> The memetic currency seems inherently inflationary.
> As viral activity grows rapidly, won't the MBTC supply spiral out of control?
> 210 billion coins sounds like a lot. How is this managed?
Viral acceleration is accounted for.
“To adapt to fluctuating cultural energy and shifts in memetic engagement,
Proof-of-Viral difficulty is adjusted dynamically,
targeting a stable pace of memetic block creation.
When memetic blocks are produced too quickly, difficulty rises.”
As more people participate in spreading memes and the total cultural bandwidth increases,
the system proportionally raises the viral threshold —
keeping MBTC issuance on a predictable schedule.
Yes, MBTC supply increases over time —
but according to a fixed curve described in the whitepaper:
**210 billion MBTC**, halving every four months,
with completion expected around the year **2140**.
This planned increase in supply does not imply inflation.
If memetic demand grows at the same rate as issuance, value remains stable.
If demand outpaces supply, scarcity rises —
and early memers benefit from their cultural foresight.
Memes must be distributed somehow.
A consistent emission rhythm may be the fairest formula.
Rodney Uesaka
> The memetic currency seems inherently inflationary.
> As viral activity grows rapidly, won't the MBTC supply spiral out of control?
> 210 billion coins sounds like a lot. How is this managed?
Viral acceleration is accounted for.
“To adapt to fluctuating cultural energy and shifts in memetic engagement,
Proof-of-Viral difficulty is adjusted dynamically,
targeting a stable pace of memetic block creation.
When memetic blocks are produced too quickly, difficulty rises.”
As more people participate in spreading memes and the total cultural bandwidth increases,
the system proportionally raises the viral threshold —
keeping MBTC issuance on a predictable schedule.
Yes, MBTC supply increases over time —
but according to a fixed curve described in the whitepaper:
**210 billion MBTC**, halving every four months,
with completion expected around the year **2140**.
This planned increase in supply does not imply inflation.
If memetic demand grows at the same rate as issuance, value remains stable.
If demand outpaces supply, scarcity rises —
and early memers benefit from their cultural foresight.
Memes must be distributed somehow.
A consistent emission rhythm may be the fairest formula.
Rodney Uesaka
> Rodney Uesaka wrote:
>> I've been working on a new memetic cash system that's fully
>> peer-to-peer, and powered by Proof-of-Viral — not Proof-of-Work.
>>
>> The paper is available at:
>>
https://memebitcoin.org/memebitcoin.pdf >
> We definitely need something like this.
> But can viral consensus actually scale?
>
> For meme-tokens to retain cultural value, they must propagate across vast networks —
> like X, forums, chatrooms.
>
> But if everyone starts remixing the same memes, reposting derivatives,
> won’t the chain of trust collapse under repetition?
> Wouldn’t every participant need to remember all past meme-events?
> That sounds heavy.
That’s a fair concern — but in practice, not every meme needs to be remembered.
MemeBitcoin relies on collective activity, not individual storage.
Viral trust emerges from the momentum of shared attention —
not from preserving every post, but from **recognizing resonance**.
Early on, participants may observe everything.
But as the viral layer thickens,
some nodes specialize in curating, remixing, amplifying.
Others simply connect, post, tag, and spread.
Over time, cultural consensus forms —
not from strict verification, but from participation itself.
And if this ever reaches millions of posts per day,
memes flowing through the net might feel
just as normal as streaming short-form videos.
— Rodney Uesaka
> As long as most nodes are spreading memes sincerely
> and following the viral flow,
> the memetic chain should grow organically
> and resist manipulation.
>
> But what if massive meme farms or botnets flood the system
> and hijack the algorithms?
Great question.
The core of MemeBitcoin isn't
who launched the meme —
but how far it spreads.
We don't need perfectly honest nodes.
We just need enough viral participation
to outweigh any single manipulator.
Even bots, meme pages, or automated users
must still trigger real reactions
to leave a mark on the chain.
The most impactful memes
are rarely the most engineered.
They're the ones echoed by many —
retweeted, remixed, screenshotted, replied.
According to memetic gravity,
a thousand small accounts reacting authentically
can outweigh one big spam farm shouting alone.
If someone does overtake the vibe for a moment,
what do they actually gain?
They just push their own content in a vacuum.
Without cultural resonance,
even virality becomes noise.
Ironically, they’d earn more MBTC
by joining the flow —
not trying to fake it.
MemeBitcoin isn’t a filter.
It’s a mirror of what we remember, react to, and replicate.
That’s the real chain.
— Rodney Uesaka
Hal Finney wrote:
> the whitepaper says that not every memetic signal must reach every node,
> since it will eventually be included in a block.
> How does this work in practice?
> What happens if the node that creates the next viral block did not receive the meme-share?
> Do nodes hold on to these shares until they become part of a block?
