Original author: Dan Finlay, co-founder of MetaMask
Original translation: angelilu, Foresight News
Related reading:
MetaMask co-founder goes to Pump to issue coins. Is Ethereum just visiting next door?
MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay launched two meme coins CONSENT on Base and Solana. As of the time of writing, the market value of the two tokens on Base and Solana is only 392,000 and 782,000 US dollars. Although Solana is slightly ahead, the market value of the token was nearly 10 million US dollars at its peak yesterday, which has dropped by 90%. The developer has no intention of continuing this game, so he wrote this report as a summary of the experiment. The following is Dan Finlays original text:
Out of curiosity, I conducted a boring experiment related to Meme Coin. On November 27, I issued a token of the same name called CONSENT on Base and Solana through clanker and pump.fun respectively. This was just an experiment and I had no further plans. This experiment made me feel very unhappy, but at least it allowed me to experience the current Meme Coin ecosystem firsthand.
Where does the theme of the CONSENT token come from?
It all started with a simple observation of social media dynamics. While browsing Twitter, Bluesky, and Farcaster, I noticed a stark difference in how these communities (that I follow) treat AI and consent for data use.
Twitter/X: Seems to have the least concerns about AI, with many AI researchers gathered on the platform. I have rarely seen discussions about the economic interests of artists (maybe the artists have left, or maybe I just don’t pay attention to them).
Farcaster: Made up of a group of people with Ethereum and Web3 backgrounds who are primarily focused on getting the next compelling product out the door as quickly as possible, and are more likely to accuse those with ethical concerns of being “armchair” critics, including those of Meme Coin.
Bluesky: It seems to be attracting a lot of artists that I used to follow, and a lot of people who care about the well-being of artists in the age of AI. I understand this concern very well (I have been an artist for most of my life, and have wanted to make a career out of it), but I find these discussions lacking the pragmatism that I appreciate in the Farcaster subculture.
In particular, a post on Bluesky went viral that shared a new Huggingface repository containing a million Bluesky posts for digital analysis and AI training. In the responses to the post, a significant number of people expressed shock that the repository had posts without their consent.
One of the replies became the theme of my Meme Coin: Why don’t you AI brothers understand what “consent” is?
As the developer of the crypto wallet MetaMask, I have been thinking about the issue of informed consent for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, some of our current digital systems have no clear informed consent mechanism at all. To be honest, I feel a little uncomfortable even taking a screenshot of this post without consent, however, from a protocol level, both Bluesky and Farcaster require that all posts are public and readable by anyone. While this is generally understood on Farcaster (because the user base is more technical), on Bluesky, there is a disconnect between the protocol-level requirements for informed consent and the social-level expectations for informed consent.
It turns out that P2P social media platforms aren’t the only digital protocols with unclear definitions of social consent, which leads to some bad experiences. This also happens to apply to meme coins.
My previous opinion on Meme Coin
My perspective on Meme Coin may be different than what the average reader might expect.
My view on alternative currencies has been deeply influenced by my experience in primary school where teachers created a special token system to trade old toys, and I have always believed that alternative currencies have great potential. So I pay special attention to token mechanisms that allow users to clearly express the level of trust and the reason for trust.
However, the current Meme coin operation mode seems to be an attempt to make some of the token mechanism ideas of the past few years easier to implement, such as replacing Reddits voting mechanism with token weights, etc. But I still dont think this is a good way.
First of all, I believe that the main value of tokens should be reflected in those tokens that represent specific resources, rather than those vague meme coins that lack a clear vision (or even find it difficult to develop into larger-scale projects), where even the meme creators themselves are not clear about what they consented.
Secondly, for projects that really need financing, the bonding curve may not be the best choice. When starting a new company, the founder will carefully consider when to issue new shares, to whom to sell, and how to manage investor expectations. But in the bonding curve, the positioning of a token may fluctuate between pure entertainment game and serious crowdfunding tool. On this platform, it is difficult for both parties to the transaction to determine the specific position of a token on this spectrum. And strangely, even though the Meme I created is very simple (even with a clear promise: Holding this token allows you to use this text for AI training), people continue to try to give it more meaning.
As far as I know, the current Meme coin issuance platform mainly provides two basic functions for token creators: buying and selling. Although it is also equipped with a public chat room and some metadata functions, the platform itself only provides the most basic trading capabilities. If we want to build a real community, achieve long-term development, and even raise funds for actual projects, why only provide these two simple functions? Pump.fun calls the creators of tokens developers, and users call the developers selling behavior Rug behavior. This seems to be because only software developers could issue tokens before, and... the only reason for developers to sell is to take away investors funds.
To me, it’s deeply sad to see a platform that people are calling the major new use case for crypto come to this. It’s like a distillation of the cynicism that has come out of the worst behavior in crypto over the past decade. Which is worse? That the developers think all people need is minting coins and Rugs, or that users seem to think this is a way out of their economic situation?
Initially the branding of the platform (Fun!) led me to think there might be some fun energy in the environment, but I should have known better. Recently some people have gone to extreme lengths to boost their Meme Coins, including threatening to harm themselves and others (effectively trying to hold themselves or others hostage to public traders).
I expected to see a community of traders who were knowledgeable and willing to invest a modest amount of tokens to improve their abilities and learn how to distribute new tokens among a group of people they truly trusted. I wanted people to hold tokens from creators they admired, not for a quick profit or a bigger exit, but because they believed that doing so would help build a long-term, stable ecosystem together. That was the best scenario I could imagine. I envisioned these participants realizing that they were playing a financial version of High Five. But the reality was very different.
