🐸 MemeSHARE – Collectibles Platform for Memes

💡 Overview

In recent years, the use of memes has spread from specialized internet culture groups to mainstream outlets, thus popularizing the term and what it represents. In its pure form, a meme is just an inside joke within a community, where each individual is capable of pushing the joke in any direction they see fit. Memes are usually summarized in an image but may exist in other mediums such as songs or small phrases. For pictures, it is often a custom for members of a community to Photoshop the meme by making minor adjustments, such as crossing out one word, replacing a phrase, or adding an item to the image to make references to other memes. Such behavior facilitates the creation of infinite sources of memes due to cross "memefication" and keeps the community engaging and growing. There has also been a meme called "meme stock is rising or falling," referencing the fact that one meme is becoming popular, and people should "invest." While we see that this meme meant as a joke, we believe that it is an exciting idea to be inspired from, and therefore we propose a solution, MemeSHARE.

MemeSHARE is a trading platform for non-fungible tokenized meme collectibles. It is built upon Ethereum blockchain (Ethereum) and tokenized using an ERC-721 standard. In other words, each token is unique, has a unique ID, and has its own value. People are the main driving force behind the platform and the prices of the collectibles. Investing early on into a "successful" meme when it's cheap, may yield high profits. Collectibles will be released based on suggestions, demand, current trends, and other factors that may come into the decision making. While a collectible card of the same meme may be reminted at a later time, the unique ID may be traced down to an earlier release and represent a higher value to some.

The reason for the utilization of Ethereum is its public availability. Essentially, a blockchain is a public database that can be read by anyone and interacted with by anyone based on a specific set of rules defined by the developers. Ethereum is the second most popular blockchain, known for its smart contract technology. A smart contract is a digital contract that executes automatically on the blockchain once all the requirements are met. The most straightforward smart contract would be "Once the buyer sends the money to the smart contract, the smart contract sends the product from the seller to the buyer."

MemeSHARE will use Ethereum smart contract technology to keep track of all meme collectibles and who they belong to. MemeSHARE smart contract will be fully readable by anyone with the means of interaction with Ethereum, and the owners of the collectibles will be given an ability to transfer ownership of any of their collectibles, whether it is for money, other collectibles or for free, as a gift. One advantage of using a public database is everyone knows who the owner of a particular collectible is, therefore, eliminating the number of scams possible. Another advantage is that anyone can build a platform or an app that would support MemeSHARE without us limiting developers with an API. In other words, whatever data we can read, you can read it as well. We are especially excited about this feature because this will facilitate the creation of a flourishing community where we can help one another and see what great things we can create together.

💡 Structure

🔦 Creation and Auction

As mentioned earlier, there will be several factors used in determining what meme collectible will be created. Once decided, MemeSHARE will make a call to the smart contract to mint a collectible. As soon as we mint a meme collectible, smart contract makes a call to create another smart contract to handle the auction section of the process. During this process, the ownership of the collectible is immediately transferred to the auction smart contract. This ensures a trustful minting of collectibles, and the only way to come into the possession of the collectible is through a fair auction. People can make bets for a collectible they desire within a period set by the timer. If no one makes a bid, the timer resets. If a collectible goes through a couple of auctions and no one makes a bid, it will be vaulted indefinitely or given away. Once the timer runs out, whoever is the highest bidder gets charged the amount bid, and if that transaction gets through, the auction smart contract transfers the ownership of the collectible to the bidder. And thus, you have "invested" into a meme.

🔦 Ownership and Exchanges

Owned meme collectibles will be displayed in the user's collection tab. We want users to be able to customize their owned meme; therefore, users will be able to make one comment to the collectible and leave a mark on it forever. This is a big decision since it is not known how a particular comment may affect the value of a collectible. Think baseball cards. If a famous baseball player signs his card, the value will most like go up, but if someone draws a stick figure on the same card, the value will go down if not completely lose all of it.

Furthermore, the glory of a lot of memes is unpredictable, limiting the lifespan of your investments. Therefore we want to make sure that users have the means of trading based on your future predictions. The platform for trading will be featured as a separate tab, where users will be able to create a trade by selling their collectibles or partake in the buying of it. MemeSHARE will allow exchanges of meme collectibles for currency, meme collectibles and meme collectibles, and meme collectibles for nothing (gifts or account transfers). Users will have a chance to inspect collectibles being traded for comments, identification, and authenticity. Once both parties confirm a trade, and a system confirms that parties own what they want to exchange, a call will be made to the MemeSHARE smart contract to transfer ownership of the collectible from one party to another. Trading meme collectibles have never been more accessible.

🔦 Future Sections

In the future, it would be interesting to build out a database of all collectibles, who owns them, what comments are present and so forth. Also building out a platform that utilizes the use of the collectibles is another interesting idea. Creating mini games, social media or reaching out to existing platforms to allow for the owners of collectibles to have privileges (emotes/icons/other) would be fascinating to see, and allow for further growth of the community.

💡 Currency

We believe it is essential to provide all methods of payment to reach out to the mainstream audience. Currently, the Ethereum currency known as "ether" is the only way to interact with the blockchain. Setting up an Ethereum wallet can be bothersome, and obtaining ether can be even more so. Also, gas costs necessary for each transaction that alters the state of the smart contract may far outweigh the costs of a collectible in a heated auction. To address these complications, the first feature we would like to implement is to allow for mainstream methods of payment, such as Credit and Debit cards, PayPal, and others. The second feature is for Ethereum wallet holders is to proxy all gas costs to us, allowing for seamless Ethereum transactions for those who choose to deal in ether. The success of the platform lies in creating an experience that will be accessible to all users.

💡 Collectibles Design

Collectibles design is an important part of the experience. Each collectible will contain: a drawn image with a unique style, meanwhile keeping the original content that made it so unique; a short description pertaining to the origin of the meme, its meaning, and/or any other remarks; a pop-out text that will display previous owner’s comments.

💡 Auction Prototype

Please see below, the image of the prototype webpage of MemeSHARE auction tab.

Please see below, a closer look at auction panel.

The prototype can currently be viewed on 👉 www.MemeSHARE.io 👈. In order to interact with the website, currently, you will need to install Metamask and switch network to Rinkeby.