reply guys

why would anyone want to buy something where private presale holders are sitting on EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of a coin that they can dump immediately? $fair coded

private presale for “friends” only before announcing publicly? this is embarrassing behaviour and exactly the type of extractive CT nonsense that many on farcaster claim to be above.

Farcaster-native research: https://paragraph.xyz/@matthewb | prev. Juicebox, Nouns, RAW DAO | casting about coffee, hi-fi, and other rabbit holes

launches are inherently complex because of snipers, insider allocations, and the mechanisms of the launchpads themselves. you can have edge via sniping bots or insider information, neither is uncommon.

100% fair isn't really possible, it's more like a spectrum between fair and extractive. as the spectrum leans towards fair, upside can be capped due to weak-handed holders. as the spectrum leans towards extractive, upside can be capped due to high concentrations of supply in a small # of wallets.

ultimately, a coin can't really sustain billions in mcap if the distribution is terrible. $pepe is a good example from 2023 that has been able to maintain value long-term. certainly had its fair share of early profit takers and insiders. the team also held a certain % of supply early on and either sold it long ago or burnt the tokens. it now has very good distribution which is hard to replicate in new launches.

as opposed to traditional projects which rely on the team to convey legitimacy, for pure memes ideally the team should relinquish control and let the community take over. otherwise, this can pose an existential risk much like nft projects that constantly need to one-up their roadmaps to keep the narrative going. there are a few exceptions to this like $bonk and $shib, but in general utility and a centralized team are inadvisable. the more common model is coins like $pepe and $mog which maintain a distance and simply post memes to socials, which is fine imo.

anyway, not particularly interested in rehashing the memecoin debate since I spent all of 2023-24 arguing about it but perhaps the above will be helpful in some way.

which memecoins were fairly launched? I don‘t know much about memecoins

you could argue that this is true to varying degrees, between snipers and insider allocations. the latter isn't always the case even though the former usually is. nonetheless, some have still managed fair distribution which is how they survive for months or years later with high sustained mcaps. so it's not impossible.