The Avalanche Foundation — the organization behind the smart contract blockchain platform Avalanche — is doubling down on memecoins with a liquidity mining incentive program to drive momentum for community-owned coins within its ecosystem. 

On March 21, the foundation announced “Memecoin Rush,” which provides $1 million in Avalanche (AVAX) tokens as an incentive for traders and liquidity providers of community coins based on Avalanche.

The program’s first phase will begin on the decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms SteakHut and Trader Joe. Avalanche said these platforms will “incentivize trading and add liquidity strategies” for community tokens within the network.

According to the announcement, rewards will be given to liquidity providers on liquidity pools of memecoins Coq, NoChill, Tech and Kimbo paired with the AVAX token.

In addition, Avalanche listed Coq, Kimbo, NoChill, Gec, Tech, Husky, Meow, Kong, Meat and Kingshit as beneficiaries of the incentive program’s vaults.

While crypto community figures like Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin have been critical of memecoin traders, Avalanche seems to have a different perspective.

On Dec. 29, it announced that its $100 million culture catalyst fund would be used to purchase memecoin assets based on the network.

Avalanche said that memecoins represent the “collective spirit and shared interests of diverse crypto communities” and claimed that they go “beyond mere utility assets.”

It also highlighted that the initiative aims to position its blockchain as a network that supports new forms of creativity and culture.

Related: Trader fumbles $1M bag after selling a Solana memecoin early

On Jan. 24, Avalanche clarified that not all memecoins will get a piece of the $100 million fund. The foundation shared eligibility requirements like having contracts renounced, possessing low ownership concentration among whales and having high levels of liquidity.

The Avalanche foundation also said that the project should be a month old at minimum.

In March, memecoin on the Solana network hit what a community member described as “peak degeneracy,” with token projects raising over $100 million in just three days.

Memecoin founders received millions from March 15 to 18 through a controversial fundraising method called “pre-sales.”

With this crowdfunding model, investors send Solana (SOL) tokens to a wallet address, hoping to receive a weighted distribution of tokens once it goes live. However, there is no guarantee that the investors will receive the tokens in exchange for their SOL.

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