing to a chart: 'send it' is what you say instead of doing research, and what you type in a group chat when someone asks whether they should. It can also describe the coin itself, which 'sends' when it goes up quickly.

▸ 2021peak 2024still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

'Sir', misspelled on purpose and used in every reply: 'ser, the floor is rising', 'ser, do not do this'. The most common word in NFT Discords in 2021 after 'gm', and part of a small dialect — ser, fren, anon, wen — that let strangers address each other with a courtesy that was also a joke. The record notes that it was used with equal frequency for praise and for warning.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Shiba Inu Vitalik Burn

Shiba Inu's creators had sent half the supply to Vitalik Buterin's wallet as a marketing gesture, on the theory that he would never touch it. In May 2021 he gave around 50 trillion of the tokens, reported at roughly a billion dollars, to a Covid relief fund for India, then burned 90 percent of what remained and said the rest would go to charity. The largest gift in the coin's history was also its largest sell.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Side-Eyeing Chloe NFT

The 2013 clip of a small girl reacting to the news of a trip to Disneyland with an expression of deep suspicion, sold as a token by her family in September 2021 for 20 ETH, reported at around $75,000, to a music company in Dubai. One of the last of the year's meme-subject sales, and the smallest of the famous ones.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

● Aliven.✎ 3

A record of who held what at a particular block, taken before an airdrop, a vote or a reward so that only holders at that moment qualify. 'The snapshot has been taken' was the sentence that ended a week of buying and started a week of selling, and 'buy before the snapshot' was the market's most reliable short-term instruction. The record notes that the picture in the phrase is of the ledger, not the art.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Snoop's Sandbox Estate

A virtual mansion in The Sandbox belonging to Snoop Dogg, announced in September 2021, and the plot next to it that a buyer reportedly paid around $450,000 for in December 2021 in order to be his neighbour. The record's clearest example of celebrity as location: the value was proximity to a famous person who was, like everyone else, mostly not there.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Solana Monkey Business

Five thousand pixel-art monkeys on Solana, launched in August 2021 and treated ever after as the chain's founding blue chip: the collection that early Solana people bought to prove they had been early. Holders organised into MonkeDAO, which later took over the project, one of the few cases of a community actually acquiring the thing it had been told it owned.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Squid Game Token

A token trading on a Netflix show it had no connection to, which rose from under a cent to a reported $2,860 in six days while holders found they could not sell. On 1 November 2021 the developers drained the liquidity, reported at around $3.4 million, and the price went to zero in minutes. The BBC and CNBC had covered its rise. They covered the fall the same week.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

An animated series about cats that get high, voiced by Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Chris Rock, Jane Fonda and Vitalik Buterin, funded by selling 10,420 tokens for about $8 million in 35 minutes in July 2021. In September 2023 the SEC found the sale was an unregistered securities offering; the company settled for $1 million without admitting or denying the findings. The cartoon that became a precedent.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2023

● Alivev.✎ 3

Sweep the Floor

To buy the cheapest listed items in a collection in one go, either to raise its floor price, to signal confidence, or because a tool made it a single button. In 2021 it was something a whale announced; by 2023 it was a slider on a trading site, and the announcement had become a screenshot of the slider. 'Sweeping' remains the market's word for buying in bulk without looking.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

● Alivephr.✎ 3

The JPEG Is Not on the Blockchain

The sceptic's sentence of 2021: the thing you bought is a token that contains a link, the link points to a file on a server or an IPFS gateway, and if that server goes away you own a number. True of nearly every NFT sold that year. Used as a rebuttal to the 'ownership' pitch, and, in 2022, as an explanation when projects shut down and the pictures went with them.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

A work by the pseudonymous artist Pak sold on Nifty Gateway over 48 hours in December 2021 as units of 'mass' that merged into larger spheres when held in the same wallet. Around 28,000 buyers spent a combined $91.8 million, which the platform called the largest sale by a living artist; critics said a work sold in 312,000 pieces to 28,000 people was not one artwork. The record files both claims and does not referee.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2021

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

The Sandbox Land

Plots in a voxel world owned by Animoca Brands, sold in waves through 2021 to brands, celebrities and investors: a virtual estate reportedly went for $4.3 million in November 2021, and HSBC, Gucci and Warner Music all bought land they mostly did not build on. The game itself reached the public later and smaller than the land sales had implied.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Ubisoft's platform for selling in-game cosmetics as NFTs, called 'Digits', launched in a six-year-old game in December 2021 with a trailer that collected dislikes faster than views. The company stopped updating the game in April 2022, which ended the experiment without anyone having to announce it. The record's example of a publisher testing the water with a boot.

▸ 2021peak 2021†2022

● Aliven.✎ 3

What an NFT was supposed to do for you besides be a picture: access to a Discord, a game, an event, merchandise, an airdrop, a vote. Every 2021 project promised utility and the question 'what's the utility' became the market's own joke about itself — asked sincerely by newcomers and sarcastically by everyone who had heard the answer before. Most utility was a Discord role.

▸ 2021peak 2022still up