Meme coins explained: Dogecoin to PONS, Robinhood Chain, and the egg that refused to die

A joke with a dog on it, and a warning.

In 2013, two software engineers made a coin as a joke. It had a dog on it. At its peak it was worth about 2,800 times its early price.

That same year, and every year since, millions of other joke coins went to zero. By one count, 98.6% of the coins launched on the largest meme launchpad ended as rug pulls or pump and dumps (Solidus Labs).

So the video gives you both sides: the coins that made people rich, the ones that took everything, and one small coin called FOMOEgg, where the developer went quiet and the community refused to let it die.

By the end you will know how this works, how to start without getting wrecked, and why the FOMOEgg CTO team thinks community takeovers can be done in the open. Now the obvious question: why would anyone buy a joke?

A token with no product, priced on attention.

A meme coin is a token with no product behind it. No earnings, no factory, no app you need it for. What it has is attention: a picture, a joke, a story that people want to share. And attention, it turns out, can be priced.

The original is Dogecoin, launched in December 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer and named after a Shiba Inu meme. In late December 2013 it traded at about a 40th of a cent.

The community did strange, generous things with it. In 2014, holders raised money to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics.

Then, in 2020 and 2021, Elon Musk started posting about it. One word: Doge. The price jumped each time. On May 7, 2021, Dogecoin hit 73 cents and its total value passed 85 billion dollars.

The next night, Musk hosted Saturday Night Live. Everyone expected a rocket. Instead the price fell almost 30% during the show. Traders have a phrase for that: buy the rumor, sell the news.

Today Dogecoin trades around 8 cents. Still huge, but about 89% below its peak. That is lesson one of meme coins: the ride up is real, and so is the ride down.

Thousands of copies followed, and even the winners gave it back.

Dogecoin made a template, and thousands of copies followed. These are the famous ones, the coins that reached the top of the charts.

Shiba Inu peaked in October 2021 and is about 94% lower today. Pepe the frog peaked in December 2024 and is down about 85%. Bonk on Solana peaked in November 2024 and is down about 95%.

Even the winners give most of it back. The people who did well usually had one thing in common: a plan to take profit before the crowd left.

Notice what is missing from that list: a reason for the price to hold. Nothing in a meme coin pays holders or produces anything, so the price depends on whether the next crowd shows up. When it does not, the chart shows it quickly. That is why the video keeps coming back to one habit, which is deciding your exit before you enter.

A new chain, a launchpad, and a token that moved fast.

Here is what changed in 2026. A brand new chain opened, and on new chains the early days move fast.

On July 1, 2026, Robinhood Chain went live. Robinhood did not endorse the meme coins on it, but builders showed up anyway. One of them was PONS, a launchpad where anyone can create a token in minutes.

PONS has its own token too. On July 17 it traded around a third of a cent. By September 3 it was near 60 cents, about 180 times higher in seven weeks. Today it sits around 34 cents: still more than 100 times above that July low, but well below its high (GeckoTerminal).

Launchpads like PONS lower the barrier to almost zero, which is exactly why most of what they launch disappears. Making a token is easy. Keeping people around is the hard part, and that is where the rest of this story lives.

That is what early looks like on a new chain: fast, loud, and nothing is guaranteed. Activity on the chain itself also cools. CoinDesk reported on October 10 that average daily transactions fell 42% from mid-September to early October, and active addresses fell 31%. For every PONS there is a graveyard.

Six risks, told straight.

If you skip anything in the video, do not skip this part. Here are the six risks, in the order the video covers them.

1. 1

   Most coins die.

   CoinGecko says more than half of all tokens it ever tracked are now dead.

2. 2

   Rug pulls.

   A developer launches a coin, waits for buyers, then sells everything or pulls the money out of the pool. The chart goes straight down and it does not come back.

3. 3

   Concentration.

   If a few wallets own most of the supply, they can move the price whenever they want. Check the top holders on any coin, including ours. Right now the FOMOEgg top 10 wallets hold about 83%. We say that plainly because you should know it before you decide anything.

4. 4

   Scams around the coin.

   Fake support accounts, fake links, wallet drainers. No real team will ever ask for your seed phrase. Ever.

