When AI UGC Meets Fan Economy: How MEET48 ($IDOL) Created a Web3 Entertainment 18x Phenomenon?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
When AI UGC Meets Fan Economy: How MEET48 ($IDOL) Created a Web3 Entertainment 18x Phenomenon?
For observers anticipating Web3's mass adoption, MEET48 might just be the breakthrough case most worth watching.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: TechFlow
When it comes to virtual idols, you've surely heard of "Hatsune Miku."
Launched in 2007 by Japan’s Crypton Future Media as a vocal library for the VOCALOID voice synthesis software, Hatsune Miku has become the world's most influential virtual idol IP: her holographic concerts sell out; she opened Lady Gaga’s ArtRave tour; her YouTube channel has accumulated billions of views… By 2012 alone, revenue from software sales, music distribution, game collaborations, concert tickets, merchandise, and cross-industry partnerships had already surpassed 10 billion Japanese yen.
Idols are carefully packaged commodities—and virtual idols represent the ultimate expression of this logic. Behind Hatsune Miku’s massive commercial success lie several key driving forces:
- Global IP operation capabilities: Through mature strategies like concerts, brand collaborations, and merchandise spin-offs, Hatsune Miku has penetrated music, fashion, and anime industries, building a powerful ecosystem that bridges reality and virtuality, online and offline.
- Technology innovation enabling fan co-creation: Thanks to the low barrier to entry and open nature of VOCALOID technology, a digital utopia where “everyone can be a creator” has emerged, fueling widespread creative enthusiasm around the Hatsune Miku IP.
- Creator revenue-sharing sustaining IP vitality: A revenue-sharing model attracts countless global music producers, illustrators, and video creators to produce derivative works, forming a vast user-generated content (UGC) community.
With AI maturing and further empowering UGC creation—sparking even more passionate fan content—the virtual idol economy stands once again on the brink of explosive growth. As renowned investment firm a16z puts it, virtual idol cultivation is poised to become a multi-billion-dollar industry.
So how do we ignite this space? How do we incubate not just the next, but thousands of "Hatsune Mikus"? The answer lies in three core elements:
- Technologies that better inspire mass co-creation: offering seamless creative tools and more immersive interactive experiences;
- Fairer and more transparent incentive models: better balancing interests among creators, platforms, and fans to ensure sustainable growth;
- Global operational capability: integrating multiple sectors to build an entertainment metaverse where virtual idols become a "second reality" in fans’ lives.
With these breakout ingredients clearly laid out, MEET48—a leading Web3 entertainment pioneer harnessing both AI-powered UGC to unleash creativity and blockchain to enable value ownership and distribution—is now drawing broader attention.
Web2 + Web3 Resource Stacking: The Core Moat Behind MEET48’s Repeated Breakouts
As the world’s first all-in-one decentralized virtual idol development and fan economy entertainment ecosystem, MEET48 aims to start from a UGC foundation, leveraging AI, Web3 consensus, and blockchain technologies to maximize content protection and creator incentives—unlocking levels of value creation and user cohesion unattainable by traditional Web2 platforms.
On June 11, 2025, $IDOL became Binance Wallet’s 22nd TGE project, raising funds 192.03 times over target within one minute. On September 5, 2025, $IDOL peaked at $0.0416, up more than 18x from its TGE price. Post-TGE, $IDOL ranked #1 among projects under $300M market cap, entered the top 10 for token price ROI, and made the top 20 BNB Chain IDO return list.
Even before its TGE triumph, MEET48 was already a capital-favorite star in the Web3 entertainment space.
First, its unique positioning in the sector:
The entertainment industry naturally boasts high traffic and strong community traits, making it a crucial gateway for Web3 mass adoption.
Meanwhile, Web3 offers ownership and circulation mechanisms—a remedy to Web2 entertainment’s long-standing flaw of “users create value, platforms capture it”—driving a full transition from platform monopolies to fan-driven co-creation.
Despite rapid advances in AI and Web3, few niches have successfully established scalable UGC ecosystems. Virtual idol development—fusing AI-powered music/dance ecosystems with AI agent technology—stands out as one of the most promising areas for mass adoption and breakout potential.
Second, MEET48’s two-decade deep expertise in music-dance social apps, virtual romance games, real-life idol training, and fan economies has yielded rich pan-Asian entertainment and idol resources:
MEET48 holds exclusive licensing rights to SNH48, Asia’s largest idol development program, unlocking access to top-tier IPs and cross-industry collaborations—ideal for incubating virtual idols and building metaverse social experiences.
