Bonk Inu Devs Burn All Their Team Tokens As Solana Ecosystem Frenzy Continues
Developers behind the Solana-based memecoin project Bonk Inu (BONK) burned over 5 trillion tokens, or 5% of the total supply, earlier Friday, blockchain data shows. The move claimed to have effectively burned all tokens earmarked for developers of the project.
Members of the Solana community saw the burning as a step towards the legitimacy of the Bonk Inu project – one that calls itself a symbol “for the people, by the people” by actively avoiding token insider trading and predatory behavior.
During the last 24 hours, centralized exchanges and decentralized applications alike introduced bonk-based trading events and NFT mintand adds to the utility of the memecoin for traders and holders.
Data shows that over three million BONK transactions were executed in the last three days, indicating active participation by holders. Unique BONK holding wallets have grown to over 86,000 as of Friday from under 25,000 at the beginning of this week.
However, large token sales have hindered bonk’s price rise, which is now over 2000% in the last week. The tokens have fallen over 40% in the past 24 hours as early investors took profits and crypto exchanges, such as Bybit, introduced Bonk futures, allowing traders to bet against the token.
The rapid rise of Bonk Inu, shaped around the popular shiba inu dog breed that has spurred popular projects such as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, can be attributed to several factors.
Last week, Bonk developers dropped 50% of their entire token supply to several Solana-based NFT collectors and creators, resulting in almost immediate hype and a market for the project.
Holders of a total of 297,000 individual Solana-based NFTs were said to receive the airdrop. Airdrops refer to an unsolicited distribution of a cryptocurrency token or coin, usually for free, to a number of wallet addresses and are typically used as a tactic to gain users.
The project actively called out the “toxic tokenomics” of controversial funds such as Alameda Research – which was widely criticized for distributing a small portion of the token supply to retail traders while retaining a majority for private investors and project developers.
Several Solana projects already have integrated bonk tokens for use as payments for listed NFTs, while some introduced “burn” mechanisms for NFT-based events. Token burning means removing coins from the total supply of a cryptocurrency.
As such, liquidity pools on Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Orca have attracted over $20 million in volume for trading pairs involving BONK – cumulatively generating thousands of dollars in fees for liquidity providers.
Liquidity providers are investors who stake their cryptocurrency tokens on DEXs to earn transaction fees, usually in the form of token rewards.
Data from Orca shows that the BONK/SOL pair has completed over $14 million in trading volume, while the BONK/USD coin pair saw over $6.2 million. Both pools pay out almost 1% every hour to liquidity providers, or over 24% every day.
