Meme coins are in the spotlight after shiba inu coin's massive run. Here are the 10 largest by market cap.

• Meme tokens have been hounding the spotlight thanks to shiba inu's massive run.
• "These are driven by culture and represent an underlying theme or movement," John Wu of Ava Labs said.
• Here are the top 10 meme coins by market capitalization.

Thanks to shiba inu's massive run, the coin is now the top meme token and eighth-largest cryptocurrency overall after its founding just over a year ago in August 2020.

But what exactly is a meme token? John Wu, president of Ava Labs, the team behind altcoin avalanche, put it simply: "These are driven by culture and represent an underlying theme or movement, rather than special technical use cases."

That's not to say meme coins, which are typically borne out of jokes, are useless. The ethereum-based shiba inu, for instance, is developing shibarium and shobosi games and is offering non-fungible tokens, to name a few.

And if anything, the eye-popping success of shiba inu only reinforces that investors should not dismiss meme tokens, Tim Frost, CEO of digital wealth management platform YIELD App, told Insider.

"The value of a crypto token is decided upon by the people that are buying and selling. And if the people that are buying decide that they like a dog meme coin, then a dog meme coin is going to be popular," Frost said.

Apart from the coin with a cute puppy as its mascot, there are other meme tokens out there that are well-loved by the crypto community. Here are the top 10 by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap data.

10. Doggy

• Ticker: DOGGY
• Price: $0.008882
• Market capitalization: $35.9 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 661
• One-week performance: +34.02%

9. Tiger King

• Ticker: TKING
• Price: $0.00009783
• Market capitalization: $58.9 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 544
• One-week performance: -13.41%

8. SafeMoon Inu

• Ticker: SMI
• Price: $0.00007325
• Market capitalization: $73.2 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 496
• One-week performance: +744.39%

7. CumRocket

• Ticker: CUMMIES
• Price: $0.06276
• Market capitalization: $82.8 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 466
• One-week performance: +41.17%

6. MonaCoin

• Ticker: MONA
• Price: $1.44
• Market capitalization: $94 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 440
• One-week performance: -5.12%

5. Hoge Finance

• Ticker: HOGE
• Price: $0.0005165
• Market capitalization: $203.9 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 285
• One-week performance: +169.48%

4. Dogelon Mars

• Ticker: ELON
• Price: $0.0000007371
• Market capitalization: $405.8 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 156
• One-week performance: +49.59%

3. Samoyedcoin

• Ticker: SAMO
• Price: $0.1607
• Market capitalization: $467.9 million
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 234
• One-week performance: +712.51%

2. Dogecoin

• Ticker: DOGE
• Price: $0.2991
• Market capitalization: $38.3 billion
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 10
• One-week performance: +19.10%

1. Shiba Inu

• Ticker: SHIB
• Price: $0.00007928
• Market capitalization: $45.0 billion
• Overall crypto market cap rank: 8
• One-week performance: +181.46%