SNH48 Group commands over 30 million fans across Southeast Asia and global Gen Z audiences. This vast, highly engaged, sticky, and monetizable fanbase provides a solid foundation for MEET48’s on-chain economic prosperity.
Prior to TGE, MEET48 had amassed 3.8 million active users and 500,000 Web3 wallet addresses. In the 30 days before TGE, it recorded 31 million on-chain transactions, topping DappBay’s Social category.
Additionally, MEET48’s core team brings extensive experience in traditional entertainment—artist management, major live events, fan operations, game development, and film production—enabling its events to achieve true mainstream breakthroughs.
In January 2025, MEET48 launched the “MEET48 BEST7” global voting campaign, receiving over 697 million votes, reaching 3.39 million registered users, and amassing over 1.18 million active wallet addresses—ranking #1 on DappBay’s social DApp list and #3 on DappRadar’s social leaderboard.
In June 2025, MEET48 officially kicked off its first WEB3.0 Global Idol Annual Popularity Election (WIPA), allowing fans to vote using $IDOL. As the first attempt to integrate blockchain into idol selection, the event attracted stars like Jacky Wu, Super Junior-D&E, Sandara Park, MIYAVI, and Xu Jiaqi from the Siba family. It collected over 48.25 million $IDOL tokens—1.01% of total supply—setting a historical record in Web3 entertainment.
In December 2025, MEET48 concluded its second large-scale voting event, “MEET48 Best7: Stage of Light,” during which fans cast 20,342,242 votes. According to DappBay, MEET48’s event dApp recorded 619,000 transactions in the past 7 days, with 356,000 unique active addresses (UAW)—topping BSC’s social dApp rankings for both 24-hour and 7-day UAW.
Combining unique sector advantages, rich idol IP assets, and a powerful fan ecosystem, MEET48 has emerged as the chosen breakout vehicle for institutions betting on Web3 entertainment mass adoption:
In April 2025, MEET48 completed a token round with a FDV valuation of $100 million. Led by Fosun Group co-founder Liang Xinjun, Hash Global, and HashKey Capital, participants included Animoca, Infinity Labs, Promontory, Oak Grove, and numerous Web3 experts.
In June 2025, YZi Labs invested in MEET48. Following the announcement, $IDOL surged over 30%. Meanwhile, MEET48 was also selected for BNB Chain’s MVB program, becoming a key entertainment project supported by Binance’s ecosystem.
By every measure—internal strength, fundraising performance, and user metrics—MEET48 exemplifies the “top student” standard in Web3. But how does it translate AI-driven virtual idol economic potential into market recognition and growth momentum? MEET48’s multidimensional ecosystem built around the “entertainment social metaverse” reveals its concrete path to reshaping the global idol industry.
AI-Powered UGC Fuels Fan Co-Creation: MEET48 Builds the Entertainment Metaverse
Centered on the vision of an “entertainment social metaverse,” MEET48’s ecosystem rests on two pillars:
- VWA – Virtual World Assets: Leveraging rapidly advancing AI UGC capabilities, MEET48 provides robust products and tools that empower users to “create stars,” generating meaningful and valuable digital assets. These are integrated with social and gaming modules to form a full metaverse ecosystem, giving VWA diverse application scenarios;
- PoC – Proof of Creativity: Through a proprietary EVM-compatible Layer 2, MEET48 introduces a new blockchain-based value verification system. Content value is authenticated via Web3 community governance token voting—including input from fans—better quantifying and rewarding ecosystem contributions and reshaping value distribution in entertainment.
Vibrant asset creation is the starting point of any thriving ecosystem—and such creation depends on solid infrastructure.
In MEET48’s ecosystem, VWA are core assets, and AI-powered UGC is the primary tool for creating them.
AI virtual idols are quintessential VWA: as digital assets, fans develop deep emotional bonds through their involvement in the idol’s creation and upbringing. As AI evolves, expectations for AI virtual idols go beyond mere visual resemblance—they now demand vividness, real-time interaction, and multifaceted “soul-building.” These are key challenges MEET48 is tackling head-on.
