What’s Milady? The Edgy Ethereum NFT Neighborhood With Vitalik Buterin’s Help – Decrypt

Originating as an NFT neighborhood, Milady and its surrounding ecosystem has develop into one of the vital culturally important teams in Ethereum and crypto as an entire.

Through the years, notable figures have joined or interacted with the neighborhood, together with the likes of Elon Musk and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Identified for its edgy humor, layers of irony, and cult-like mentality, the Milady neighborhood has defied many makes an attempt to decipher what on earth is happening in its self-referential world. At its most broad, the neighborhood spans a number of NFT collections, meme cash, world raves, a Minecraft server, and lengthy philosophical texts.

This has led many, together with the likes of alt-right political commentator Nicholas Fuentes, to try to interact with the neighborhood, solely to get misplaced in a maelstrom of memes.

Don’t fear although—through the years, we’ve develop into specialists on the subject. Right here’s what that you must know.

What’s Milady?

Milady (additionally known as Milady Maker) is an NFT assortment created by the Remilia Company in August 2021. The profile photos characteristic cute Chibi anime model characters with big shiny eyes, every with a person “drip” rating and grade. It’s believed the Milady character was impressed by Hororo from the anime collection “Bottle Fairy.”

Whereas at its core Milady is a profile image NFT mission, the Milady ethos rejects a lot of what’s to be anticipated of this sector. For starters, to be a Milady you don’t have to purchase an NFT—simply change your profile image on X (previously often known as Twitter), sparking the meme that merely altering your profile image to a Milady will change your life.

Remilia as an ecosystem additionally features a quarterly journal, different spinoff NFT initiatives like Remilio Infants, a file label, and extra. Whereas not technically below the Milady umbrella, a lot of the Remilia ecosystem overlaps with the Milady NFT neighborhood—each via its members and cultural strategy.

On prime of this, there’s a Milady Minecraft recreation server—referred to as Miladycraft—which acts as a social hub for its neighborhood members in addition to a considerate artwork piece on the state of recent gaming and society.

In December 2024, the Milady Cult Coin (CULT) launched on Ethereum because the official token for the mission—after quite a few associated tokens had been launched however by no means formally endorsed.

This got here after six months after a pre-sale that the mission’s leaders and neighborhood members trolled as a rip-off. This was finished via spamming “Don’t fear about it” to anybody that requested what was occurring, adopted by a stream of deep-fried AI-generated memes.

However actually, Milady is a mindset and a philosophical outlook on life. A lot of the Milady ethos comes from the writings of Charlotte Fang, the founding father of Remilia Company.

Who’s Charlotte Fang?

Charlotte Fang is the pseudonymous founder and CEO of Remilia Company, and in flip the chief of the Milady Cult. Fang principally goes by he/him pronouns, however informed Decrypt that she/her can be utilized relying on the “vibe” that you just’re feeling.

A collection of weblog posts on Mirror.xyz have afforded readers a glimpse into the controversial founder’s philosophical and sociological views.

A foundational idea for Fang and the broader Milady neighborhood is “community spirituality,” which broadly refers back to the cultural connections embedded via web memes and references—encouraging the embrace of the digital self.

In one other weblog publish titled “The Cancelled Will Inherit the Earth,” Fang philosophizes on the present state of cancel tradition. He argues that there’ll quickly be a time the place each particular person with a notable following could have been canceled not directly, resulting in the canceled taking on tradition.

As such, Fang argues the case for “pre-canceling” your self, for instance, by deliberately saying slurs—he believes that is “punk.” This will likely clarify a few of the controversial issues that Fang and Milady members have mentioned on-line. Consequently, Fang has develop into one of the vital polarizing founders in crypto—which was additional exacerbated by a 2022 controversy.

The Miya controversy

In 2022, the co-founder of DeFi Llama, 0xngmi, uncovered Fang as having posted alt-right extremist content material below the pseudonym Miya. 0xngmi alleges that below the Miya pseudonym, Fang was posting racist and homophobic content material, in addition to having inappropriate relationships with minors affected by consuming problems.

At first, Fang tried to distance himself from Miya, however ultimately caved in and admitted his involvement. In an X publish, he mentioned that his actual views “maintain no room for hate” and that he detests abusers and groomers.

Fang defined in a weblog publish that he ran the account with different contributors between 2019 to 2020 as a “performative identification,” masquerading as an AI writing from a “post-human” world with a “schizotheory” writing model. With this, Fang and the opposite Miya contributors had a “style for partaking in problematic content material” exploring fringe ideologies till their “logical conclusions as a type of important satire.”

Miya has now develop into one other pillar of the Milady lore, with cult members embracing the controversy and affect relatively than ignoring its relevance. In some ways, the industry-wide cancellation of Fang and the Milady mission on account of the Miya controversy solely led Fang’s followers to lean additional into the Milady philosophy.

“Woke censorship had its run and made for dreadful tradition via the late 2010s, however the undercurrent of revolutionary irreverence will at all times be cooler than normalizing counter-pressure,” Fang wrote in a weblog publish nearly a yr later. “Take into account how the primary thought anybody who hears about Miya being a LITERAL NAZI ANOREXIA CULT LEADER is: Cool.”

Regardless of the controversy and wider fall of the NFT market, Milady continues to be culturally related within the crypto house. In 2023, Tesla founder Elon Musk posted a Milady meme, inflicting its value to spike. Then in 2025, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin donned a Milady profile image in what many believed was a vibe shift as he entered “wartime mode.”

Milady is complicated, controversial, and weird—but it surely’s not one thing you’ll be able to ignore.