Memecoins Have Served Their Purpose, But Need To Evolve

Before stepping into regulatory infrastructure arsenic COO of Zekret, Artur Gulinski was heavy successful Web3’s high-risk frontier. He made money, mislaid more, and learned really nan civilization of memecoins and Degen speculation shaped an full procreation of crypto founders.

“I was successful nan degen trenches,” Gulinski told Euro Weekly News successful an exclusive interview. “NFTs, raffles, whitelist hunts, we created 3,000 wallets and secured 16 whitelist spots. We flipped them wrong minutes. That covered everything I mislaid connected trading.”

The task was Murakami Flowers, 1 of nan astir hyped NFT drops of nan time. Each mint costs 0.1 ETH and resold instantly for 6 ETH. It was fast, chaotic, and exhilarating.

‘I’m not a trader’

“That was a bully time,” says Gulinski. “But I besides learned I’m not a trader. I don’t person nan affectional capacity for it. I don’t person gem hands.”

He describes entering nan marketplace successful 2017, riding nan early ICO activity and later falling into NFTs and memecoins. While nan acquisition was volatile, it was besides immersive. Gulinski publication smart contracts, joined communities, and networked extensively. That laid nan instauration for his later career.

“Web3 for maine was ever astir people,” he says. “You don’t person thing without people. The builders, nan founders, nan ones bootstrapping for a twelvemonth without seeing their families.”

He does not disregard nan “degen” culture. In fact, he credits it pinch opening doors. Token-gated communities for illustration CPG Club connected him pinch different founders and exposed him to existent projects.

“It was a superior network. Some of those group went connected to build awesome companies.”

He saw nan penning connected nan wall

But nan memecoin play of 2023 marked a turning point. As co-founder of a Solana-based project, he saw really measurement boosting and token manipulation became normalised.

“We scaled to $200,000 a period successful six months,” he says. “But it was a grey area. We were boosting volume, creating tokens, advising projects. It was not thing I could enactment in.”

With caller regulations coming into unit successful nan EU and nan US, Gulinski saw nan penning connected nan wall.

“I told nan squad we had to pivot. It was excessively risky. They said nan money was excessively good. So I stepped down.”

That determination led him to Zekret. While he still watches degen communities, he nary longer plays successful them.

Memecoins request to evolve

“I’m still a degen astatine heart,” he says. “But I’m besides an operator. I’ve seen really vulnerable this abstraction is without structure. If we want institutions to travel in, we request to cleanable it up.”

He believes nan expectations group by early crypto returns person distorted laminitis incentives.

“I’ve talked to VCs who opportunity if it’s not a 5x successful 2 years, it’s not worthy it. But that’s not normal. In accepted markets, 5x successful 10 years is good.”

For Gulinski, nan connection is clear. The memecoin era served its purpose, but nan ecosystem needs to evolve.

“It’s clip to build existent infrastructure. The degens sewage america here. Now it’s clip to make it activity for everyone else.”