In December 2022, Solana was in crisis. FTX had just collapsed. The Solana network was associated with Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud. Trading volumes were dead. Then on Christmas Day 2022, an anonymous team launched BONK — a memecoin themed around a Shiba Inu, airdropped for free to over 200,000 Solana wallets. It was meant as a gift to revive the dying ecosystem.
BONK exploded. Within weeks it had a market cap in the hundreds of millions. Solana wallets that had received free airdrops found themselves holding life-changing money. More importantly, BONK proved that Solana wasn’t dead — it was just waiting for energy. The BONK launch single-handedly revived Solana memecoin culture and laid the groundwork for the 2023-2024 Solana memecoin supercycle. Sometimes the most strategic move in crypto is to give something away for free.
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