• Vitalik Buterin worried about current meme mania with “no value.”
• However, he believes charities and on-chain games can benefit from the trend. 

Once again, Vitalik Buterin’s love-hate relationship with memecoins became apparent in a recent proposal. 

The founder of Ethereum [ETH] has always made his stand against memecoins. Penning his misgivings on the booming sector in the current bull cycle, he highlighted; 

“This time, they are heating up again, but in a way that is making many people feel uneasy because there isn’t anything particularly new and interesting about the memecoins.”

Buterin singled out the crazy meme scene in Solana [SOL], adding that; 

“Apparently a bunch of Solana memecoins have recently been openly super-racist. And even the non-racist memecoins often seem to just go up and down in price and contribute nothing of value in their wake.”

The founder emphasized that he has “zero enthusiasm for coins named after totalitarian political movements, scams, rug pulls..”

But Buterin also believes memecoins can be used for great purposes that drive value to every user. 

Memecoins for charity and on-chain games

He stressed that projects can drive fun and value at the same time. He proposed that memecoins can be helpful in charity or on-chain games.  

Buterin has gifted millions of memecoins to charities and non-profit organizations in the past. For instance, he was recently shocked after his gift of Shiba Inu [SHIB] to an AI regulation advocacy group pumped and outperformed his expectations. 

Beyond charity, Buterin proposed using memecoins in on-chain games, especially to elevate low-income users, citing the Axie Infinity [AXS] case in Southeast Asia. 

He summed up the proposal, stressing that, 

“At the least, more good memecoins than bad ones, ideally those that support public goods instead of just enriching insiders and creators. But also, ideally, making games rather than coins and making projects that people enjoy participating in.”

Conversely, Solana’s founder views meme mania as a network stress test for future growth. 

However, other chains like Avalanche [AVAX] and Arbitrum [ARB] opted to explore memecoins to attract growth and usage in their ecosystems. So, it seems memes are here to stay, whether for fun, user growth, or chain growth.