Bolstered by a 30-million-strong fan base and over 40,000 music copyrights, MEET48 maintains a research team exceeding 500 members, investing heavily in foundational AI technologies such as 3D virtual human music-and-dance AI models, AI entertainment agents, and Web3 metaverse intelligent social systems. Their mission: to fully upgrade “companion-style interaction” and “idol cultivation” models, refining a complete AI virtual idol creation and value cycle system.
On MEET48, users can create personalized virtual idols via AIDOL Producer, including:
- Character design: appearance, outfits, accessories;
- Stage design: lighting, stage settings;
- Music and dance choreography: text-to-music, music-to-dance, text-to-dance modules, editable by UGC users;
- Podcasts, livestreams, talk shows, variety programs: generated directly from major AI models without manual editing, enabling 24/7 content output;
- Companion interaction: each virtual idol is an AI entertainment agent with AI companionship and AI romantic companion functions.
△ MEET48 AI UGC 2025 - 2026 Virtual Idol Group
All creation processes are now fully powered by AI large models, enabling users to rapidly turn their idol concepts into reality and deeply engage in every aspect of content creation and idol management. This delivers a higher level of “form and soul alignment,” while forging deeper emotional connections between creators and their creations—embodying a “process-as-product” cultivation model.
The blockchain-based voting system is MEET48’s core traffic amplifier:
AI-created virtual characters undergo transparent, on-chain voting, turning fan support into quantifiable, assetized equity. Works are evaluated and ranked through community governance token voting, establishing verifiable value.
MEET48 leverages SNH48 Group’s five sub-units, 300+ real-life idol artists, and over 30 million loyal fans. In February this year, SNH48 Group announced all members will join MEET48.ai—the AI Agent UGC creator community under MEET48—as AI Agents.
In past on-chain events, MEET48 achieved over 100 million total fan votes. With abundant resources, MEET48 builds virtual versions of real idols on-chain, using fan voting as a bridge to carry Web2 community热度 and commercial value into the Web3 ecosystem.
Additionally, creators can launch their assets commercially via Mars Protocol, MEET48’s IP tokenization platform.
Mars Protocol has already launched meme projects such as virtual fashion ambassador DripLord, top global teen idol HIKIKI, CZ & pet dog BZ, and virtual girl group MAB3.
Beyond its main Web3 AI UGC idol platform, MEET48 also operates a stealth traffic driver: gaming.
Auditions GO is an AIUGC virtual idol music-and-dance simulation game developed by the original team behind the globally popular Audition (Dance Dance Revolution). As a next-gen Web3 virtual music-and-dance simulation and the industrial deployment of the world’s first vertical-domain music-and-dance LLM, it is deeply integrated with the MEET48 community and is expected to open limited user testing in 2026.
From asset creation to interaction and circulation, everything converges in MEET48’s metaverse product, Social Metaverse, completing the loop:
Users’ AI virtual characters serve both as avatars in the metaverse and as AI companions living in alternate realities. Once created, interactions across richer scenarios deepen immersion. As MEET48’s core interactive platform for VWA, creators generate deeper value through engagement and asset circulation within the metaverse.
This comprehensive product matrix has driven MEET48 to sustain over 537,000 daily active users, offering a full-cycle experience—from fandom to stardom, interaction to monetization—and elevating MEET48’s narrative from “AI virtual idol economy” to “Web3 entertainment infrastructure.”
If low-barrier, high-quality, immersive participation draws users into the MEET48 ecosystem, then fairer, more transparent value ownership and distribution are the foundational drivers enabling MEET48’s long-term sustainability beyond Web2.
And the native token $IDOL serves as the circulatory system and backbone of all value flows within the MEET48 ecosystem.
The Core Value Engine $IDOL: Community First, Long-Term Co-Building
Issued on BNB Chain, $IDOL has a total supply of 4.8 billion. As the sole universal currency in the MEET48 ecosystem, $IDOL acts like a multifunctional key, combining utility and value storage.
In terms of utility, $IDOL is the passport to MEET48’s “entertainment metaverse,” unlocking access to various features: purchasing virtual items and privileges, AI content creation tools, customizing AI virtual idols, interacting with them, launching assets, and more.
During major events like idol rankings or community votes, fans can use $IDOL to participate in annual MEET48 voting campaigns to support their favorite idols.
Simultaneously, $IDOL serves as the central control panel for MEET48 governance: holders can vote on critical proposals regarding platform upgrades and future direction, ensuring ecosystem development aligns with community interests.
