The last few months have seen the Polkadot network come back to life, and ironically, a project called “Dot is Ded” is behind that. Backed by the $DED token, this grassroots memecoin has gone out of its way to get noticed, winning praise and admiration for the way it has leveraged the resilient and never-say-never attitude of the Polkadot community.
It’s safe to say that Polkadot is back. Daily trading volume in the past has tipped over $1bn. The community sentiment is absolutely bullish. While the coin price is nowhere near the ATH of the last bull run, optimists and maximalists will argue that there’s nothing stopping them from revisiting a similar price level.
Dot is Ded set out with a mission of revitalizing and resurging the Polkadot ecosystem, and while they won’t claim sole responsibility for the recent results, they can be sure that their efforts were a significant catalyst and a bonafide mood changer. They have been helped, in large part, by a mouthwateringly large marketing spend.
How DED Built a ~$1m Marketing Budget!
Almost no new startup in the crypto space has ever had $1m to work with. $DED is built different. With no celebrity backers, no VCs, and just a community team and mission, they had to get creative. This is what DAOs, governance, and treasuries were built for, and so, instead of selling equity for funds, $DED went to Polkassembly and simply asked for some DOT.
Here’s the opening statement of their pitch: “Market sentiment is shifting, and several treasuries are actively investing to stimulate growth and excitement during this bull run. For example, Solana’s initiatives, such as $BONK, are leveraging this opportunity effectively. This project’s funding rationale is to capitalize on the memecoin trend as a marketing tool for the DOT ecosystem and to showcase Polkadot’s diversity and buzz-generating capabilities.”
It worked. On December 27th, 2023, Polkadot’s DAO voted 61% in favour of releasing 91,557 DOT to the $DED team. At the time, the value was around $8.41 per DOT, but since then the price performed well, peaking at around $10.75. Therefore, the total value of their 91,557 peaked at about $975,000, just shy of $1m.
Lunar Strategy, Flight3, and RZLT, the three marketing agencies behind the pitch and now leading an exciting multi-pronged marketing campaign, can revel in the fact that their previous work had already positioned $DED as the leading DOT memecoin. This was crucial to them being selected to bring Polkadot back to life.
$DED on MEXC – Trading Volume Shows It Is Very Much Alive
DOT is DED ($DED), the community-centric memecoin revitalizing the Polkadot ($DOT) network, has listed on the top-10 cryptocurrency exchange MEXC. Users committed 49,939,063 $MX to support the DED listing during MEXC’s Kickstarter campaign. These campaigns help identify high-quality projects and offer free airdrops to users.
This centralized exchange listing enhances the legitimacy of DOT is DED, which has already received over $1m from the DOT treasury and distributed $DED to over 1.3m DOT wallet holders via a free airdrop. The $DED listing now exposes it to more than 10 million MEXC customers in 170 countries. MEXC benefits from the active DED community and the fact that many DED holders are also Polkadot supporters.
The DED/USDT trading pair opened on MEXC on May 9th at 11:00 (UTC) and saw over $1.7m in trades within the first four days, with the highest volume of $527,800 on May 11th. MEXC, ranking between 10th and 11th in trading volumes with over 2,100 cryptocurrencies, offers $DED a larger ecosystem, aiming to boost trading volumes and engagement. This partnership is crucial for DED’s longevity and success, promoting activity on the Polkadot network.
Hot on the Lips – Influencer Shoutouts
Dot is Ded has been talked about by some of the biggest influencers in the crypto space recently. Take Lark Davis for example, with over 1.1m followers, who shared a tweet of him unstaking his $DOT to make sure it qualifies for the $DED airdrop. This same activity was then shared by AshCrypto to his 1m followers, this time showing exactly how much $DOT he was moving – about $2m worth. That Martini Guy, with 540k followers, told his huge audience exactly how to qualify for the airdrop, with Boxmining (211k) saying “$DED will be THE meme coin on $DOT”.
Mando CT (207k) tweeted “I just bought over 3000 $DOT (21,300 USD) from KuCoin and transferred to my wallet to join the $DED Airdrop on Polkadot.”, before shouting out Subwallet, Talisman, and Nova, in another display of ecosystem support. Finally, YouTubers DataDash, DubzyXBT, and CyrilXBT have all also made positive comments about $DED in recent videos.
Major Community Partnerships
Partnerships, collaborations, grassroots activities – call them what you like, but a common theme that has inspired not just the Polkadot network, but other blockchains too, is how DED has driven people to take action. The community has banded together in style.
One poignant example of community involvement is from the Astar Network, which has granted $DED token holders full access to their new game, Astar Strike. They’re also going to redistribute any $DED they get from the airdrop to their own NFT holders – talk about layers!
Polkadot wallets and bridges have also gotten involved, in a major way. StellaSwap, a hybrid DEX on Moonbeam, introduced a new DED-DOT feature where users could stake DOT and still qualify for the airdrop. Bitfrost then did the same, building a similar liquid staking feature. Neurolanch and Talisman are running a 350 DOT (~$2800) giveaway in the build-up to $DED’s release, Nova Wallet is giving 20 people 20 DOT each, and Subwallet App is giving 20 people 10 DOT each.
Final thoughts
The $DED project has breathed new life into the Polkadot network, leveraging community support and strategic marketing to achieve significant milestones. From securing a $1m marketing budget through Polkadot’s DAO to listing on major exchanges like MEXC, Hydradx, and Stellaswap, $DED has proven its impact. Influencer endorsements and strong community partnerships further underscore its success. As $DED continues to stimulate activity within the Polkadot ecosystem, its journey showcases the power of grassroots efforts in the crypto space.
