Could It Be Dogs and Frogs That Have Taken Over the $30 Billion Meme Market?
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Could It Be Dogs and Frogs That Have Taken Over the $30 Billion Meme Market?
With the meme sector becoming increasingly competitive between frogs and dogs, I wouldn't be surprised at all if another viral frog emerged.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Observer Lao Wang
According to data from CoinGecko, the market cap of the meme sector has reached $50 billion—over 300 billion RMB!
More strikingly, trading volume remains at $4 billion, with liquidity hitting 8%!
What does this mean?
In the crypto industry, this surpasses the entire liquid staking sector, which stands at just $47 billion;
The entire NFT market is valued at less than $30 billion.
Even hyped sectors like Layer2 and DePIN only reach a few hundred billion dollars in total market cap.
01 Value Investing? Dream On. Meme All the Way to the Mansion
Back in May this year, Binance released an official report conceding defeat:
If you want to make money in crypto this year, meme coins are the way to go—the sector surged 331% this year, far outpacing all others.
Many VC-backed tokens peaked right after listing; without real-world applications and facing continuous token unlocks, whoever buys in later becomes the greater fool!
Meme coins don't have this issue—they're fully tradable upon listing. It's survival of the fittest, fortune favors the bold.
Ten years ago, crypto rags-to-riches stories were built on buying BTC/ETH. In recent years, it’s all been about memes.
For ordinary users who can’t access early-stage quality projects or lack superior insight, forget about VC coins—focus on memes instead!
02 Last Cycle, Dogs Ruled the Market
Currently, dogs dominate the meme sector.
Among the top 10 meme coins by market cap, the lineup is six dogs, three frogs, and one cat—with the poor cat barely scraping into tenth place.
Dogecoin leads by a huge margin, with a market cap exceeding $17 billion—accounting for 35% of the entire meme sector.
Second-ranked Shiba Inu (ShiB), launched in 2020 and allegedly the brainchild of a Shenzhen Ponzi scheme, saw daily trading volumes below $1 just six months after launch—but now boasts a $10 billion market cap!
I personally know a woman who became wealthy through Shiba Inu—she now lives in a luxury penthouse in central Shanghai, enjoying a simple yet monotonous lifestyle.
The spiritual figurehead of the dog family is Elon Musk. After Shiba Inu gained popularity, Musk tweeted that he would name his pet Shiba Inu “Floki.”
Thus emerged $FLOKI, now valued at $1.7 billion:
However, recent dog-themed memecoins have become less tied to Musk:
First came Solana’s Bonk in 2023, dubbed “the unusual dog,” which lay dormant for nearly a year before fueling this year’s Solana “pump-and-dump” season. Now valued at over $160 million, an early investor could have seen 100x returns this year!
At the end of last year, another Solana-based dog token, WIF—the “hat dog”—gave investors around two months to get on board before skyrocketing. It now ranks fourth, with a market cap of over $2 billion.
In April this year, the Runes protocol introduced DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON—a new dog-themed meme coin. Currently the flagship token of Runes, it has a $500 million market cap and ranks ninth, marking the latest work from Chinese speculative circles.
03 The Cat Coalition Falls Short
Amid the overwhelming dominance of dog-themed tokens, cat memes appear lukewarm.
Currently, POPCAT is the best-performing cat meme—perhaps because cat owners are less impulsive. That said, POPCAT doesn’t even look like a proper cat.
One meme summed it up perfectly: "cat in a dog's world."
But this particular cat looks too serious—the price peaked at launch, leaving retail investors with little profit opportunity.
04 Frog Memes Quietly Rise
When it comes to frogs, the leader is undoubtedly Pepe:
Though listed less than a year and a half ago, Pepe offered ample entry opportunities throughout last year.
This frog has serious pedigree—if Musk ignited the dog craze, then Trump fueled Pepe’s rise:
Trump himself retweeted the meme—could it have even influenced the U.S. election?
Culturally, Pepe the Frog runs deeper than any dog meme—appearing across political movements worldwide:
Don’t think this frog fights alone—he has family, like Brett:
Origin-wise, Brett and Pepe share the same roots, both originating from cartoonist Matt Furie’s comic “Boy’s Club.”
Brett launched on March 1st this year, and within three months its market cap grew hundreds of times over, now reaching $150 million—ranking seventh in the meme sector.
Eighth-ranked BOME is also a frog. Its creator, darkfarms, is a well-known Pepe remix artist.
It was BOME that popularized the “send money via Twitter to mint a token” gimmick.
05 Is Matt Furie Becoming a Legend?
From the above analysis, Matt Furie emerges as the true soul behind frog memes—Pepe and Brett are his original creations, while BOME is a derivative remix based on his work.
Beyond these, other characters from Furie’s pen have also achieved solid market caps:
Hoppy, after several months of development, now holds a market cap of over $50 million:
Andyd sits at a $150 million market cap:
Landwolf clocks in at $140 million:
If you’re bullish on frog memes, Dark Lord might be the best candidate for early positioning.
Not only is this frog Matt Furie’s latest creation, but it’s also a direct embrace of crypto—minted as an NFT:
Since Furie resides in the U.S., he can only issue NFTs—direct token issuance would be illegal.
This leaves room for community-driven, ownerless memes. With the frog vs. dog rivalry heating up in the meme space, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if another viral frog token emerges soon.
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