Author: Zuo Ye Waibo Shan
Meme Is Waiting for Its AMM Moment
On the 100th day since Robinhood Chain went live, we have not seen a second spring for PONS. The Meme / stock narrative has stalled, even though this was the greatest innovation since TRUMP issued a coin in 2024.
After a US president issued a coin, the Meme sector should not have had another high, until the emergence of US stocks. This should have been the opportunity for Binance bStock to become a prime broker, until the emergence of Meme / stocks, restoring onchain strength.
Stalling is the current state of Meme. US stocks are Meme's possible future. No regrets after making a move, but every step consumes the mind.
This twisted mentality leaves the entire crypto industry at a loss. Meme and tokenized stocks can pair in unexpected ways. After 100 days of momentum, tokenized stocks, stablecoins, and trading are still devouring real money, while launchpads, trading terminals, and Hook pools all carve up Meme profits.
The feeling of being locked outside is too expensive. Please enter the trenches and seek the path to salvation.
The Rise of Wild Finance
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Chemical weapons are the atomic bomb of the poor, Meme is the Perp of the Third World.
Hong Kong's Bitcoin conference has nothing to do with Bitcoin, and even nothing to do with CZ, who returned to Hong Kong after many years, just as Token2049 no longer has anything to do with Crypto. Although altcoins are recovering, everyone unanimously chooses stocks and Meme. Trust Wallet choosing HyperLiquid is also for RWA. On stage, people talk about how to become Wall Street. Off stage, people speculate on what Wall Street does not want.
Today's crypto also has nothing to do with decentralization, but the US dollar bubble will take long enough to burst, long enough to support an industry for decades. The money is always there. The only difference is whether it flows to the regular army or to the wild path.
The regular army's path is already fully occupied. The Trump account goes to Robinhood. Blood collection centers, savings rates, and Flock surveillance cameras are all about the midterm elections. Even if Meme has a hundred-day bloom, it is merely spillover from Trump's election strategy. Policy dividends reach compliant platforms first, and only then the chain.
Beyond traditional finance, it is crowded with Chinese crypto millionaires who want to come ashore and become compliant. Power expires and becomes void. Trump's pardons are expedited. But the later Generation Z, facing the undeserved status of Coinbase and Kraken, will inevitably be squeezed into wilder fields. Crypto relative to TradFi, Meme relative to exchanges, is nothing more than another cycle.
The conference belongs to others, the licenses belong to others, but the money in the bubble belongs to everyone.
I am willing to call Meme wild finance. It is closer to the essence of the coin world than the readable, writable, and ownable Web3.
Why has wild finance collided with US stocks at this moment?
After a long period of adjustment, the US government has brought most offshore exchanges under control. Binance has come ashore in the Middle East. OKX has partnered with ICE to seek an IPO. But US exchanges have discovered a new "regulatory arbitrage" opportunity.
The US government exempts onchain issuance and trading behavior, while offshore exchanges bind their own hands and feet. Then Coinbase + Circle jointly send USDC benefits to Hyperliquid, and Robinhood Chain launches Meme/US stock trading pairs. To some extent, this maximizes their compliance advantage: comply with US rules, arbitrage the whole world.
This is especially true for retail investors and young people around the world. They neither have the ability to open US stock accounts nor the principal to go all in on contracts. But YGG and StepN once proved that they are full of energy and willing to participate in financial games with small amounts of principal.
As it happens, in the 2021 retail investor battle against Wall Street, the main battlefield was Robinhood. It is just that GME is replaced by AMC in 2026.
A Standing Ticket for the Disruptor
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Those who cannot grab a seat have no choice but to flip the table.
Image caption: Gold digging in US stocks
Image source: @zuoyeweb3
Robinhood repriced stocks directly from the secondary market for the first time. This is as important as Pre-IPO, because US stocks are now very fragmented. On the one hand, more and more companies are stuck in long private holding periods. On the other hand, a small number of giants monopolize the vast majority of liquidity in the secondary market for a long time.
In other words, it can create liquidity during private holding periods and direct it toward Pre-IPO Perp. On the other hand, it can reprice the "few, zero, scattered" stocks in the secondary market, restore their liquidity, and direct it toward Meme stocks.
