An argument could be made that the 2016 presidential election was won with memes. Who would have thought the lowly meme, a humorous pairing of text and an image that is spread on the internet, could come to take such a prominent role in our contemporary culture?

Like other forms of user-generated content, memes are shared haphazardly across multiple platforms, which has made it hard to assign them value. Blockchain technology has the potential to change that. Blockchain is poised to revolutionize the way user-generated content is shared and valued in the upcoming years.

Meme Wars is a game that uses blockchain technology to introduce new ways to share and monetize memes through creative competition. In Meme Wars, players submit memes based around a theme to “battle” each other. The community votes for their favorite meme by staking Ether, a popular cryptocurrency. The most upvoted meme in a battle is declared the winner, and the Ether that was used to vote on the losing meme is distributed to the winning meme and its supporters. Meme Wars explores new models for sharing, monetization, and content analytics that blockchain makes possible.