Web3 Reading Series (1): From Cultural Genes to Memecoin "Reading is good, without seeking deep understanding; every time there is a realization, one gladly forgets to eat." (Here, Tao Yuanming's 'without seeking deep understanding' is quite different from the modern meaning, just right to open the topic.) In our era of the internet, there is a peculiar phenomenon: the speed of word dissemination is always far faster than people's understanding of it. By the time it becomes popular, its original meaning has long been dissolved, deformed, or even completely changed. 'Meme' has become cat and dog meme images, PUA is equated with 'emotional blackmail', and the 'Dark Forest Law' is used to describe the survival of the fittest in the cryptocurrency world... The origins of these words actually have significant backgrounds. In this series, we will delve into and discuss their true original meanings and evolution. In the context of the Chinese internet, 'meme' is almost equivalent to 'meme image'. However, the origin of this word is actually unrelated to the internet. It comes from the concept proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in The Selfish Gene, used to describe how culture, ideas, and customs replicate and spread through imitation like genes. I first read this book shortly after the Chinese translation was published, almost twenty-five years ago. The core of a meme is not 'humor', but 'replicability', 'transmissibility', and 'evolvability'. Even the word 'meme' is actually a combination of the ancient Greek word mimeme (to imitate) and the English word gene. This naming itself hints at its biological analogy background. This word was born in 1976, more than twenty years before the internet became popular. The 'meme' that Dawkins talks about can be a sentence in a book, a melody in a song, the essence of a painting, or a scene in a movie. "Looking back at the desolate place, returning, there is neither wind nor rain nor sunshine," Su Dongpo's poetry can be passed down for a thousand years, relying not on genetic inheritance, but on human imitation and dissemination. Therefore, poetry and literature can be 'memes', and philosophical thoughts and scientific theories can also be 'memes'. Good memes can be passed down, while mediocre memes will be eliminated by the times—this is the cultural aspect of 'survival of the fittest'. In the internet age, this speed of replication and evolution is amplified to the extreme. Every meme image we forward today and every popular saying we quote is part of meme dissemination, only the medium has changed from word of mouth and printed ink to global instantaneous connectivity. This is also why in the cryptocurrency world, 'meme' has given rise to a brand new financial phenomenon: memecoins. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe, and even a series of tokens with different animals essentially may not have strong technical foundations or complex economic models; their value mostly comes from community consensus and the continuous replication of cultural symbols. The price of memecoins is extremely volatile, but its dissemination method is fundamentally no different from classic memes: as long as the community can keep it visible, imitated, and discussed, it can gain immense attention and capital inflow in a short time. Memes here complete a crossover from cultural symbols to financial assets, replicating not just humor, but also market value and wealth. But like genes, memes and memecoins also exist in survival of the fittest; not all memes and memecoins can last for a hundred years, so careful analysis is still needed when investing.

，