5. 5

   You.

   Fear of missing out makes people buy the top and panic sell the bottom. Yes, we see the irony: our coin is literally named after it.

6. 6

   No safety net.

   There is no bank insurance and no customer service that can reverse a trade. Crypto rules and taxes change by country.

So here is the rule that matters most: only put in money you could lose completely and still sleep that night. This page is education, not financial advice. Nobody, including us, can promise you a price.

Why a community would fight to save a coin.

Sometimes a developer abandons a coin. They sell, or they just go silent. Usually that is the end. But sometimes the holders step in and take over the socials, the website and the story. Crypto calls it a CTO: a community takeover.

Popcat's creator handed it off early, and the community grew it past a billion dollars in value. The developer of BILLY sold everything 20 minutes after launch, and the community rebuilt it to 215 million (Decrypt).

Some fail. One coin hit 100 million in four hours and later fell below 2 million.

The ones that survive have the same things: clear leaders, open books, and a reason to stay after the excitement fades. For background on the idea, see the iq.wiki explainer.

The egg that refused to die.

FOMOEgg launched on Robinhood Chain in September 2026 on PONS. It had a simple idea: you write a thesis about a coin, theses enter a race, and trading fees feed a burn, removing tokens from supply forever.

People loved it. There were over 30,000 theses, as reported by the original feed, and 161,870,048 tokens burned, which is 16.19% of all the eggs that will ever exist.

Then the developer went quiet. The burn slowed and the race stalled. Most people would have walked away. 1,310 holders did not.

The community asked PONS for a takeover. PONS approved it, and on October 14 the fee recipient moved from the old developer to the community takeover's wallet, on chain, where anyone can check it. Same token, same burn history, no new coin, no reset: a new chapter. Read the receipts in A memecoin's developer walked away. The takeover is on chain, the earlier story in The egg hatched, and the full proof on the CTO page.

Most takeovers happen in private chats. This one is happening in the open: every burn verifiable, every race replayable, every wallet public, and a free guide at fomoegg.com/cto-help so the next abandoned coin knows what to do.

The values are written down: trust before hype, verify before claiming, community before ego. The developer created the egg. The community became its next evolution.

Rebuilding the burn engine for 2.0.

Right now the egg is being rebuilt. This is the heart of FOMOEgg 2.0, the burn engine, and here is how it is designed.

1. Fees come in
2. A public reserve holds them
3. The reserve buys eggs back
4. Those eggs are burned

Every step will leave a receipt on chain. You will not have to trust us. You will be able to check.

The race comes back too, with results anyone can replay from the same public seed.

FOMOEgg 2.0 is being built right now and launches soon. If you are watching before launch, you are early. Early does not mean guaranteed. It means you get to help build it, test it, and hold us to every word in the video.

Six careful steps to start.

If you want to try meme trading, here is how to start the careful way.

1. 1

   Download the FOMO app. It is on the App Store and Google Play. FOMO is a social trading app where you can see what other traders buy.

2. 2

   Sign up with the invite link fomo.family/r/turbomac, or enter the code turbomac. New users get 10% off fees.

3. 3

   Add a small amount. FOMO lets you fund with Apple Pay. Start with an amount you would be fine losing.

4. 4

   Check before you buy. Look at the contract address on the project's own website, the top holders, and whether the team is real and public.

5. 5

   Write your exit plan before you buy. When will you take profit? When will you walk away?

6. 6

   Search FOMOEgg in the app. Read our site, then decide for yourself.

Disclosure: turbomac is part of the FOMOEgg community, holds FOMOEgg, and may earn a referral reward from that invite link.

Before step four, bookmark the checks that matter on any coin: the contract address from the project's own site, the top holders on a block explorer, and a real, public team. The same checks work for FOMOEgg, and our CTO page links every one of them.

You do not need a big wallet to belong.

If this story means something to you, you do not need a big wallet to be part of it. Builders, artists, testers, storytellers and people asking their question for the very start of their journey: everyone has a role.

You can also support the community fund or watch a race. One developer started the egg. 1,310 people decided it was not finished. Maybe the next one is you.