Vitalik Buterin criticizes celebrity meme coins and calls for attention to their social value and long-term sustainability

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed strong dissatisfaction with the recent trend of celebrities experimenting with cryptocurrencies by creating meme coins. He believes that most current celebrity meme coins lack any meaningful social impact.

In a June 5 social media post, Buterin noted that most celebrity-backed meme coins lack real utility or specific use cases to support their creation.

Buterin believes that financialization is not an end in itself, but a means. It is justified only if it serves the purpose of bringing value to society. Examples of these purposes might include improving health care, supporting open source software and promoting the arts, he said.

Buterin said that the core purpose of a project should be to give participants a sense of achievement or satisfaction, even if the project ultimately fails or the value of its tokens returns to zero.

He added: “Our goal should be to create projects where, even if all the tokens in the project are eventually worth zero, ordinary people will feel happy and satisfied participating in them. Ordinary businesses and charities have been achieving such standards , although this is a basic requirement, the projects we build should also reach at least this level.”

Proposed Approval Criteria

Buterin has set several criteria for cryptocurrency projects initiated by celebrities. He believes that only projects that meet these criteria are likely to gain his recognition and respect.

First, these cryptocurrency projects should go beyond merely bringing wealth to celebrities and early investors and instead provide substantial benefits to the public. He cited the Stoner Cats NFT collection launched by Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis as more respectable than the meme coins launched by other celebrities this year because the project actually funded the production of a show.

Buterin also proposed that celebrity meme coins should include attractive mechanisms, such as decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) activities, which can promote the participation of community members and help the value of the token go beyond transactions.

Finally, he emphasized that these tokens should be designed with a long-term perspective and be able to last for more than ten years, rather than being active on the exchange market for only a few months and then being forgotten.

Meme coins of under the blessing of celebrity effect

Celebrity meme coins have become a new trend in the cryptocurrency space in recent weeks, with celebrities including Caitlyn Jenner, Iggy Azalea and Davido issuing multiple tokens through the Solana-based Pump Fun app.

The success of these attempts has been mixed, but blockchain data suggests that these assets have primarily benefited traders who entered the market early, who accumulated sizable positions in these tokens. For example, blockchain analytics agency Lookonchain reported that an address associated with Nigerian record producer Davido earned more than $470,000 in just 11 hours.

Meanwhile, the Mother Iggy token launched by Iggy Azalea also continues to attract attention, having soared approximately 500% in the last seven days according to CryptoSlate data.

Conclusion：

Vitalik Buterin’s criticism of celebrity meme coins highlights an important discussion point in the cryptocurrency space: the social value and long-term sustainability of projects. The standards he proposed provide an opportunity for reflection and self-improvement not only for celebrity-related crypto projects, but also for the entire industry.

As the cryptocurrency market continues to develop, investors and project sponsors should pay more attention to the actual utility and contribution to society of the project, rather than just short-term financial gains.

Only in this way can cryptocurrencies truly realize their potential to change the world and positively impact people.

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