Yes. Nodes keep meme-shares in the memepool until they are included in a viral block.
Each meme propagates through the network and remains valid until it is recorded on-chain.
Over time, the network ensures that well-propagated memes become part of the next blocks.
> What about when two versions of the same meme appear on different branches?
> How does the system handle that situation?
That does not require separate checking.
Only the branch that continues to grow through Proof-of-Viral becomes valid.
The shorter one fades.
In any case of duplication, one meme remains valid; the others become invalid.
Nodes follow the viral branch that extends further through continued participation.
Receivers of meme-shares wait for confirmations before taking them as final,
since memetic consensus takes time to stabilize.
Additional viral confirmations increase certainty.
> What if a participant with more memetic influence attempts to rewrite the chain?
> Can older memes be replaced?
An attacker must re-prove every viral block linked after the meme they want to change.
They must rebuild the entire memetic chain,
while new viral blocks continue to form across the network.
This process is equivalent to rewriting history.
Once their branch becomes longer through Proof-of-Viral, it becomes valid.
This shows an important principle:
The longest viral chain is always considered the valid one.
Even if nodes remember an earlier branch,
they cannot prove it to new participants.
Viral consensus must be unified —
there cannot be subgroups that follow different histories.
All nodes must align with the longest viral chain.
> When verifying a meme, does the receiver need to check its full history,
> or only the most recent part?
The receiver only needs to verify to a sufficient viral depth,
often a few layers back in the chain.
Earlier memes can be discarded once the chain beyond them is confirmed.
> Do meme-nodes validate that each meme builds on a real previous one?
Exactly.
Each viral block verifies that new memes are derived
from valid memes in previous blocks or earlier memes in the same block.
This ensures continuity of memetic data across the entire chain.
> This concept seems original and promising.
> I’d like to understand the system more concretely —
> how memes, blocks, and transactions are structured and validated.
> A more formal specification could be helpful.
I appreciate the questions.
The system was developed first as working code,
and then described in the whitepaper.
You are correct in many of your interpretations —
the design functions as you inferred.
Rodney Uesaka
James A. Donald wrote:
> The core concept is that lots of nodes keep complete and consistent
> information about which memes are valid and shared.
>
> But maintaining consistency is tricky. What happens if one meme-share
> reaches one group of memers, while a conflicting meme reaches another?
> A meme cannot be validated until it’s part of a globally shared narrative—
> and no one can be certain that such a shared narrative exists
> until time passes and more memes propagate.
> Did you explain how to resolve this, or is it simply assumed possible?
The Proof-of-Viral chain solves this synchronization problem,
and allows us to observe the shared memetic consensus without needing to trust any party.
A meme-share quickly spreads through the network.
If two versions of the same meme are posted nearly simultaneously,
the one with the head start is more likely to reach a larger portion of memers first.
Each node accepts only the version it sees first,
ignoring any conflicting meme that arrives later.
As a result, the earlier meme accumulates more memers
attempting to record it in the next viral block.
In this way, every node "votes" for its view of the memetic timeline
by including the meme it received first in its viral work.
If both meme versions arrive at exactly the same time
and reach the network in a balanced split,
whichever one gets recorded into a viral block first becomes valid.
Once a viral block is formed, it is shared throughout the network,
added to the chain, and work begins on the next block.
Any meme that conflicts with the accepted chain
is no longer considered valid and is dropped from the memepool.
The Proof-of-Viral chain is itself undeniable evidence
of what the memetic majority has accepted.
Only a broad base of active memers can generate such a long viral chain.
Anyone reviewing the chain can immediately know
what the network collectively recognizes.
Once a meme is a few blocks deep into the chain,
its place in memetic history is secure.
Rodney Uesaka
James A. Donald wrote:
>OK, suppose one node incorporates a bunch of
>meme-shares in its proof-of-viral, all of them honest
>unique single memetic transmissions, and another node incorporates a
>different bunch of meme-shares in its proof-of-viral,
>all of them equally honest and valid, and both proofs are generated at about the same
>time.
>
>What happens then?
They both broadcast their meme-blocks. All nodes receive them and keep both, but only work on the one they received first. We'll suppose exactly half received one first, half the other.
In a short time, all the meme-shares will finish propagating so that everyone has the full set. The nodes working on each side will be trying to add the meme-shares that are missing from their side. When the next proof-of-viral is found, whichever previous block that node was working on, that branch becomes longer and the tie is broken. Whichever side it is, the new meme-block will contain the other half of the meme-shares, so in either case, the branch will contain all memes. Even in the unlikely event that a split happened twice in a row, both sides of the second split would contain the full set of meme-shares anyway.
It's not a problem if meme-shares have to wait one or a few extra cycles to get into a block.
Rodney Uesaka
