The Avalanche Foundation, the nonprofit organization charged with supporting the Avalanche blockchain network, disclosed its holdings of five different memecoins early Thursday morning.
According to a blog post, the Avalanche Foundation holds Coq Inu, Gecko, Kimbo, NoChill, and Tech. These five tokens, which “represent the fun, spirit, uniqueness, and interests of diverse crypto communities,” collectively have a market cap of approximately $541 million, with Coq Inu representing over 74% of the total.
Read More: Avalanche Foundation Jumps on the Meme-Coin Wave
The disclosure announcement comes more than three months after the nonprofit unveiled its initial plans to purchase memecoins through its Culture Catalyst Initiative, a $100 million creator program that Avalanche rolled out in 2022.
The Avalanche Foundation “disclosed its holding of community coins today in order to reflect its efforts to support grass root community efforts and community spirit within the Avalanche ecosystem, as these underpin the vibrancy and engagement of the Avalanche network,” said Vikram Nagrani, the director of Avalanche Foundation, to Unchained.
No Intrinsic Value
The memecoins in the Avalanche Foundation’s holdings appeal to the notion of meme culture driven by humor and group interests instead of market fundamentals.
Coq Inu, with a total supply of 69.42 trillion tokens, derives its marketability from its chicken-inspired mascot and suggestive pun in its name. Gecko, which uses a cartoon lizard as its mascot, originated from a regional community in Vietnam, while Kimbo “is the community web3 dog exploring the Avalanche ecosystem,” as proclaimed on its X account.
NoChill is a memecoin referencing the colloquial slang phrase regularly used within and beyond the crypto ecosystem to describe a variety of social situations like when someone acts without regard to others, moves recklessly, or behaves in any way that is not cool, calm, and collected. Tech takes its name from a popular adage among crypto denizens, “We are innit for the tech.”
Eligibility Concerns
The Foundation’s policy for memecoin purchases stipulated that tokens must be older than one month to qualify; however, the foundation recently acquired TECH tokens, which began trading on Trader Joe, an Avalanche-based decentralized exchange, merely 10 days ago. This action has drawn criticism from community members who argue the foundation violated its own purchasing criteria. X user @0xChefGoose expressed dissatisfaction directly to Avalanche Foundation Executive Director Aytunç Yıldızlı on X, stating, “You guys posted criteria, and some of the coins you chose did not respect those criteria. That’s my main feedback.”
Yıldızlı later explained the reasoning behind the choices in a post on X, writing: “We considered the criteria that a token must be a month old as just an obstacle for new tokens with a community behind them. Considering how this ecosystem is fluid, the foundation should be flexible in its strategies, too.”
Read More: Avalanche Foundation Releases Eligibility Criteria for Meme Coin Purchases
The nonprofit entity may add more memecoins to its portfolio. “Other community coins could also potentially join the program,” the blog post stated. “For instance, the Avalanche Foundation is currently evaluating ERC-404 tokens following their promising debut as a novel token class that the Avalanche community is helping to pioneer.”
UPDATE (March 15, 2024 11:51 a.m. ET): Added quote from Vikram Nagrani
