MIIX Capital: PEPE Project Research Report

1. Project Status

1.1 Business Overview

PEPE is a MemeCoin issued on Ethereum on April 17, 2023, driven by pure memes and positioned as the peoples token. PEPE was created to take advantage of the popularity of MemeCoins such as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, pay tribute to the Pepe the Frog online meme created by Matt Furie, and establish itself as the top MemeCoin in the industry.

In market operations, PEPE has attracted a lot of attention from the cryptocurrency community by formulating tax-free policies, a redistribution system that rewards long-term stakeholders, and a destruction deflation mechanism that maintains the scarcity of PEPE tokens.

1.2 Team Background

Zachary Testa , founder of PEPE, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, USA in 1997. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2018 with a degree in marketing. He is also an American landscape photographer who has a record of violating laws in multiple wilderness areas, sacred indigenous areas, and other areas where drones are prohibited.

Matt Furie is the original creator of PEPE the Frog. An American comics artist and illustrator, he is best known for creating Pepe the Frog, a character in his Boys Club series, which he first launched in 2005. It was originally designed as a green humanoid frog, and later evolved into a variety of memes and spread widely on the Internet in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

It is worth noting that in August 2023, the price of PEPE plummeted by 20%, and the founder Testa faced scrutiny. It was reported that he and team members stole more than $15 million worth of PEPE from the projects multi-signature wallet. The Telegram Handl of other PEPE team members is @billyoptions, @zerozevia and @ekim 222 (now all deleted).

1.3 Products/Technology

PEPE was born to position itself as the most memorable MemeCoin in existence, but according to the official website, PEPE has no intrinsic value and product technology connotation – PEPE is a MemeCoin with no intrinsic value or financial return expectations. There is no formal team or roadmap. It can be said to be completely useless and is only for entertainment.

But this is not uncommon in the crypto space, as many MemeCoins have appeared in the past without making any claims and directly warning users that they have no value.

1.4 Development Roadmap

In the first phase, PEPE will be listed on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko to promote community growth, carry out marketing activities, and increase visibility and influence;

In the second stage, PEPE will be listed on major centralized exchanges to expand trading volume and liquidity, increase market value and ranking, and attract more investors and partners;

Currently, it is in Phase 3, listing PEPE on various first-class exchanges, launching what the team calls the Meme Era is Coming plan to create an ecosystem of meme coins, including NFTs, games, charity, etc.

2. Market data

2.1 Official website data

According to the official website data from February 2024 to April 2024, the total visits were 990.13K, the average monthly visits were 330.04K, the bounce rate was 72.42% (medium, the official website structure is simple), the user access data in each region was relatively uniform, and direct visits and shared visits accounted for more than 75%, which may indicate that the proportion of dirty data in the visiting user data is not high, and most of it is the result of community interaction and communication.

2.2 Social Media Data

3. Competition Analysis

3.1 Track size

MemeCoins usually have no practical use and rely mainly on sentiment and community stickiness. Between 2020 and 2021, memecoins such as $DOGE and $SHIB established themselves, demonstrating the unique charm of the memecoin market. Currently, the total market value of all memecoins is about $60 billion, with Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Dogwifhat, and PEPE occupying a prominent position in the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, but this figure is still lower than the peak of nearly $100 billion driven by Dogecoin in early 2021.

Initially, MemeCoin was mainly concentrated in the ETH ecosystem. With the rise of high-performance networks, the Solana network has become an important network for MemeCoin transactions, and the enthusiastic participation of its community has made it the center of the vibrant memecoin market. After the Denchun upgrade, Base Chain has also become the main platform for trading MemeCoin thanks to the significant reduction in transaction fees on DEX.

3.2 Competition Status

According to Coingecko data, in the first quarter of 2024, MemeCoin became the most profitable crypto track with an average return rate of 1312.6%, among which the top 5 were DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, WIF and FLOKI.

In the ETH ecosystem, PEPE, as the TOP 1 project of MemeCoin, is far ahead in terms of transaction volume. Other popular MemeCoins, such as TRUMP, PORK, and FLOKI in TOP 2-4, are far behind PEPE. However, compared with SHIB, although PEPE in TOP 3 still has about 3 times the space, its development speed is much faster, and its expected growth and market value performance are more worth looking forward to. For example: SHIB took 90 days to reach 100,000 holder addresses in 2021, while PEPE took less than 30 days to break 100,000+ holders.

Observing the development pattern of the leading MemeCoin, when the consensus demand of Meme narrative reaches saturation, it will turn to pursue substantive functional exploration to expand users and support market value, such as DOGE’s announcement of launching ecosystems such as ShibaSwap and NFT. In other words, the first stage is the financial flywheel, and the second stage is the landing of narrative. PEPE coin will also continue to explore new application scenarios in the process of Phase 3 of the roadmap to support the growth of its market value.

3.3 Differentiation Advantages

Compared with other MemeCoins, PEPE has natural artistry and spreadability. PEPE comes from Pepe the Frog, an original work by artist Matt Furie. The character has been popular on the Internet since 2005 and has a deep cultural foundation and recognition.

