Memetic Moonshot: Ray Chan on His Latest Web 3.0 Venture Memeland

The Internet is an integral part of our lives, but the advent of blockchain illustrates both its shortcomings and potential. Among its believers is 9GAG founder Ray Chan, who’s working tirelessly to usher in the third iteration of the World Wide Web.

Blockchain. Cryptocurrency. The metaverse. Web 3.0. These terms may still sound novel to most of us – despite taking the mainstream media by storm during the past two or three years, especially during Bitcoin’s all-time high in 2021 – but the underlying technology and guiding principles of these innovations have existed for much longer than you may imagine. Bitcoin, for example, was invented as long ago as 2008, by a programmer who went under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. But while blockchain technology can be traced back by more than a decade, Ray Chan, the Hong Kong-based founder of the meme-sharing website 9GAG, tells us that the ethos behind what many consider to be an impending revolution has existed for years.

“It almost goes back to what started the Internet in the first place,” Chan tells me as he retraces the concepts back to the late 1980s. “In Web 1.0, we talked a lot about open source and building it for the people. It’s just that in Web 2.0, things got so efficient and effective that all the power went to the big companies. For Web 3.0, we’re going back to the basics. If you believe in the Internet, Web 3.0 should be a better model instead of its current form.”

In essence, this new iteration of the Internet utilises blockchain technology to create a decentralised system that gives control back to its users, granting them greater ownership of both their created content and personal data. It’s been hailed as the great equaliser, which should level the playing field and significantly shift power dynamics between web users and massive corporations such as Meta or Google, and it’s precisely these ideals that spurred Chan to create his newest Web 3.0 venture, Memeland.

Thanks to Chan’s 15 years of experience with Web 2.0 through 9GAG, the problems plaguing the status quo are obvious to him, though he says the requisite solutions are now clearer than ever before. Describing current social-media models, Chan explains that, while the likes of Facebook and Instagram are free for both users and content creators, these platforms can take up to a 95 percent cut of advertising revenue, leaving its community with scraps. On the other hand, the payment models employed by the likes of OnlyFans and Netflix are able to provide their creators with a more significant cut, though paywalls may ultimately limit distribution. A superior alternative, says Chan, is SocialFi.

SocialFi combines social media with decentralised finance (DeFi) concepts such as decentralisation and digital ownership, so that content creators and users can both benefit directly. Through NFTs, creators can sell their content in exchange for digital tokens, giving them proper remuneration for their work, while fans can enjoy owning unique digital products that prove their loyalty. Since both the underlying cryptocurrency as well as the NFTs are limited in supply, their values naturally appreciate – or, at least, they have done so far – which has often made them better investments than traditional financial instruments. But while SocialFi products are the company’s ultimate goal, Memeland is currently focusing on building a community through NFTs and a fungible token named $MEME that will facilitate digital transactions, both of which are important foundational pillars for the project.

“If you look at Web 3.0, it’s made up of a few components. What I see is that many companies in the industry right now only have one component, and when they only have one, it can be good when it’s a bull market, but they’ll hit a bottleneck after some time,” Chan explains. “Different components need to work together to maximise impact – and that’s why, for Memeland, we use the analogy of cooking a three-course meal for a Web 3.0 dinner: NFTs, a fungible token and SocialFi products. With these three courses, it’ll make the dinner much more delicious.”

His approach is a refreshing one, especially considering the current bear market for crypto and NFTs. Anyone paying attention to the blockchain news cycle over the past several years will have heard of dozens – if not hundreds – of projects either being rug-pulled or completely falling off a cliff, in spite of bright and ambitious launches. In such a climate, Chan believes it’s critical to look not just at local peaks, but step back and observe market cycles, which so far have proven bullish.

But most important – and this is why Memeland stands out among the vast sea of Web 3.0 projects – is that Chan is able to appreciate the importance of something most other projects have yet to understand: that success with any Web 3.0 endeavour requires the collaboration of a lively, participating community, one that truly believes in your vision and the ethos behind what you’re doing.

“Among all the top companies in this area, Memeland is one of only few that actually have a very strong background in Web 2.0, as well as a strong start in Web 3.0,” Chan points out. “Most other top projects are basically semi-dead already. Unlike them, we have a very strong vision, and we want to build a community that’s interested in creating this SocialFi ecosystem together.” He adds: “A lot of people in Web 3.0 talk about building in public, but for us, whether we’re building things in public or not doesn’t really matter. Building with the community is the key.”

As a testament, Memeland has launched three separate NFT collections over the past year and a half since its conception – titled Potatoz, Captainz and MVP – and they’ve amassed upward of 6,000 collectors. Even more impressive is its follower base on Twitter, which has now exceeded 400,000 fans, making Memeland one of the most anticipated Web 3.0 projects in the post-Covid period. Unlike many other products or cryptocurrencies in that sphere, which heavily spotlight their own roadmaps and often make unrealistic promises, Chan prides himself in going completely without one. Instead, he simply holds a grand vision of what Memeland can ultimately develop into, and his team works closely with its online followers through social-media channels and its own Discord server to realise that vision, while constantly fine-tuning the latter according to user feedback.

Touching on Treasure Islandz – Memeland’s version of the metaverse – Chan drives home the point of why it’s necessary to keep options open and not restrict himself to an overly ambitious and over-promising road map, instead working with the community to build something people actually want.

“We never announce any road maps but we do have a vision of a few products we want to build,” he explains. “With Treasure Islandz, it’s a metaverse concept we want
to launch, but what it actually is is pretty fluid. Web 3.0 moves so quickly it’s almost like dog years: working one year in Web 3.0 is basically like working for seven years
in the rest of the tech industry. Because of this, we have a vision where people can participate and communicate with each other, but exactly what it is is still evolving.”

The concept of Web 3.0 will no doubt revolutionise the Internet, but to successfully bring around any revolution requires acceptance by millions of users, a challenge that countless tech pioneers have yet to conquer. Whether this will happen any time soon or what the end product might look like are questions no one can really answer now. But what we do know is that change is coming, and we’re going to need more thought leaders like Chan to bring us into this new age of interconnection.