Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Reacts to Memecoin’s Parabolic Surge

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin intervened in reaction to an X post by Roko Mijic criticizing the acceptance of memecoins, which caused a significant rise this past weekend, to correct the record on the fledgling asset class’s adoption.

The Vitalik Buterin Disposition on Memecoins

The ongoing memecoin rally in the digital asset space pushed the combined market cap of the assets up 30% north of $41 billion earlier today. Popular Shiba Inu (SHIB) surged by a wholesome 52% earlier today, leading the memecoin rally. The price surge took the price of SHIB to $0.00002 and till the time of this writing, the token has yet to bow to bearish correction.

Canine-themed memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE) equally registered up to 30% increase earlier in the week. Market analysts believe that DOGE may be gearing up for a mega bull run in the long run. Its average daily trading volume has also gone up significantly, surpassing $4.77 billion. Overall, the rally has touched almost all memcoins and there are still speculations that the positive momentum will last for a while.

One X user tried to establish the fact that these memecoinuse cases are currently experiencing a rally due to a lack of use cases resulting from a decline in crypto infrastructure. However, Vitalik Buterin reacted to the post, trying to explain that this is not the outlook in all cases. 

“I feel like 2 years ago I completely agreed, and my high-level argument was something like “infrastructure is public goods, the incentive to fund public goods is N times smaller than optimal (that’s basic econ 101), so it’s practically impossible for there to be too much infrastructure”,” Buterin explained.

Under-loved Infrastructures In the Crypto Ecosystem

He went on to talk about how “infrastructure” is a diverse category where some could be public goods and others are “realistically a zero-sum network effect grabbing game.” For Buterin, he perceives some infrastructures as being over-invested, having more than enough acceptance and adoption. On one hand, others are barely loved and talk more about being accepted.

I feel like 2 years ago I completely agreed, and my high-level argument was something like "infrastructure is public goods, the incentive to fund public goods is N times smaller than optimal (that's basic econ 101), so it's practically impossible for there to be too much…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 2, 2024

For perspective, the Ethereum co-founder itemized some of the infrastructure that he perceives as under-loved. Zk voting as well as association set providers for privacy pools made it to the list amongst many others. 

Vitalik Buterin mentioned ENS names on Layer-2 with decentralized verification via CCIP as one of the under-loved infrastructures. The others were proof of personhood and proof of community membership, more secure software supply chains for DApps, and a fully decentralized (and no “governance token”) instant cross-L2 token transfer protocol.

All these have gained expression one or or another with Polygon deploying the ZK technology through its ZKEVM protocol. However, the adoption is generally at a lower pace compared to the hype memecoins are generating at the moment.