The Pepe the Frog meme, which has accumulated popularity over the years, is the core factor in the development of PEPE. PEPE took advantage of the cultural appeal of the meme, cleverly combined the advantages of blockchain technology with the spreadability of the PEPE the Frog meme, and used the collective power of Internet culture and the unique attributes of the crypto community to create a Memecoin with a strong community consensus like PEPE.

3.4 Risks and Issues

As one of the top 3 tokens of MemeCoin, PEPE, like other MemeCoins, faces the risk of volatile volatility and poor market value stability. Once sentiment turns to market value and coin prices, they will fall sharply. Although PEPE may and has brought high returns to many investors, investing in MemeCoin still requires caution and patience.

In addition, the incident in which a PEPE team member stole more than $15 million worth of PEPE from the projects multi-signature wallet had a huge impact on the community. Now, with the soaring market value of PEPE, the incident seems to have become a thing of the past, but whether there are still risks left and whether it may cause community turmoil and token market value fluctuations remains unknown. It is recommended to pay close attention.

4. Token Valuation

4.1 Token Model

The total supply of PEPE is nearly 420.7 billion (420, 690, 000, 000, 000), a number that pays tribute to the popular Meme numbers 4: 20 and 69 (these numbers have specific meanings in certain cultures). The official website claims that there is no pre-sale of PEPE tokens, zero taxation, LPs have been destroyed and the contract has been abandoned.

4.2 Valuation Analysis

The valuation model of MemeCoin is very different from that of traditional financial assets. The main reason is that the value of MemeCoin depends mainly on factors such as the size of its narrative, the frequency of emotional arousal, and the celebrity effect, which are difficult to accurately quantify using mathematical models. Although some MemeCoins have found innovative ways to integrate NFTs, decentralized finance (DeFi), or community-driven initiatives, many projects focus mainly on emotional values such as humor and irony. This lack of fundamental technical value also leads to the limitations of the MemeCoin valuation model.

First of all, in the Memecoin track, the TOP 1 DOGE currently has a market value of 20.8 billion US dollars (maximum 100 billion), SHIB has a market value of 14 billion US dollars (maximum 50 billion US dollars), and PEPE currently has a market value of 3.9 billion US dollars. They are all in full circulation, and PEPEs natural dissemination properties give it a greater comparative advantage in the competition, and its ability to rise and shape value has great potential.

Secondly, for Meme, narrative is product, culture is product, and community is product. Although it is difficult to accurately quantify the value of MemeCoin, some valuation formulas can be used for vague judgment. The narrative in the formula is the Meme product itself, and the number is a deviation factor that is difficult to accurately calculate and contains multiple factors. If extended, the valuation = the size of the narrative (the scope of the market impact) + the frequency of emotional awakening + celebrity effect (KOL recognition and ability to bring goods) + SOV (Share of Voice: media share) and other multiple factors.

Among the AI-generated token scores based on analysis of market trends, historical performance, on-chain transactions, and Twitter and news content, PEPE currently ranks second (63 points), reflecting the greater potential opportunity to invest in the token in the next 24 hours.

The PEPE token has grown by 6.1% in the past 7 days and has received some positive sentiment from KOLs on Twitter in the past 24 hours. PEPE was mentioned 8 times by 6 KOLs with a total of more than 208,947 views. Accounts that mentioned PEPE include ColdBloodShill, cryptogems 555, ai_9684 xtpa.

PEPEs valuation = Narrative size (90 points/100 in the Memecoin field) + Emotional arousal frequency (80 points) + Celebrity effect (70 points) + SOV (50 points) = 290 points (total score 400 points)

Finally, as of May 15, 2024, Coinglass data showed that PEPEs open interest surged 24.43% to $139 million, while derivatives trading volume surged 19.72% to $2.063 billion, which may further drive PEPEs short-term volatility. Coupled with the recent influx of frequent transactions by whales and the continuation of the Meme market cycle, the market remains optimistic about the long-term prospects of PEPE.

4. Summary

As a MemeCoin project, PEPE lacks substantial product and technical support. At the same time, the PEPE teams previous history of malicious cashing out and the legal review that the founder may face have added more uncertainty to the development of PEPE, which is also a risk factor that needs to be considered when investing in PEPE.

However, PEPEs inherent communication properties give it a unique comparative advantage, and it has already succeeded in community and cultural narratives, occupying a place in the MemeCoin market. The continued hype of PEPE by a large number of whales also provides a certain growth foundation for the long-term development of PEPE.

In terms of current market value, compared with DOGE and SHIB, PEPE is relatively undervalued and has the opportunity to achieve higher growth in the big cycle market. However, because the overall market is weak, investors are advised to adopt a cautious wait-and-see investment strategy, pay close attention to the further developments of the project team, monitor the community activity and changes in market sentiment, so as to adjust investment decisions in a timely manner.

References

【1】 https://www.PEPE.vip/

【2】https://ai.0xscope.com/

【3】https://dune.com/wuligy/PEPE-metrics

【4】https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/Memelords

【5】https://www.coinglass.com/currencies/PEPE

【6】https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/30961

【7】https://www.rootdata.com/Projects/detail/PEPE?k=NDE0Ng%3D%3D

Note: All the above opinions are for reference only and are not investment advice. If you disagree, please contact us for correction.

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