Bonking
Good morning/evening
As you are probably aware there are hundreds if not thousands of meme coins, pump.fun had a time where it was churning out more meme coins per day than I could care to count, with a large portion of those being rug pulls and scams. Now I am not a meme enthusiast as I think they can give crypto a bad reputation, there are the people who get rekt on memes and then say Solana is bad, there is much more to Solana than memes.
There are though some memes that are more than mere rug pulls and scams though, that have stood the test of time like DOGE, PEPE, SHIB and BONK. What started as Solana’s tongue in cheek response to Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, Bonk has evolved and now has it's own meme coin sharing platform 'Lets bonk' that is currently overtaking pump fun on volume.
The birth of Bonk
Bonk was launched in late 2022 as a community driven meme coin on the Solana blockchain. At the time, Solana was suffering from a PR crisis due to the collapse of FTX, which had heavily backed the ecosystem. In that gloomy bear market moment, BONK emerged as a kind of defiant joke, a lighthearted attempt at something fun, community driven that didn't promise anything. The coin was airdropped to a wide range of Solana users and It wasn’t just about price speculation, Bonk wanted to symbolize community unity in the face of chaos.
Despite its playful image, BONK quickly picked up serious momentum. It was integrated into wallets, listed on major exchanges, and even accepted for payments in some corners of the Solana ecosystem. More importantly, it sparked genuine community engagement.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bonk1/
Bonk chart ! year
Solana
Being on Solana with its speed and low fees makes it easy to buy, sell, swap and its ease of use is a plus when trading memes. You can take a punt with little capital as the fees are so low, not quite the same as memes on Ethereum! The latest chapter in Bonk’s evolution is the launch of 'Let’s Bonk' an on chain meme sharing platform where users can upload, rate, and reward memes, all powered by BONK tokens.
- Dec 2022: BONK Launch & Airdrop
- Jan 2023: Exchange listings begin
- Mid-2023: BONK integrated into wallets and dApps
- 2024: Let’s Bonk development begins
- 2025: Let’s Bonk platform launches
So what can you actually do on 'Lets Bonk'
Meme Uploads, Users can post image memes directly on the platform. These are stored using Solana’s infrastructure and optionally backed up on decentralized storage (e.g., Arweave).
As Token Tipping, Like a meme? Bonk the creator. With one click, users can send BONK tokens to meme artists, creating a true creator economy around humor and virality.
Upvote to Earn: Users who consistently upvote popular content can earn BONK rewards — essentially getting paid to curate the meme feed.
NFT Meme Minting: Top-rated memes can be minted as 1-of-1 NFTs, turning a viral joke into a collectible piece of internet history.
Lets Bonk chart 1 month
Web 3 Not web 2
In the Web 2 world, (Twitter, Instagram, TikTok) the creators rarely earn anything and are rewarded with likes, not ownership.
By contrast, Let’s Bonk:
- Empowers creators with monetization tools.
- Creates on-chain records of meme culture.
- Builds community incentives into content engagement.
It also taps into one of crypto’s degen sides but it is a bit of fun, not an investment IMO although they can be relatable, emotional, and viral by design and Bonk is tapping into this. There are other projects that have been using Bonk in one way or another, Backpack, Tensor, and Drip Haus have all integrated BONK in various ways, helping it evolve from a joke into a meme layer currency across Solana’s creator ecosystem. It is as though Bonk is turning into its own brand and it has a big community following.
Future plans
With the launch of Let’s Bonk, the Bonk team has proven that meme coins can build real utility. But apparently they’re not stopping there.
Future plans reportedly include
- Leaderboards & Bonk Battles: Competitive meme tournaments with BONK prizes.
- Mobile App Version: Bringing meme-sharing to the masses.
- Partnerships with NFT projects and DAOs to gamify meme creation.
- AI Meme Tools: On-chain AI tools that help generate viral meme formats.
Bonk may have started as a joke, but it looks as though it may now have a vision to be more.
Charts from https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/lets-bonk/
What are your thoughts, do you think this has a chance or will it just be another flash of hype? As I have said before Memes are not my thing but it is a bit of fun. As always thank you for reading and please feel free to comment.
