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BY Jex Exmundo •
January 05, 2023
The final 12 months have been rough for Solana, to place it flippantly. Once thought to be a cleaner and greener alternative to Ethereum, following 2022’s Earth-moving Merge that saw the NFT community’s most widely-used blockchain finally shift to the extra energy-efficient proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, Solana lost certainly one of its most important advantages over its biggest competitor within the NFT area.
Couple this with a large August 2022 hack that noticed more than 8,000 Solana crypto wallets emptied of millions of dollars in SOL, along with controversy concerning the stance of its flagship NFT marketplace Magic Eden on creator royalties. If that wasn’t sufficient, in late December 2022, Frank III announced that DeGods and y00ts — two of the blockchain’s most popular NFT projects — will migrate to Ethereum and Polygon someday in Q1 2023.
Things could look dire for Solana on the surface, but Frank’s announcement additionally coincided with the issuance of the first ray of hope for the blockchain this 12 months: $BONK. But can the hype carry SOL’s development right into a meaningfully sustainable position? We’re simply weeks into Bonk’s existence, but that doesn’t imply we can’t provide all the necessities to comply with its profession as the newest meme token.
First off — what does “bonk” even mean? A meme token much like Shiba Inu or DOGECOIN, it launched on December 25, 2022, and despatched SOL’s worth into a surge of 34 % in 48 hours, based on CoinMarketCap data. Half of the token’s provide was airdropped to customers, in a move to avoid Alameda-like economics — and this brought on greater than $20 million in trading quantity. Although its precise etymology may be up for debate, its intent as an echo of earlier meme coins is obvious.
What do you get whenever you mix #Solana, memes, and a 100 trillion total provide with group airdrops?
BONK! pic.twitter.com/sUb1bt9S2W
Inspired by the grassroots growth and growth of its predecessor, $BONK is being positioned as a coin that’s “for the people, by the individuals,” in accordance with official statements on its social media profiles and website. Aligning with this technique, the 50 p.c of $BONK’s nearly 100 trillion coins in supply had been airdropped to artists, creators, and community members lively within the Solana group. That’s more than 23 trillion in circulation as of writing, giving multiple creators in the area the newly coined title of Bonk billionaire.
So how do you purchase $BONK, then? If you can’t luck out into an airdrop in Solana communities you may be part of, your greatest guess would be to buy some SOL through a crypto change similar to Binance, then head on to a decentralized exchange like Dexlab to commerce in your SOL.
Through $BONK, its improvement group hopes to sort out the alleged harm that “predatory actors extracting from retail for their very own gain” have wreaked on Solana throughout 2022, based on its bonkpaper. With that in mind, these first few weeks of Bonk’s circulation on the open market have seen builders on Solana rewarded for their hard work in creating this blockchain.
The crazy thing is, it just might be working. As of writing, Bonk’s market cap sits at roughly $106 million. That’s almost 10 occasions larger than Samoyedcoin’s $11 million market cap, Solana’s earlier resident dog token. In the short time period, it’s even rescued Solana from lows it hasn’t seen since February 2021.
In response, many Solana-powered platforms like Magic Eden have indicated robust curiosity in integrating the brand new coin as an accepted forex on their platforms. Meanwhile, NFT projects like Jungle Cats have promised holders of their NFTs the chance to earn $BONK upon staking their NFTs. DeGods venture leaders and neighborhood leaders missed the possibility to get in on the $BONK train, nonetheless, following $BONK burning the 500 billion $BONK allotted to the project.
Although the $BONK’s high yields have been a boon to many, excessive yields sometimes don’t final. However, Bonk burned a complete of 1 billion of its provide on January 3, which implies the jury’s still out on whether or not it’s going to maintain respectable worth in the long run. In the best-case state of affairs, it’ll find a continued niche among merchants like $DOGE and $SHIB earlier than it. Despite the huge rally $BONK’s seen in past weeks, the two OG Shiba Inu-inspired meme coins nonetheless eclipse $BONK in current buying and selling quantity as of writing. This might speak properly of Bonk, since, for instance, Shiba’s all-time 24-hour buying and selling quantity high was $84.48 million. That’s greater than 4 occasions that of Bonk’s, but it proves that a surge doesn’t routinely imply a token will go the method in which of passing trends. This signifies that in the worst case, it’ll proceed to tank in worth within the coming months following this current surge, similar to nearly all of meme cash that have hit the crypto market within the last decade.
To guarantee $BONK’s current success won’t simply be a flash in the pan, its group might need to put in severe work to keep the ship afloat. Still, whatever becomes of $BONK in the future, there’s one we are in a position to say with certainty: this is the shot in the arm Solana’s wanted for quite some time. As the meme token’s first month in the house carries on, we’ll be here to offer the full image.
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