Experimental Procedure
Earlier in the day, someone suggested that I use the clanker bot (an AI bot that mints tokens for you on request) on Farcaster to convert a random meme into tokens.
I chose that Bluesky post about data consent and access rights as the token name and created a token for it.
Launching a Meme coin has never been easier, you @ the bot and describe the Meme, then you see the token and a ticker, now people can buy and sell that token. It instantly created a token, but I didnt have any, and I saw people rushing to buy them. I immediately felt a pang of anxiety. Are people going to dump a token with my name on it, and Ill just be watching the price fluctuate? So I quickly put ETH into this token so that at least I would get in close to the bottom of the price of this token.
With my frustrating experience with clanker, I had to wonder if the same pattern was happening with pump.fun on Solana. For product experimentation, I had to try both.
So I started to launch a token with the same name on Pump.fun.
The ETH I put into Clanker quickly shrunk by half, probably due to early buyers selling. Although it looks bad, Clanker does allocate me a fee on each transaction while continuously diluting the market value. Although this mechanism protects me from early buyers, it is actually an invisible and continuous Rug for buyers. If your goal is to truly build a trusted vault, you dont want this feature (Im not sure thats the goal).
In my conversation with the Clanker team, they shared some interesting project descriptions, development plans, and product ideas. They are open to project iterations and strive to create value through exploration. This attitude is worthy of recognition, although I still have reservations about the long-term value of such tokens.
The experience on Solana was completely different. Although I only published information about these two tokens on Farcaster, the response in the Solana ecosystem was far beyond my expectations. I initially invested only about 2 SOL (about $500) to start the market, but in just one hour, the value of my position skyrocketed to more than $100,000. When I tried to sell about 25% of my position (about $16,000), surprisingly, the price went up instead of down 5 minutes later, so I bought it back at a higher price.
But what really worried me was that I saw a lot of retail investors investing disturbingly large amounts of money. More buyers poured in and the price started to rise. I started getting a lot of private messages asking questions about the token. Some people called me a developer and asked about the roadmap.
The biggest problem is that you don’t know the true identity of the buyer. In traditional financing, you wouldn’t accept an investment from a friend who is addicted to gambling. But in bonding curve transactions on public chains, funds are just cold entry and exit numbers, and the situation of the counterparty is completely invisible. Interestingly, this ambiguity may make Meme coins more compliant at the legal level, but the actual risks may be greater. Although ambiguity is sometimes beneficial, especially when you trust your counterparty, in this open, first-come, first-served market, buyers have no way of knowing who is buying at a lower price, so even if you trust the project party, you cannot guarantee safety.
In the context of Meme Coin, the only seemingly clear act of consent is the buyer’s explicit consent to put money into something. But if it’s not clearly defined, what exactly is consent?
As of writing this, I am still troubled by these tokens. I have absolutely no idea who owns these tokens now. Let me be clear, I have no plans to develop these tokens further. The tokens were intended as an educational experiment, and I hope that my sharing of this information will save others from having to do the experiment again.
The paradox of CONSENT
This experience made me think of an interesting paradox: if I want to create a CONSENT token, I need to be careful about who can hold it. But in the current system, I have no control over who can buy these tokens.
Even worse, token holders may have no idea what they are holding. They may not have read the token’s description or promises at all. In this case, how can we ensure truly informed consent?
This leads me to some possible improvements:
Creators should be able to restrict who can purchase their tokens. This may require some form of permission system.
There needs to be a better way to ensure buyers actually understand what they are buying. Perhaps by requiring them to read and confirm certain information before buying.
Token creators should have more tools to manage their tokens than just simple buy and sell functionality.
The platform should provide more options to set the usage and restrictions of tokens.
There should be better ways to build and maintain communities rather than focusing solely on price speculation. These are not perfect solutions, but they may be steps in the right direction.
Future Thoughts
If we want Meme Coin to become a meaningful tool and not just a speculative game, I think we need to seriously consider the following points:
We need better tools to manage participants. Not everyone should be able to participate in every token project.
We need clearer ways to express the purpose and promise of tokens. This is not just to protect buyers, but also to protect creators.
We need to rethink terms like “developer” and “rug.” These words reflect an unhealthy mindset that implies token creators are either building something or running a scam.
We need to think about how to keep it fun while also ensuring responsible participation.
Summarize
After this experiment, I came to the following conclusions:
The current meme coin ecosystem is too confusing for serious fundraising, and too serious for light entertainment. It’s in an awkward middle ground.
The lack of proper controls and consent mechanisms makes this space fraught with potential problems.
Even the simplest, most straightforward tokens can be misunderstood and over-interpreted.
We need to develop better tools and mechanisms to manage these interactions.
Perhaps most importantly, we need to think hard about what we want this space to be. Is it pure entertainment? A serious fundraising tool? Or something in between?
Regardless, the current state of affairs is not ideal, and I hope that by sharing these experiences and reflections, I can spark some meaningful conversations about how to make this space better, more responsible, and more meaningful.
To anyone who holds any CONSENT tokens: Thank you for participating in this social experiment, I am leaving my funds in both places to resolve the allegations of my deceptive behavior. If I could return them all I would, but I guess those who put their tokens into this system did consent.
