What is Milady? The Edgy Ethereum NFT Community With Vitalik Buterin’s Support

Originating as an NFT group, Milady and its surrounding ecosystem has develop into some of the culturally vital teams in Ethereum and crypto as a complete.

Over time, notable figures have joined or interacted with the group, 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 group has defied many makes an attempt to decipher what on earth is happening in its self-referential world. At its most broad, the group 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 have interaction with the group, solely to get misplaced in a maelstrom of memes.

Don’t fear although—over time, we’ve develop into specialists on the subject. Right here’s what it’s worthwhile to 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 style 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 sequence “Bottle Fairy.”

Whereas at its core Milady is a profile image NFT undertaking, 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 referred to 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 magazine, different by-product NFT initiatives like Remilio Babies, a file label, and more. Whereas not technically beneath the Milady umbrella, a lot of the Remilia ecosystem overlaps with the Milady NFT group—each by way of its members and cultural method.

On prime of this, there’s a Milady Minecraft recreation server—referred to as Miladycraft—which acts as a social hub for its group 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 undertaking—after quite a few associated tokens have been launched however by no means formally endorsed.

This got here after six months after a pre-sale that the undertaking’s leaders and group members trolled as a rip-off. This was accomplished by way of spamming “Don’t worry about it” to anybody that requested what was taking place, 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 simply’re feeling.

A sequence 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 group is “network spirituality,” which broadly refers back to the cultural connections embedded by way of web memes and references—encouraging the embrace of the digital self.

In one other weblog put up 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 may have been canceled indirectly, resulting in the canceled taking up tradition.

As such, Fang argues the case for “pre-canceling” your self, for instance, by deliberately saying slurs—he believes that is “punk.” This may increasingly clarify among the controversial issues that Fang and Milady members have stated on-line. Because of this, Fang has develop into some of the polarizing founders in crypto—which was additional exacerbated by a 2022 controversy.

The Miya controversy

In 2022, the co-founder of DeFi Llama, 0xngmi, exposed Fang as having posted alt-right extremist content material beneath the pseudonym Miya. 0xngmi alleges that beneath 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 post, he stated that his actual views “maintain no room for hate” and that he detests abusers and groomers.

Fang defined in a blog post that he ran the account with different contributors between 2019 to 2020 as a “performative id,” 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 crucial satire.”

Miya has now develop into one other pillar of the Milady lore, with cult members embracing the controversy and affect moderately than ignoring its relevance. In some ways, the industry-wide cancellation of Fang and the Milady undertaking because 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 by way of the late 2010s, however the undercurrent of revolutionary irreverence will at all times be cooler than normalizing counter-pressure,” Fang wrote in a weblog put up virtually 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 area. 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 possibly can ignore.