After the listing effect in the coin world, altcoins, and VC coins all died at the same time, how to innovate asset issuance methods will become the coronation of the next super platform. This will be more straightforward than the division among contracts, spot, and Meme. Hyperliquid could have ended the battle with Pre-IPO Perp, but relative to the giant-dominated US stock secondary market, its bargaining power against Anthropic is too weak.
This is the dilemma Robinhood faces. It must do the retail business of the secondary market, and at the same time find a way to touch underwriting before and after IPO. Meanwhile, Perp and prediction markets have already been occupied by others.
If everyone still remembers, when Robinhood Chain first launched, its trading volume was not outstanding. Bringing in the dYdX team to develop Arcus did not create a sensation. Uniswap also tried to promote its own CCA (serious coin) and Pools Trade (Meme) token issuance mechanisms, not to mention other DeFi giants. But the effect was similar: no effect.
Then Vlad followed the founder pet Meme craze that Solana started in 2024, actively cooperating with the community-discovered $Cashcat, igniting Robinhood's earliest Meme heat. But Robinhood still wants to do the stock business and earn the familiar PFOF rebates.
Everyone knows they want to do stocks. Binance frequently has founders enter the field to ignite Meme traffic. Coinbase targets tokenized stocks. But Robinhood first experimented with tokenized stocks, then RWA Perp. Only after Cashcat successfully ignited did it secure a place through Stock Meme.
Robinhood has not unified the market. It neither started Meme nor ended tokenized stocks. Instead, it played the role of disruptor, barely obtaining a standing ticket for itself.
Under such a two-way convergence, paired trading of Meme and stocks follows naturally. This does not diminish its innovative character. Imitation is not shameful. To surpass the earlier cat and dog craze and direct it toward stock trading is an honorable defeat.
Where It Failed
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The signboard is borrowed, and the customers cannot be taken away.
Over the past 100 days, Meme has tried to cosplay as a pricing power tool for stocks. Whether it was the AMC boss's legal letter or the SEC granting Uniswap an exemption for AMM market making, neither could sustain this momentum.
The SEC has fallen into a vicious cycle with the crypto industry: "regulate and it dies, loosen and it chaos." There is a natural paradox here. Americans trading US stocks do not need the chain. Foreigners trading US stocks are beyond the SEC's reach. It can only punish trading platforms.
Image caption: Trading re-retailization
Image source: @zuoyeweb3
Before one wave subsides, Robinhood has not successfully directed Meme trading toward tokenized stock trading. Before another wave rises, it has also not directed onchain liquidity to the Robinhood main site. The dilemma is similar to before. $UNI rises while $HOOD stays calm. The retailization of trading is still underway.
However, even in the Meme/stock boom in early September, the main trading pair was still Meme/USDG. Meme US stocks mainly exist as a gimmick and signboard. Once the heat fades, it must move to the next preparation period for heat.
If you want to earn daily DeFi fees in financial markets, remember that Ethereum DeFi's diversified income is sometimes inferior to a single stablecoin on Tron.
Here is a judgment: U-standard has successfully moved from exchanges to DEXs, from spot to Perp and prediction markets. Meme/stocks are destined not to last long. Meme's main function is still to build momentum and promote. It should be regarded as part of market strategy.
Taking the Meme path with coin-world characteristics
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Retail investors are not afraid of going to zero. What they fear is not even having the qualification to place a bet.Meme, after $TRUMP in 2024 and the coin-stock pairing wave in 2026, has already evolved beyond PumpFun launchers and GMGN trading terminals into social trading products like FOMO, fully demonstrating that Meme still has the fundamentals for a third wave of innovation.
The only question is: after the grand narratives of the president and US stocks, what mechanisms and elements can still mobilize sentiment?
Image caption: Crypto becomes a policy-driven market
Image source: @zuoyeweb3
Let's look at the most granular market structure. Building a chain or L2 is no longer a technical problem; the core is the flow of attention and capital. From the partial success of Robinhood Chain and the contrast with Arc's spectacular death, Meme first, DEX follows, DeFi takes over, RWA and AI sustain the narrative and vision, and fees are earned long-term—this is certainly how it will develop.
