Born out of the wreckage left behind by the collapse of FTX in November 2022, BONK is a meme coin geared toward bringing collectively the Solana neighborhood.
In December 2023, a BONK growth noticed the cryptocurrency’s market cap surge to over $1 billion, inflicting Solana Saga smartphones to promote out after savvy merchants realized that the BONK airdrop bundled with the telephones was value greater than the units themselves.
However what precisely is that this canine coin all about? What makes it particular? How does it work? And what even is the BONK meme?
What’s BONK?
Billed because the “social layer and neighborhood meme coin” of Solana, BONK is a Solana-based cryptocurrency with an ecosystem encompassing DEXs, dapps, NFTs, and—after all—a canine mascot.
As of Could 2024, Bonk is the sixth largest meme coin, and is the 63rd largest cryptocurrency of any kind by market capitalization, in accordance with information from CoinGecko.
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had been a vocal supporter of Solana, so when his fraud started to unravel in 2022, the Solana neighborhood was searching for a option to distance itself from the collapse of FTX.
With sentiment round Solana’s worth “at an all-time low,” 22 Solana builders joined forces to create a “neighborhood coin” with a helpful (and dog-themed) ecosystem surrounding it.
Whereas the BONK core crew stays nameless, they claim to have prior expertise constructing DeFi, NFT, and different merchandise on Solana. Additionally they defined that there isn’t a frontrunner inside the group, as a substitute working collectively as equals.
Shortly after the token launched in December 2022, Solana builders and neighborhood members have been airdropped round $300 value of BONK for Christmas. This was executed in an try to unite and reward the neighborhood for pushing by way of the exhausting yr. In response to CoinGecko, as of Could 2024 this airdrop is value over $550,000.
In January 2023, BONK’s builders burned 5 trillion BONK that was allotted to them, in a bid to cease the cryptocurrency’s worth from dropping. This burn shrunk BONK’s circulating provide by 5% to 94.2 trillion, however its worth continued to fall within the rapid aftermath of the burn.
What’s the BONK ecosystem?
In response to its official website, BONK has 129 integrations, however lists seven key projects in its ecosystem.
They embrace BONKbot, a Telegram buying and selling bot that enables Solana customers to commerce utilizing the messaging service, and BONKSwap, an automated market maker (AMM).
Different tasks within the BONK ecosystem embrace a gamified health platform (Moonwalk), a cross-chain bridge to purchase BONK (imaginatively known as BuyBONK), and a decentralized change (OpenBONK).
There are lots of different BONK-inspired Solana integrations spanning DeFi, gaming, and social, however we don’t have sufficient ink to undergo all of them one-by-one.
It’s, nevertheless, necessary to focus on BONK’s steady engagement with Solana NFT tasks. For starters, the challenge distributed 21% of its token provide to 40 lively Solana NFT tasks. On prime of this, a BONK-inspired NFT assortment known as BONKz was launched in 2023.
What’s in a reputation?
BONK’s identify references a collection of comedian memes, wherein canine—principally the meme-friendly Shiba Inu breed—have been hit on the pinnacle with hammers with a ‘bonk’ sound impact (clearly, no canine have been harmed within the making of the meme).
In response to KnowYourMeme, the ‘bonk’ meme originates from a 2019 Instagram submit which contains a “humorously malformed” Shiba Inu being struck by a hand holding a hammer, with a ‘bonk’ clip artwork and sound.
This quickly unfold throughout Twitter and Reddit with different canine getting bonked too. This meme later developed into the ‘go to horny jail’ response meme, despatched to customers that have been—because the cool youngsters say—being sexy on predominant.
In contrast to many meme cash, the BONK token makes use of its personal proprietary emblem as a substitute of the unique meme. That is helped it to keep away from the authorized battles over copyright which have affected some tasks, like BONK’s Solana meme coin stablemate Shark Cat.
What are the longer term plans for BONK?
Since its preliminary Christmas Day airdrop in 2022, BONK has been all about bolstering the Solana neighborhood. Its distribution technique going ahead is not any totally different.
The BONKDAO decentralized autonomous group has been assigned 15.8% of the full provide of BONK, in a bid to empower the neighborhood to decide on the place the BONK ecosystem goes subsequent. The DAO has voted on proposals together with the creation of a voting tutorial video, funding a marketing campaign, and burning treasury tokens.
On prime of this, any contributor who’s given BONK tokens to fund their challenge is given a 3 yr lengthy vesting schedule. This implies, in principle, that integrations are much less prone to rug the funding as they’re incentivized to stay round for a minimum of three years.
The perfect place to maintain up with BONK neighborhood bulletins is the BONK Inu Twitter account or the official Discord community.