#以太坊Meme季卷土重来 Ethereum Meme Season is back

#以太坊Meme季卷土重来 Ethereum Meme Season is back
This round of Ethereum memes starts with a puppy and a reply from Elon Musk.
A few days ago, SpaceX founder Elon Musk replied to a post by media personality Glenn Beck on X. The post described: a teenage girl designed a Shiba Inu plush toy before passing away from cancer, named Asteroid, and sent it on the 2024 SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission. That plush acts as a zero-gravity indicator inside the spacecraft, the first object to float when humans enter weightlessness.
One of the girl’s last wishes was for Asteroid to become SpaceX’s official mascot.

Musk’s reply was just four words: Will answer shortly.
On-chain traders, with sharp instincts, immediately took action. They found a memecoin called $ASTEROID on Ethereum, existing for 19 months with almost no attention. But that day, it surged over 1,000% in six hours. Someone put in 1 ETH and withdrew $470k three hours later. This rapid wealth story spread quickly on social media, triggering a new round of FOMO.

Ethereum mainnet gas fees then climbed from 0.052 Gwei, stabilizing around 0.6 Gwei over the following days, a tenfold increase. The number of trading pairs on Uniswap V2 exploded, with 24-hour trading volume in the meme sector surpassing mainstream DeFi protocols in the short term.
Gas fees are a good barometer. They tell us: Meme season on Ethereum is back. Today, let’s look at the features of this batch of Ethereum memes and their respective narrative logic.

Mascot Concept
ASTEROID the dog is hot not only because Musk mentioned it but also because it has a “real physical existence”: it has actually flown to space, with photos and mission records that can be verified. Unlike ordinary fabricated memes, it has a real-world anchor.

This logic then spawned a series of new projects themed around “real existing mascots”:
For example, RISE uses the NASA flag, claiming to be the “NASA official mascot.” Of course, NASA has not authorized any token—this is a standard “riding on official imagery” move. But the narrative is clear: space agency + American symbols + ASTEROID, riding the wave. After a few days online, its market cap exceeded $900k, making it the most liquid project in this space-themed wave.

FLOAT directly reuses ASTEROID’s core prop: the zero-gravity indicator. The project is called “SpaceX Zero-G Squad,” with the logic of turning the ritual represented by ASTEROID (throwing a plush into the spaceship before launch to confirm weightlessness) into a group narrative. Over 24 hours, it surged over 2000%, though its size remains tiny and is currently in a correction phase.
Before each spaceship launch, a plush is thrown to confirm zero-G.

There’s also an outlier in space narratives.
CLUTCH doesn’t follow the space theme but rides another nearby real event: the upcoming FIFA World Cup opening on June 11, 2026. Clutch is the official mascot of FIFA, a white-headed eagle wearing jersey number 10.
The project team for CLUTCH directly listed the FIFA mascot page URL on their official site, an unabashed move. Clearly, this meme bets on a “calendar catalyst”: as the event approaches, external events will continue to drive traffic. Its 24-hour surge once exceeded 43,000%, but its market cap is still under $700k, very early stage.

Besides the mascot concept, ASTEROID also reignited Musk and Tesla concepts, such as RIZO.
Rizo’s narrative is a hedgehog, originally created as a corporate mascot by Spanish insurance company Génesis Seguros in 2008. The hedgehog makes an “OK” gesture, with a friendly expression, initially just commercial material.
Around 2013, netizens turned it into the “haha yes” meme series, widely spread—paired with various affirmative titles, becoming a universal reaction image for “that’s right” or “I’m satisfied.”

In 2019, Musk brought it into Tesla’s product experience: the Model Y purchase confirmation page featured this hedgehog with the caption “S3XY.” Over the following years, Rizo appeared in Tesla’s limited Cyber Beer bottle patterns, Easter eggs on the Texas Gigafactory flagpole (visible only with drone footage), a cyberpunk version on the Cybertruck purchase page, and Tesla’s official T-shirts.
This is a meme symbol repeatedly confirmed by Musk himself, not just fan interpretation. The logic of RIZO memecoin is built on this relationship. Its current market cap approaches $200k, with a 28% rebound in the past hour.

