It may not feel like it when you see the 100th Doge clone appear on the 100th L2 chain, but memecoins are getting smarter. Not all of them all at once it must be said, but change is underway nevertheless. There is a seismic shift occurring in the memecoin industry whose effects are just beginning to be felt. While energy, humor, and memes will always be the primary driver of memecoin appeal, something else is now increasingly being thrown into the mix: utility.

What Can You Do With a Memecoin?

It can be hard trying to make sense of the memecoin sector, a crypto vertical that has expanded so rapidly and widely over the past 12 months that it’s dominated everything else, from AI to DeFi. The polymemecoin era has seen new tokens being created every second in an orgy of memes that’s turned traders into “clickers” compelled to buy and sell dozens of nascent tokens every day in the hope of making a profit.

The top 10 memecoins are down an average of 63% over the past 12 months as traders have switched to chasing quick x’s on memecoin launchpads that reward flipping. Thankfully, this unsustainable and exhausting trend shows signs of having peaked, as the market once more returns to seeking quality over quantity. A new breed of memecoins is emerging that supports real use cases and long-term building, and is finding favor with the communities who will dictate their fate. The following tokens are part of the emerging memecoin meta in which utility and fun co-exist.

WOMIO

WOMIO is a memecoin launchpad and token rolled into one. It’s no run-of-the-mill launchpad, however, nor is it your regular memecoin. The launchpad enables anyone to create a memecoin of their choice and deploy it on the blockchain of their choice in seconds. As for the WOMIO token, it’s staked by holders in return for receiving an allocation of all memecoins created on the WOMIO platform.

So far, so simple. But there’s a lot more to WOMIO that accounts for why its community is growing so quickly and excitement levels are rising. The WOMIO team are leading proponents of the trend to make memecoins useful again by incorporating real use cases and features – and aim to encourage new projects launching on the WOMIO launchpad to follow suit. Not only does the WOMIO token have genuine utility, in other words, but so will many of the tokens that come next. This ain’t just another memecoin: it’s a movement.

The Meme Games

Alone, a memecoin character is but one small creature. But when it teams up with its frens, it becomes a part of something greater and can take on the entire world. That, essentially, is the ethos behind The Meme Games, a sporting project that unites crypto’s favorite cats, dogs, and frogs in a sporting arena for head-to-head competition. 

The $MGMES presale is currently underway and there’s gamification built into the project from the get-go. Token buyers who correctly predict the outcome of the sprint race featuring several leading memecoin characters will win a 25x multiplier. It’s a taster for what’s to come as The Meme Games peppers its project with fun games and PvP competitions designed to keep the community coming back for more.

Shiba Shootout

Shiba Shootout is proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks. While the shiba inu meme has been a crypto staple since at least 2020, it’s vividly reimagined in Shiba Shootout. Set in the Wild West, the project is at the forefront of the P2E movement in which $SHIBASHOOT tokens can be earned for in-game achievements. In the case of Shiba Shootout, that’s – you got it – shooting mostly.

One of the neat things about projects like this is they’re extensible: while the first game is a Wild West shooter, there’s scope for incorporating additional games, both created by the Shiba Shootout team and by third-party developers. These titles will extend the utility of the $SHIBASHOOT token while unlocking new ways to earn.

Crypto All-Stars

Crypto All-Stars is another memecoin project that’s elected to draw upon a cast of colorful characters rather than rely on a single dog or frog. As a result, there’s scope for onboarding crypto holders from a broad swathe of communities who are enticed by the cutesy retro graphics and novel utility built into the $STARS token.

A staking vault aims to form a single portal for all the memecoins, which can be collectively locked alongside $STARS tokens in order to earn rewards. Through gamification, great graphics, and a mission that is much more wide-ranging than anything previously attempted in this sector, Crypto All-Stars is flying the flag for utility-driven memecoins.

PlayDoge

As the name suggests, this is a doge memecoin you can actually play with. Specifically, you can play PlayDoge. Drawing its inspiration from the much-loved virtual pets that surfaced in the 90s, Tamagotchis, PlayDoge tasks holders with looking after their canine friend and ensuring their every need is met.

The graphics are charming, the game mechanics are well thought out, and the formula underpinning PlayDoge is fun and rewarding without ever feeling like a slog. For these reasons, PlayDoge has an outsize chance of going the distance while playing its part to enhanc memecoin utility.