the experiment of the co-founder on memecoin between speculation and consensus flaws

The co-founder of MetaMask, Dan Finlay, conducted an experiment on memecoins highlighting debates on consensus and their speculative nature. Here’s what emerged. 

MetaMask and Finlay’s experiment on memecoins: the debate on consensus

Dan Finlay, co-founder of MetaMask, conducted an experiment on memecoins that sparked a debate on Web3 and AI consent.

“Last night I created an experiment on Farcaster that went beyond expectations. What had started as research on the platform revealed truths about incentives, limits, consensus, and human impact in web3. Some lessons and reflections on building better systems:”

In practice, Finaly has minted two tokens “Consent” on Ethereum and “I Don’t Consent” on Solana, experiencing an eye-opening journey, raising critical points on crypto meme. 

The experiment initially recorded a strong frenzy towards these tokens, with the value reaching at one point even exceeding $100,000. However, such a position then left the participants exposed to financial losses.

In fact, Finlay had to face the backlash from investors, some of whom threatened him or asked for long-term plans for the assets, despite the simplistic design of the tokens. 

In this regard, Finlay said:

“The only act of consent that seems unequivocal in this memecoin environment is that buyers are definitely agreeing to put their money into something. But without this thing being well defined, what kind of consent is it?”.

MetaMask and Finlay’s experiment on memecoin: the speculative nature

While on one hand, the debate on the consensus of the memecoin sector has heated up, on the other hand, its true speculative nature has also emerged, making meme cryptos highly risky. 

MetaMask’s finaly experienced firsthand that the liquidity of crypto is often tied to speculation, and this is not always a good thing. In fact, memecoins continue to thrive thanks to extreme volatility, often driven by trends on social media rather than intrinsic value or utility. 

Their speculative nature could make them susceptible to market manipulation through pump-and-dump schemes, in which unsuspecting investors are left empty-handed when prices collapse after the enthusiasm has faded.

In any case, Finlay’s discoveries have highlighted the blurred boundaries between public visibility and user expectations and the need for clearer systems of consent, trust, and responsibility. 

In this regard, in his experiment, Finlay also cited Bluesky to draw a parallel between the consensus of memecoin and consensus in digital platforms with AI.

Specifically, Finlay referred to Bluensky, given that a set of public post data was used for AI training without the explicit consent of the users. 

Here too, the co-founder of MetaMask noted the existence of a disconnection between the protocol’s consensus expectations and the social consensus expectations. 

Pay attention to meme crypto

Recently, the sector of memecoins has been analyzed precisely because they too are riding the bullish wave following Donald Trump’s victory in the USA 2024 presidential elections.

First of all, the memecoins of the moment were analyzed, with an exception for Dogecoin (DOGE), which is the meme crypto par excellence. And then Bonk emerged, the meme crypto on Solana, and PEPE. 

In any case, it was also noted here the high attention that must be paid to these crypto which are simply the representation of high-risk speculations. In fact, often their market performances are due to real pump&dump schemes that always end in a crash. 

These schemes create real speculative bubbles around these simple assets, which are fundamentally based on nothing useful. When the bubble then bursts, the harsh truth arrives, which is why investors can no longer remain unaware of this high risk of their investments.