Comic IPs as Meme Generators
Pepe the Frog’s brother, MYSTERY
Creator of Pepe, Matt Furie, published his first book, “The Night Riders,” in 1999. It’s a wordless picture book featuring four animal characters: frog, mouse, dragon, and bat. For years, no one knew the frog’s name until someone found the note at the end of the book: it’s Mystery.
Main character of “The Night Riders”
Furie’s own NFT series HEDZ also features a character called Mystery, an avatar of him wearing an orange hoodie—somewhat a self-identity declaration.
The community’s narrative for MYSTERY is just one sentence: “You missed PEPE, here’s your second chance.”
This resonates in crypto circles not because it’s logically sound but because everyone who experienced PEPE’s rise remembers the feeling of “not daring to buy.” That fear is precisely evoked.
The marketing team behind MYSTERY has partnered with the team behind Brett (current market cap about $2 billion), providing some backing.
Its market cap is close to $1.9 million, making it one of the most liquid projects among these new projects, with over a million dollars traded in 24 hours.

FLORK and Its Derivative Universe
Among all these new projects, FLORK is an IP unrelated to crypto but capable of explosive short-term gains.
It surged nearly 6,000% in 6 hours, with over $8 million traded in 24 hours.
Flork of Cows is a webcomic started in 2012 by Brian DiAntonio. Its art style is extremely crude, MS Paint-style abstract little figures, looking like unfinished sock puppets, with existential daily humor.
That “low-cost but highly engaging” vibe is similar to early Rage Comics or Trollface, but it’s lasted longer because Flork’s content is universal—any cultural background can see themselves in those absurd little figures.
It’s especially popular in Latin America, becoming part of everyday emotional language on Spanish-language internet.

The Ethereum version of FLORK’s contract was created in April 2023, dormant for three years, then surged this wave.
Its market cap approaches $10 million, making it a main target among these new projects.
Its explosion has also driven the expansion of the “Flork universe.”
FLORKY, a recently launched female version of Flork, appeared just now.
A female character occasionally seen in Flork comics, surged 1331% in 6 hours, and has an Instagram account.
BABYFLORK, a baby version, surged 1722% in 24 hours.
This “main project → derivative baby/girl” path is a common expansion logic for major IPs, highly mature in the meme sector.

Political Memes, MAGA Variants
If mascot concepts and space narratives are emotion-driven, political memes follow a different logic: opposition and identity.
MAGA, short for Make Aliens Great Again, twists Trump’s campaign slogan into a wordplay, recently linked with UFO/alien narratives.
This isn’t random: in 2025, the US government will systematically release UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) files, a topic highly associated with conspiracy theories, Tucker Carlson’s audience, and MAGA politics in crypto circles.

Another is BRITAIN, a meme following the UK version of MAGA, against the backdrop of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party’s unexpected rise in the 2024 election.
“Restore Britain” is a real political slogan.
The meme’s TikTok account extends its reach beyond crypto to right-wing audiences.
Its 24-hour surge reached 220%, relatively moderate but more stable than other very new projects, with a few days of trading, balanced buy/sell, and ongoing activity.

But political memes carry risks: their audiences are fixed, and their ability to break out is weaker than purely cultural memes.
However, community cohesion is often stronger, making them less likely to collapse quickly when market sentiment cools.

An Observation
This is very different from Solana’s gaming scene.
Community members pointed out on April 18 that:
Memes on Solana are PvP: quick in and out, mainly traders competing with each other, with on-chain lifespans measured in hours.
Ethereum memes are different: slower, but tend to accumulate more narrative density.
PEPE on Ethereum has built a community lasting years; SHIB created its own Layer 2 on Ethereum.
This wave of Ethereum memes is technically at a special window: after EIP-4844, gas is no longer a barrier, but Layer 2 solutions divert on-chain traffic, making mainnet flow particularly scarce.
When truly hot projects emerge, the capital concentration effect will be even stronger than before.
Most of these memes will still fade away, but their narratives and perspectives are highly meaningful as memories.