Should the community agree that insiders in meme coins warrant condemnation, a starting point could be the “formal ostracism” of those involved in fraudulent activities. This suggestion was made by Paradigm researcher known as samczsun.
if we can agree that insider-driven memecoins are bad, then why not start by formally ostracizing anyone involved such that in the short term, the upside of one-time gains is not worth the downside of being made persona non grata, and in the long term, there are no gains at all?
— samczsun (@samczsun) February 17, 2025
The expert believes that such a “social solution” would make one-time gains unattractive compared to the drawbacks of being deemed a “persona non grata” in the industry.
A user by the name of bigdsenpai supported the idea and urged significant efforts to implement it, to prevent the loss of “voices and industry.”
We’ve collectively got to start making a serious effort at getting there, like ASAP —
If we can’t, then the power vacuum of sleaze is always destined to be filled with more sleaze (with slightly different haircuts) & all the liquidity/energy/optimism syphons off nonstop….We…
— Big D (@bigdsenpai) February 16, 2025
Another participant in the discussion, known as wholisticguy, recalled the case of DeFi platform Mango Markets hacker Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg, who faced the “court of crypto social public opinion” before being held criminally accountable.
I got a a better one Mango Markets exploiter Avi was first convicted in the court of crypto social public opinion
He was ultimately criminally convicted as well, but I can see a world where he could have skated if he wasn’t first publicly incriminated
— wholistic (@wholisticguy) February 17, 2025
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko questioned the effectiveness of the social layer’s “pitchforks.” He argued that such a tool is reactive to outcomes and lacks predefined rules.
Social layer pitchforks are themselves problematic because they are reactive to an outcome instead of some predefined set of well established rules.
— toly ?? (@aeyakovenko) February 16, 2025
“The only way to do this is to make users have a social credit score and reject coins with low values,” he noted.
Yakovenko explained that the community might ostracize a key opinion leader, but then the fraudulent project’s team would simply switch to another.
Trader Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie, also expressed skepticism about the proposed method. He emphasized that this issue arose even before the popularization of meme coins.
I do not believe you can effectively socially shame the shameless.
— Cobie (@cobie) February 17, 2025
According to the expert, every time someone was shamed, they simply used the attention to make counter-accusations. He reminded that there are influencers who remain popular despite community pressure.
“The people who should be shamed already know what they are doing and have chosen this path,” he explained.
In February, after being mentioned on social media platform X by Argentine President Javier Milei, an asset reached a capitalization of $4.56 billion, only for its price to plummet by 94% in the following hours.
Later, analysts linked the tokens LIBRA and MELANIA to the same team.