Charles Hoskinson's Meme Coin Plummets Over 90% in Just Hours

The founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, has launched the Quinelings project; open-source programs that can reconstruct their own code and take on the form of living beings. However, a meme coin on the Solana network that borrowed this name has plummeted within hours.

This project is based on the concept of quines; programs that have been around for decades that print their own source code as output. Hoskinson refers to the versions created by himself as digital lifeforms.

What Exactly Do Charles Hoskinson's Quinelings Do?

Say hello to Quinelings; self-replicating digital lifeforms made entirely from code.

In his introductory video, programs typed in a terminal environment transform into entities that feed, reproduce, and die.

Each Quineling begins its work as steps written to perform a task provided by a human or an AI agent. The moving body of this entity simulates and visualizes each of those steps.

Complex and branching tasks grow bodies with fractal structures, while simpler tasks form petals resembling those of a sunflower. The project's website showcases five examples, including a route finder and a job scheduler.

Visitors can execute any task and click on different parts of the entity's body to see the values related to that step. There is also a copy button that reconstructs the program from its source code and checks the correctness of the response.

Before a program is created, its compiler rejects tasks that exceed the set size limits or contain endless loops.

In a section called Ranch, two programs can produce a child. The result from one parent can feed into the task of the other parent, but this only occurs when the value types and their units match.

Currently, all these examples run as a local browser simulation.

This release expands Hoskinson's focus on the field of artificial intelligence. In September, he predicted that "crypto will swallow AI." Earlier this month, he dismissed Vitalik Buterin's warning about AI as "selfish and self-serving." Previously, he had also released a free tool to remove the watermark from the AI model Claude owned by Anthropic.

Why Did the Imitative Meme Coin Plummet Within Hours?

In the code repository of this project, there is no mention of Cardano, blockchain, or tokens.

However, shortly after Hoskinson's post, a meme coin on the Solana network named Quinelings appeared on the PumpSwap platform.

The page for this token on the DexScreener website links to GitHub and Hoskinson's post on X network. However, there is no evidence confirming any participation or connection of the Cardano founder with this token.

This coin lost over 90% of its value within hours.

Famous names often cause volatility in such tokens. In August, a post from Elon Musk about a raccoon led to a 331% surge in the meme coin JIMOTHY.

Bots can buy such tokens at the moment of their launch, leaving subsequent buyers with heavy losses.

The founder of Cardano has introduced the Quinelings project as a research prototype, not a token. The stated goal of this project is to simplify the process of maintaining, reviewing, and sharing tasks of AI agents.