THE STORY OF SHARK CAT
COMMUNITY TAKEOVER
Shark Cat was launched on March 26th, 2024 by a developer who sold all his tokens almost immediately following the launch. Shortly after the project was abandoned, some members of the crypto twitter community discovered the token, and in an effort to revive it, purchased tokens on the open market and set up social media accounts for it. The thesis was simple: cats a mf shark. The real kicker behind shark cat is the meme itself, a cute cat in a shark hat which was easy to meme with.
The project was met with incredible enthusiasm from the community. It’s cute, it swims and it bites, don’t overthink it. All of this eventually culminating in an ATH market cap of $400m just 6 days after the community takeover. The success of the community-led revival caught the attention of the cat's owner, Pookie, whose cat, Nala_Cat, is seen wearing the shark hat in the meme. Unbeknownst to the community at the time, Nala is the Guinness World Record holder for the world's most famous cat on Instagram, with 4.5 million followers. They expressed interest in getting in touch with the Shark Cat project.
CEASE & DESIST
After initial talks and negotiations with the Shark Cat community, a deal could not be met with Nala’s team and 4 members of the community were threatened with law suits as Nala’s team demanded the formal handover of the SharkCat project and no less than 10% of the token supply - an ask that was not possible for a community owned token.
Following the news of no deal being reached on April 8th 2024, cease and desists for IP infringement were sent to the various exchanges that had listed Shark Cat, some even removing the meme itself from the exchange listing. Upon this news, the community worked collaboratively to figure out a way around the IP and decided to edit the photo of Nala Cat and insert a black bar over her eyes thereby cancelling out any likeness that may have been used.
CATS A MF SHARK
For what seemed like forever, the community rallied behind the new identity for the meme, it wasn’t until May 2nd, 2024 that shark cat holders could breathe a sigh of relief that not only was the community able to use the original shark cat meme of Nala cat, but Shark Cat was the first viral cat meme to secure IP rights (intellectual property rights) of the meme it represents.
Following the news, the Shark Cat community went on to run postering campaigns across New York City, an IRL (in real life) art event at a gallery in New York City that showcased some of the communities art-inspired memes, and host an NFT auction with all revenues going to charity.
Today, the community continues to spread the word of the mf shark cat while also staying focused on the most important aspect of any meme-coin, its MEMES and RAIDS.