Moreover, $IDOL is the key credential for user rights across the MEET48 ecosystem: staking $IDOL grants access to incentive programs and rewards; long-term holders benefit from platform growth, including content revenue sharing.
These utilities are not isolated—they form a closed loop of “creation → interaction → governance → rewards.” The multifaceted nature of $IDOL helps transform MEET48 from a simple virtual idol platform into a metaverse hub integrating AI, blockchain, and entertainment.
Regarding distribution, $IDOL adheres to the principles of community-first and long-term co-construction:
- Community Incentives: 45.2%
- Ecosystem: 20%
- Team & Advisors: 17%
- Backers: 7%
- Marketing: 5.8%
- Liquidity: 3%
- IDO: 2%
Notably, nearly half (45.2%) of the 4.8 billion $IDOL supply is allocated to community incentives, ensuring fair distribution and ample reserves for long-term ecosystem growth. Airdrops account for 9%, with the first round released immediately post-TGE—users can check eligibility via wallet address, email, or account ID.
Meanwhile, $IDOL unlocking is governed by DAO voting, ensuring alignment with community interests and adaptability to evolving ecosystem needs—offering maximum flexibility.
In addition, the team and advisor allocations unlock linearly over four years, with private sale tokens locked, reducing early sell pressure. This delayed release after community distributions underscores MEET48’s commitment to prioritizing the community and long-term co-building.
More importantly, $IDOL employs a deflationary burn mechanism. MEET48 previously announced the permanent burning of 23,472,000 $IDOL tokens—approximately 0.489% of total supply and 2.6% of circulating supply—to enhance scarcity, stabilize long-term value, and incentivize community participation by permanently removing tokens from circulation.
Through multifaceted utility, flexible unlocking, and dynamic deflation, $IDOL acts as a living stream flowing through the entire chain of AI UGC creation, P2E gaming, and Metaverse socializing—ensuring every participant captures growth value through co-creation.
Following its TGE success, MEET48’s published roadmap reveals the next explosive growth phase for this dark horse in the fan economy space.
x402 Payment Integration, Idol + Game Dual Engine: The Next Surge for $IDOL
Post-TGE, MEET48 stands at a pivotal shift from “proof-of-concept” to “mass-scale application”:
On one hand, due to heightened brand visibility and strong market performance, the project is now attracting increasing analyst and investor attention: Recently, leading crypto research firm Messari published "Understanding MEET48: A Comprehensive Overview", highlighting the structural gap in today’s creator economy—where platforms dominate distribution and capture most value—while MEET48 aims to “redefine how entertainment content is created, distributed, and monetized.”
On the other hand, looking ahead to 2026, MEET48’s roadmap confirms the continuation of its dual-engine “idol + game” strategy.
On the Web3 AI UGC Idol Economy Front:
MEET48 has announced integration of the popular x402 protocol into its ecosystem’s AI Agent virtual idols, seamlessly embedding $IDOL as the native payment layer. This upgrade enables AI Agents to evolve into autonomous economic entities, enhancing $IDOL’s circulation and value capture—driving greater economic activity and user growth. Additionally, MEET48 will continue optimizing AI UGC technology to improve user experience.
Furthermore, the team plans to launch AI idol variety shows, pushing virtual idol economics further toward scale and commercialization. Meanwhile, through large-scale events like idol elections, MEET48 will expand its reach into Korea, Japan, and Western markets—ensuring compliance and global visibility.
On the Gaming Side:
The flagship game Auditions GO is即将 launched, a Web3 version of the iconic Audition rhythm game blending idol simulation, virtual dance crew creation, cross-platform competitions, and real-time interaction. Auditions GO represents MEET48’s major leap into Web3 gaming.
With the rollout of x402 integration, Auditions GO launch, and other roadmap milestones, $IDOL—the core value carrier of the MEET48 ecosystem—will directly benefit from increased payment usage, in-game monetization, and revenue sharing from virtual idol activities.
More importantly, although Web3 entertainment remains in its early stages, among the few competitors, MEET48—with its 30-million-fan base and dual-product engine—plays a pivotal role in leading sector innovation.
With rapid advancements in AI UGC and rising interest in Web3 entertainment, the overall market size is poised for explosive growth. Given entertainment and idol industries’ inherent strengths—high traffic, strong communities, and emotional premium—standing at the threshold of a multi-billion-dollar opportunity, MEET48 may well be the most compelling breakout case for anyone watching Web3’s path to mass adoption.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
深潮TechFlow