But this is only the "technique" of ignition, not the lasting "way." Although institutionalization thunders on, what truly sustains the entire market is still retail investors—or, to borrow Robinhood's term, the retail market.
Getting more retail investors to trade frequently in small amounts is enough to counter IBKR's institutional professional trading. In one sentence: the art of the electronic trading era is not NFTs, but the sense of participation in a massive online game. Spot or leverage, it doesn't matter. What matters is that atomic individuals need companionship. Spending money on Meme is no different from being a fanatical fan chasing a celebrity.
Robinhood did not become the hero of retail investors fighting Wall Street, but the philosophy of Meme transcends Bitcoin and becomes the pairing counterpart that stocks cannot shake off. Even if stocks are not hot, Meme will survive.
Exchanges becoming brokerages and competing over VIP services is merely the surface of this wild migration. What Meme truly acts upon is the identity representation of the younger generation. After BTC's pricing power was taken away by ETFs, Zcash took up the privacy narrative, but $1000 can launch 100 Memes—as long as one delivers a 1000x return, it can surpass boomer coins.
Price movements are a linear narrative, but ROI is on a logarithmic scale. The other side of US stock institutionalization is trading options rather than the stocks themselves. Increasingly complex gameplay causes ordinary people to be excluded from the capitalist financial system.
Image caption: US savings rate at historic lows
Image source: @business
Whether it was the 2021 universal stimulus checks providing the ammunition for retail investors to battle Wall Street, or Trump's enticing $5,000 vote reward, or even children's stock accounts, America's financialization and global inflation are inevitable. Liquidity will certainly keep being pumped into financial markets, and angry, indifferent kids prefer to go have fun with Meme.
Meme's AMM Moment
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Financial efficiency depends on your efficiency at depriving others of liquidity.
People and money are both there. What's stuck is something else.
What I want to say is that Base pushing into stock DeFi, from trading and lending to Perp, will definitely not be able to create a third Meme wave, because financial efficiency cannot be improved. The counterparty's liquidity stops out immediately once you start harvesting. Without the capital attrition between longs and shorts, the spirited young guys take profits when things look good and also exit when they don't.
In a highly fragmented market, how do you organize liquidity?
In "Hyperliquid's Path Here," I wrote that Perp's price sensitivity and CLOB's precise control align perfectly. Assets determine price changes; price changes require corresponding technical architecture; different technical architectures trigger different market-making mechanisms. Meme prices are pulses—they come fast and go even faster. AMMs designed for long-lived assets are not necessarily the optimal solution for Meme liquidity.
CEXs can handle everything with order books, but spot DEX AMMs cannot scale Meme—they can only launch and trade until heat death. No second DOGE has emerged to date. Contract CLOBs or Variational's RFQ cannot adapt to Meme's extreme fragmentation.
Everyone can only buy HYPE, BNB, or even $UNI, but no one holds $PUMP long-term. Ultimately, it's dissatisfaction with how Meme liquidity is organized—a refusal to accept it as the only answer for the Meme sector.
The depth of the pool determines the ceiling of Meme. Shallow pools mean high slippage, big money can't get in, and market cap can't grow. So-called heat death is when both price and hype are moving, but no one is replenishing depth. Professional market makers won't come—no hedging tools, too many coins with too short lifespans, the long tail isn't worth covering. But Meme pools' turnover and fee rates happen to be the highest in the entire market. Risk has its price; it's just that the barriers of pool selection, range selection, monitoring, and exit keep the vast majority out. Launchers exist for issuance, terminals exist for trading—only market making, this one link, still has no product for retail investors.
The contest for Meme liquidity requires an entirely new, paradigm-level invention. AMM for DeFi, CLOB for Perp—Meme is also waiting for its own. Looking forward to Meme's AMM moment.
Conclusion
A professionalized financial division of labor with crypto characteristics is underway, but Meme is never regarded as a new asset innovation. People will debate whether prediction markets are casinos, but everyone agrees Meme is nihilistic money PVP.
But looking at Robinhood's entrepreneurial history, the power of retailization is the most formidable. Everyone wants to play with the various financial instruments at the very bottom of capitalism. This is a long, bewildering journey. In 2008 we witnessed BTC. In 2026, will we see a retailized Jane Street?