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Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
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Pepe’s new Layer 2 cross-chain meme coin, Pepe Unchained ($PEPU), is now the largest meme coin presale in Web3 history, having raised an unprecedented $70 million since it began this summer.
It’s showing no signs of slowing down, either. Currently, $PEPU is netting over $2 million a day. Over on the official website, a countdown timer displays just nine days left for interested investors to buy in at a fixed presale price of $0.01295 per token before it launches on centralized and decentralized exchanges.
However, word on the grapevine suggests the presale could conclude much sooner, and the token could launch on CEXs and DEXs by early next week.
Given the extraordinary hype, once Pepe Unchained hits the open market, it’s likely to go to the moon.
The Pepe Unchained presale launched this summer to a wave of hype as meme coin fans bundled in to take advantage of virtually unheard-of staking rewards, alongside lower fees and 100x faster speeds for anyone transacting with $PEPU than its leading ERC-20 meme coin competitors.
To understand the scale of its ICO, one of the year’s biggest meme coins, Slothana, raised $15 million, which was considered a gargantuan fundraising at the time. $PEPU has netted over 4x that amount.
Beyond $PEPU’s ICO, the token’s likely listing on exchanges could smash the ceiling on its potential appreciation. So, for those who still haven’t made their minds up, there may never be a better time to buy in – an investment of $100 bags 7,722 $PEPU.
Read on to find out how Pepe’s new Layer 2 blockchain token rewards its holders with a glimpse into the future of meme coins.
Pepe: A Classic, Unchained and Reimagined
The original Pepe (ticker: $PEPE) is the third-biggest meme coin in crypto with a $8.2 billion market cap. It’s also the largest non-canine meme coin on the market.
The already-famous avatar dropped four years before Bitcoin’s launch in 2009. Pepe was originally a character in the webcomic Boy’s Club, designed by Max Furie, known and memed for his catchphrase “feels good, man”.
He then became a global sensation. Pepe became a political icon after appearing in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Since the original $PEPE’s launch, other tokens inspired by Furie’s comic have dropped, but none enjoyed quite the same success as the original.
Tokens derived from the Boy’s Club webcomic capitalize nearly a tenth of crypto’s lofty $125 billion meme coin sector. Brett coin ($BRETT)—which is on Coinbase’s proprietary Ethereum Layer 2, Base—corners $2 billion of the market, while $PEPECOIN’s market cap approaches half a billion today.
Clearly, the appeal of these viral coins lies in their potential to blow sky-high. If you had bought $PEPE one year ago today, your stash would be up 1,552%. Diamond-handed $PEPECOIN hodlersHODLers are up an unbelievable 1,628% from this time last year, according to CoinGecko.
$BRETT holders bought during late February’s launch are up nearly 19,735%. Given its origins as a Layer 2 meme coin, Pepe Unchained could follow a similar trajectory to Base’s Brett. However, it’s worth noting that while Coinbase backs Base, Pepe Unchained is a grassroots Layer 2 blockchain made by independent developers.
Pepe’s New Layer 2 Capabilities and Tokenomics
Back in September, the team announced an ecosystem roadmap in a multi-tweet thread over on X.
Two key features in Pepe Unchained’s ecosystem expansion drive include its very own Layer 2 blockchain with a decentralized exchange (DEX) for cheap swaps between $PEPU and supported tokens, alongside a Pepe Foundation, which will help fund “an entire ecosystem with the best developers in the space contributing.”
Additionally, meme-savvy crypto fans will have known about two other features since launch: a dedicated block explorer to see all transactions on Layer 2 and a Pepe Unchained bridge for instant and low-cost bridging between Pepe Unchained and Ethereum’s Layer 1.
Pepe Unchained is the first meme coin on its proprietary Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain.
Ethereum is the most commercially important blockchain, thanks to a giant community of application developers and consumers who made the network the number one blockchain for decentralized finance (DeFi).
However, Ethereum can currently only process about 15 transactions per second (tps), resulting in high network congestion and large transaction fees.
To solve this, developers have created several Layer 2 protocols. Layer 2s sit atop the main Ethereum network and process transactions independently on a side chain before adding them to the Layer 1 blockchain ledger.
Famous Layer 2s include Polygon, represented by the $POL token (formerly $MATIC), with a maximum recorded 429 tps. Layer 2 tokens have collectively amassed a market cap of over $20 billion.
Pepe Unchained taps this tech to offer a meme coin that’s a hundred times quicker and cheaper to transact with than Ethereum. Pepe Unchained offers juicy rewards to $PEPU stakers, with a variable yield rate currently set at 64% APY.
$PEPU Tokenomics and Further Reading
A total of 3.2 billion $PEPU, or two-fifths of the total supply of 8 billion $PEPU is allocated to the presale, with a hefty 30% (2.4 billion $PEPU) going towards staking.
A tenth is earmarked for the token’s marketing, while the remaining 20% is split equally between DEX liquidity and project development (both 7.5%), with the remaining 5% going into Pepe Unchained’s Layer 2 treasury.
This is not a presale to miss, and interested investors have less than nine days to get in on the ground floor.
Readers can learn more about Pepe Unchained by checking out the official website and whitepaper, or following the official X and Telegram accounts.
The project’s smart contract is fully audited by SolidProof and $PEPU can be easily bought with ETH, USDT or bank card.
Visit the Pepe Unchained website
