Solana is up 16% over the past 24 hours to a price of about $12.90. Much of the chatter and hype in the Solana ecosystem over the last few days has focused on the rise of BONK, a Solana-based token with the same kind of “doge meme” theme as Dogecoin (DOGE) and the Ethereum-based token Shiba Inu (SHIB).
BONK launched in late December with a large-scale airdrop, with free tokens sent to the wallets of a wide array of Solana developers and NFT collectors. This included developers that joined LamportDAO, a hub for Solana builders, as well as owners of NFTs from projects including DeGods and Famous Fox Federation.
Following holiday airdrops that began on December 25, BONK has become the growing focus of conversation and development among Solana developers and users on Crypto Twitter. Projects are building with BONK and integrating the token, and the growing use and excitement appear to be fueling a surge in both BONK’s price and SOL’s own value.
Overall, 100 trillion BONK tokens have been minted. According to the BONK website, 50% of the total supply has been airdropped to developers, NFT owners, creators, and artists, with a chunk of the remaining supply also locked into vesting contracts for BONK contributors.
BONK is up 58% over the past 24 hours to a current price of $0.00000105, with nearly $20 million in trading volume over the span and a market cap of almost $58 million.BONK showed a more than 100% day-over-day rise as the coin’s price kept surging, but the momentum has softened since.
It’s arguably the brightest sign that the Solana market has seen in the last two months since the early November collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX torpedoed SOL’s price and dampened enthusiasm in the space.
SOL traded for as much as $37 just before FTX’s liquidity crisis, and FTX’s close ties to Solana apparently crashed its price harder than other leading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
