Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

By Golem ( @web3_golem )

On October 20, the Chinese meme coin "Binance Life" was successfully listed on the Binance contract market, becoming the first Chinese meme coin to be listed on the Binance main site. As a result, the market value of "Binance Life" rose to US$450 million that day. The price has now fallen back, but the market value remains around US$300 million.

According to the official page, a new "Chinese" section has been added to the Binance contract market page. This means that the launch of "Binance Life" on the Binance main site will not be an isolated incident, but a beginning. Chinese meme coins can also enter the "mainstream" of the crypto market and will become one of the important sections of the crypto market for a long time to come.

Chinese Memes are no longer limited to BSC

The October Chinese meme craze originated on the BSC chain. Initially, CZ and He Yi frequently mentioned and promoted the creation of Chinese meme coins strongly associated with Binance, such as Binance Life, Cultivation, and Customer Service Xiao He. This led many players to stereotype Chinese memes as merely Binance hype and a potential failure.

It was not until the second wave of Chinese memes arrived that the community spontaneously built Chinese meme coins such as Hakimi, Milk Dragon, and Long Long on the BSC chain, which carried the genes of Chinese Internet memes. Other investors and project parties realized that it was not BSC that was deliberately promoting Chinese memes, but the Chinese community that took the initiative to choose BSC.

The market is always right. Other major public chains have also adopted the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach, actively courting the Chinese-speaking community. Chinese memes are no longer limited to the BSC chain. Base and Solana are the most proactive.

On October 20th, despite a conflict with Binance a few days earlier over listing fees, Jesse, head of the Base blockchain, released a demonstration video on the X platform. The video demonstrated trading Binance Life within the Base app, captioned with the message, "Start Binance Life mode in the Base app." That same day, Jesse welcomed Chinese builders to Base in Chinese. Influenced by Jesse's remarks, the market capitalization of the Chinese meme coin "Base Life," launched on the Base chain, peaked at $10 million.

Meanwhile, Solana, once the birthplace of a popular Western meme, was eager to avoid being left behind in this wave of Chinese meme craze. On October 14th, the content tokenization platform Trends.fun launched a campaign to solicit Chinese names for Solana. Initially, this campaign drew little attention, with some dismissing it as a mere traffic-driving tactic for the platform. However, it wasn't until October 20th, when the official Solana account, Solana founder Toly, and Solana Foundation Chair Lily Liu all retweeted the campaign's tweets, that the campaign garnered widespread community attention. Lily Liu even changed her X account profile picture to "Sola La La," signaling official approval of the Chinese name.

The market capitalization of "Solala," a Chinese meme coin of the same name launched from Trends.fun, peaked at $28 million on October 21st, but has since fallen back to around $17 million. The popularity of "Solala" has also unexpectedly boosted the growth of the Trends.fun platform. According to Dune data, the platform's transaction volume reached $40.72 million over the past seven days, accounting for nearly 50% of the total transaction volume of $89.85 million. The platform also added 26,785 new users over the past seven days, representing 37% of the total user base.

While Trends.fun's weekly trading volume still lags behind Pump.fun, numerous Chinese memes have been launched on the platform, while Pump.fun has been absent from this wave of Chinese meme activity. Trends.fun primarily tokenizes tweets, allowing users to create tokens based on tweet links. AI extracts keywords from tweets as token symbols. If the Chinese meme boom continues on the Solana blockchain, Trends.fun, with its unique issuance mechanism, may become a dark horse.

Chinese memes are evolving from short-term hits to fixed categories.

The Chinese community has long been a core force in the crypto industry, but the market has long been accustomed to a "deaf ear to the ear" mentality. Western projects are viewed through a lens of skepticism, while Chinese projects are viewed through tinted glasses. This has even led to a market alienation where Chinese teams deliberately disguise themselves as overseas projects. The meme language alone is considered a rip-off. Even in the more inclusive meme sector, where the Chinese community has become a major meme consumption market, Chinese memes remain elusive. In contrast, popular memes born on the Western internet, such as punt, ChillGuy, and moodeng, resonate with players and easily reach market capitalizations in the hundreds of millions.

This wave of Chinese meme craze has had a significant impact on the market. The emergence of several high-market-cap Chinese meme coins is correcting the market's bias against Chinese. Admittedly, for projects, releasing Chinese products now may simply be a tactical move to win the favor of Asian users, attract more social media traffic, or quickly boost liquidity in the short term. Once this wave of Chinese meme craze passes, they may return to normalcy.

In the crypto world, no narrative remains eternally popular, and the popularity of Chinese memes will experience peaks and troughs. However, the long-term significance of this wave of Chinese meme craze is that it has transformed Chinese memes from a "short-term hit" into a "fixed category"; it has enabled projects to openly participate in the ecosystem through Chinese as an entry point; and it has transformed Chinese from a "marker" into a normal, market-accepted language choice.

For investors and practitioners, the biggest change is a revised perspective. The next time we see a meme coin with a Chinese ticker, we won't dismiss it simply because it's Chinese. Instead, we'll delve deeper into its popularity, community, and meme attributes. The crypto market has established a sustainable foundation deeply tied to Chinese culture.