Lessons learned from launching a meme coin

Just wanted to share my experience with launching a meme coin. This is honest advice, and I’m not looking to shill my coin here.

I’ve been trading crypto on and off for many years, and had been playing with the idea of launching my own coin for quite some time. Unfortunately I fell victim to many rug pulls in the past, and I thought this could be done differently.

How hard can it be? Turns out, much harder than one would think.

The idea was noble: I was going to set up a fair token launch and wanted to absolutely steer clear of any market manipulation, which means:

• I hold no secret bags
• My share is only 10% and is vested for 12 months.
• Full transparency: all of this can be checked on-chain, and is enforced through the contract
• I was not going to indulge in boosting volume artificially (e.g. bots)
• I set up anti-bot measures for the first 5 minutes, to make sure my token did not get sniped. In the name of fair play.
• I was not going to shill or have my token shilled in private communities: only full transparency
• I don’t want to be associated with so-called crypto influencers on X/Twitter, much less do I want to pay them for bringing me a million bot followers
• Any proceedings from the 0.5% trading fee cut would go directly to growing my token: this is verifiable on the blockchain. I was intending to do all promotion myself, in a legitimate way.
• I detailed all of this in a proper white paper and a fun little roadmap on the website
• I bought a $160 Web3 domain name on Solana Name Service, just to prove authenticity, before earning a single dime
• I used Jupiter Studio to launch my token, to make sure that it’s on a trusted platform and with a waterproof contract. By not using pump.fun, I wanted to showcase that I’m seeing this more seriously than just a pump and dump scheme. I specifically chose Jupiter because LP migrates to Meteora, which I regard as an extremely solid platform on Solana, with a bright future ahead of itself. It would have opened up a possibility for the buyers to engage in yield farming with my token, should they so desire.
• I put up a big fat disclaimer on my website, in the name of transparency, to let potential buyers know that this is very speculative and it’s a meme coin for entertainment purposes only. I wanted buyers to know what they’re buying.
• No fake promises or trying to convince people into buying this aggressively
• Those who rise fast, can fall fast too. That’s what I wanted to avoid at all cost. I’d rather have steady and slow growth.
• Applied for verification through Jupiter, still ongoing

The net result so far:

• I got tons of engagement, but with the wrong people: got dozens of DMs from so-called influencers and promotors. It’s clear that these are entire teams: they will reply instantly at any time of day. They try to convince token creators into letting them promote their token online, and rates would usually vary from $50-500 a week, or something in the range of $200/24 hours for the bigger “influencers”. It’s very unpleasant to communicate with these people in general, although some have been more genuine and nice than others. Some actually gave me free tips and retweeted my page (big up!). Some approach you in a very aggressive manner, and some even resort to begging you to pay for their services. In any case, the latter was not the organic growth I was looking for, even not taking into account the cost.
• I haven’t been able to get a single genuine follower on socials, because there is so much noise with these influencers.
• Only 1 buyer so far, hours after the token launch. The 24h volume of my token is now $5. Let’s hope they HODL :D.
• I’m now at -$170 for launching this token, but got a valuable lesson in how this space works and how difficult marketing can be.
• I’m not letting it go yet, and I’m still hopeful this coin will take off, because I still believe it can be a fun meme and the intentions behind it are legitimate. I will still put in the effort to get this going.

I was under the impression that publishing a token about a meme that could be solid, with proven transparency and measures in place to do this properly, would be enough for a successful launch. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and most of this runs on hype without checking anything of the aforementioned. I sort of get that now, because it’s about a meme after all.

I’m interested to read your take on this, so please do let me know! Hoping someone can learn from this experience. I’ll gladly share details about my token through DM if someone is interested, but I’m purposely not mentioning it publicly in this post.