5 Base Tokens Blending AI and Memecoin Magic
This weekend I was browsing through Twitter when I saw David Hoffman highlight what he thinks are some of the best meme tokens on Base currently.
Great minds think alike, right, as these are the exact 5 coins I’m watching closest on Base right now. Why though?
Full disclosure, I’m holding a few of these at the moment—specifically HIGHER, ANON, and ghffb47yii2rteeyy10op. But beyond my personal opinions, these tokens all share some key timely themes:
- They’re popular among Farcaster power users.
- They’re also all at least indirectly linked to both the AI and memecoin metas.
- They’re higher-risk opps on Base as people are increasingly looking to this L2 for new adventurous bets.
All that said, though, keep your wits about you here. These aren’t majors or mid-caps, the trading volatility around these smaller coins can be routinely drastic, up or down, across short time frames. Losing money is an unavoidable specter on this frontier.
Yet these tokens are notable for specific reasons right now. I think they do have potential upside from here. And at the very least, learning about them can help us better understand the kinds of things that are currently exciting traders in crypto.
Below, then, let’s walk through what I think makes each of these 5 tokens stick out on Base as things stand.
1. HIGHER
Socials: Twitter | Warpcast
Current price & market cap: $0.032 & ~$32 million
CA: 0x0578d8a44db98b23bf096a382e016e29a5ce0ffe
The word “memecoin” suggests a token is driven mainly by its memetic DNA. That’s why I wouldn’t consider HIGHER strictly a memecoin, but rather a scenecoin: it’s main driver is serving as the native token of the Higher community scene on Base and Farcaster.
Even still, the token’s slick ticker and optimistic theme of “let’s go higher” does give it an attractive foundational level of meme-ry that’s shiny and timeless. But when you zoom in, there’s more depth here than 99.9% of memecoin plays. And that’s why I wouldn’t be surprised to see it listed on large centralized exchanges (ahem, Coinbase) in the near future.
Simply put, Higher is a rising headless brand. I see it in the same ballpark as Nouns DAO, just more amorphous and centered around a fungible token, HIGHER, rather than NFTs. The general gist is the same: try cool experiments with an online collective of like-minded creatives. Go higher together.
I recommend checking out The Greenpaper and Headless Composability essays by the co-founder LGHT to learn more. Follow him and the other co-founder Martin to better follow along. And if nothing else, we can expect more experiments in this movement going forward, including AI experiments.
For example, for Metaversal I recently wrote about how Martin deployed Aether, a Higher-coded AI agent on Farcaster for the Higher community, which has proven to be a hit ever since. Something tells me this is just the start of the charming AI curiosities the Higher collective will produce in the years to come. I’m personally bullish accordingly.
2. CLANKER
Socials: Twitter | Warpcast
Current price & market cap: $70.55 & ~$70.55 million
CA: 0x1bc0c42215582d5a085795f4badbac3ff36d1bcb
Speaking of Metaversal, some of my culture column readers may recall I also recently wrote about Clanker, the Farcaster AI tokenbot that lets you simply deploy your own tokens by just providing a short text prompt.
William M. Peaster Nov 19, 2024 • 3 min read
Created by Proxy Studio, Clanker’s account lets you tag it in a cast via any Farcaster client featuring your desired token ticker, name, and featured image (optional), and boom—the Clanker AI will launch your token for you in a Uniswap V3 liquidity pool on Base.
As such, Clanker has become extremely popular on Farcaster in recent weeks. It’s been the facilitator of some of the biggest “Farconomy” token launches to date, and interest around it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down so far. People are loving just how easy the bot is to use.
That said, CLANKER is the native token of Clanker, dropped by Clanker, and for this reason it’s been trading like a proxy for the wider Clanker token ecosystem that’s been blossoming on Base and Farcaster lately, which is to say it’s been trading bullishly.
If your thesis is that this token launcher is only going to become even bigger in the near future, CLANKER is one main avenue for joining the ride.
3. LUM
Socials: Twitter | Warpcast
Current price & market cap: $36.55 & ~$36 million
CA: 0x0fd7a301b51d0a83fcaf6718628174d527b373b6
Above I’ve already mentioned HIGHER and CLANKER. The intermingling of these two hot projects spawned Luminous, or LUM, which is why it’s early investors have found the token compelling.
Long story short, someone recently prompted Aether, the Higher AI agent, to prompt the Clanker tokenbot in order to create an entirely new token. The result was $LUM.
It’s not an official token of the Higher community, then, but instead it’s organically become an unofficial mascot token of sorts for the Aether agent itself. In short, LUM is now functioning as a trading proxy for excitement around Aether, and it’s now become one of the largest Clanker tokens, behind only CLANKER here presently in market cap.
Going forward, I think the main risk for LUM is market saturation. Many more AI agents will launch in crypto, and their ensuing experiments will be newer and shinier. What’s the potential moat? Early-mover status, and a direct lore lineage with the strong branding around Higher and Aether. Don’t sleep on LUM accordingly.
4. ANON
Socials: Twitter | Warpcast
Current price & market cap: $0.042 & ~$42 million
CA: 0x0db510e79909666d6dec7f5e49370838c16d950f
There are a lot of moving parts with the ANON story, so let me break it down as simply as I can:
- Supercast, a premium Farcaster client, has a Super Anon account that users can post anonymously through; someone used this account to anonymously prompt the Clanker bot to create an ANON token.
- Then came the community building. Kartik deployed anoncast.org, a new separate privacy-preserving Farcaster client powered by zero-knowledge proofs. If you hold 5,000 ANON, you can use this platform to post anonymously to Farcaster.
- While this use case might seem simple, it’s undeniably neat, and it’s one of the first zk-powered consumer crypto apps we’ve seen surface here. Even Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin is interested; he bought a small ANON bag, has asked questions, and even made design suggestions.
Now more people are clamoring to use the app, but what’s the long-term potential here?
That remains to be seen, yet there’s no question that Anoncast and ANON are capturing imaginations and a lot of mindshare in the Farcaster ecosystem right now. The bullish scenario is Anoncast keeps iterating out new features around ANON that makes it an increasingly popular utility coin atop Base, which is certainly in the realm of possibility.
5. ghffb47yii2rteeyy10op
Current price & market cap: $0.000038 & ~$3.8 million
CA: 0x354d6890caa31a5e28b6059d46781f40880786a6
A dog wearing a tie requesting a memecoin from Clanker is the idea behind this coin. It’s Dadaist in that way. And remember above how I said memecoins are driven mainly by their memetic DNA? ghffb47yii2rteeyy10op is pure meme-ry accordingly. There’s nothing but silly charming narrative here, and these days that’s more than enough for some attention.
However, have no illusions: the coin’s just a few days old at this point, and it may fall by the wayside and trade into oblivion in short order. This is the riskiest token by far of the 5 mentioned in this post. But sometimes the crazy and the inscrutable survives and thrives in the current market conditions, so if you’re hunting for degen plays on Base, this is one of the newest oncomers to consider right now.