The legend of Hawk Tuah’s memecoin affirms to the requirement for governance and openness in Web3, Azeem Khan states. It’s up to the market to supply it.
Upgraded Dec 12, 2024, 10:59 p.m. UTCPublished Dec 12, 2024, 10:06 p.m. UTC
Haliey Welch, extensively acknowledged as “Hawk Tuah,” changed her short lived viral popularity into a powerful media empire. With a growing social networks existence (230K fans on Instagram), financially rewarding brand name collaborations, and the effective podcast Talk TuahWelch seemed transitioning from web character to organization magnate.
That was up until the 22-year-old introduced her memecoin, $HAWK. Now Hawk Tuah isn’t flying so high.
$HAWK was introduced on the Solana blockchain with significant excitement, at first escalating to a $491 million market cap. This meteoric increase was brief, as the coin’s evaluation plunged to under $20 million, according to information from DEX Screener.
The quick decrease raises concerns about the job’s authenticity and the intentions behind its management. A now-deleted Twitter Spaces conversation even more magnified suspicions, resulting in prevalent claims that $HAWK is absolutely nothing more than a “celeb rugpull.”
To comprehend what took place, it is initially essential to analyze the structure and decision-making procedures that appeared to have actually underpinned the $HAWK launch.
Introducing a memecoin may look like a walk in the park (anybody can do it on Pump.fun). Doing it effectively is much harder. It needs capital, marketing and technical competence along with something great in the very first location. You require team effort. I state this as a creator who’s remained in Web3 considering that 2013, has actually raised 10s of countless dollars in equity capital for jobs of my own, and is an investor at a big endeavor fund, Foresight Ventures. (For more on how to release a memecoin, see my other current CoinDesk post here). $HAWK appears to have actually had 3 unique groups behind it, according to internet sleuth Coffeezilla:
- Welch’s Web2 group, accountable for her “standard” brand name
- Memetic Labs, led by creator Doc Hollywood, handling blockchain-related activities and holding the pen on all Web3 associated choices
- and overHere, a brand-new technical company particularly generated to assist in an unique token claim procedure created to onboard Welch’s Web2 audience.
OverHere at first took part in conversations with me to offer context about its function and stated it was open to offering anything more in a transparent way.
In a because erased X Spaces, Welch quickly dropped off around 1:00 am EST, informing listeners she was going to sleep. Doc Hollywood controlled the discussion. His business Memetics Labs was accountable for crucial elements of the token release, such as tokenomics, token minting and circulation, marketing (e.g. messaging over main mediums such as X), liquidity swimming pool development, and trading cost settings.
One listener asked why the trading charges on Meteora were so high (Meteora is a decentralized exchange, or DEX, where users can trade cryptocurrencies straight,
