- BONK, Solana’s Shiba Inu-based meme coin, has fallen 70% from its all-time high.
- The token’s price maxed out in mid-December, when the crypto community began snapping up Solana’s native phones to capitalise on free BONK airdrops.
- While BONK’s decline has impacted Solana’s on-chain fundamentals, its lasting impact will likely be negligible.
Solana’s top memecoin, BONK, has enjoyed a wild ride over the past month. The project – honouring the internet’s favourite dog, Shiba Inu – surged to dizzying heights in mid-December, gaining 11,000% and securing listings on top crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. For now though, it appears this run was unsustainable as the BONK coin has been in freefall ever since, dropping to over 70% beneath its previous all-time high.
What Happened to BONK?
Bonk flew extremely close to the sun, drumming up insane returns for some of the coin’s early investors. Noise around Bonk reached fever-pitch last month when Solana’s phones, Saga, were reported to come with a free airdrop of BONK coins worth much more than the smartphone’s retail value.
However the saying “what goes up must come down” is especially true for memecoins, as Bonk holders have found out over the past few weeks. Investing in projects that lack any real function is always a bit of a rollercoaster, and BONK returning back to earth isn’t much of a surprise for most experienced investors. But the project has proved to be a little more resilient – perhaps thanks to its prevalence within the Solana community – avoiding total catastrophe and even posting 20% gains in the last 24 hours.
What Does This Mean for Solana?
Recently, Solana has enjoyed increased ecosystem activity – largely trading volume and active on-chain wallets – culminating in the blockchain outpacing Ethereum for daily volume for 24 hours. A huge driver of this was the BONK pump, as users looked to jump on the hype train. As the train has slowed down, so too has Solana’s activity, with active wallet addresses down about 25% over the past month.
That said, the Bonk project was Solana’s flavour of the week, and its long-term impact on the DeFi blockchain will likely be minimal. Solana has a thriving community, several major developers and applications that will be vital to the evolution of cryptocurrency. Even though some crypto influencers are labelling Solana as a “rug pull”, everything points toward the network being a huge player in the next era of decentralised finance.
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