Bonk 2.0: What’s Next For Solana’s Favorite Dog?

Can new heat rekindle an old fire?

The team behind Bonk is looking to answer that question.

NOTE: This story first appeared in my Ministry of Alpha NFT newsletter on Substack. I have reprinted it here with minor modifications.

I’m sure you know Bonk. And if you haven’t, Bonk is a meme coin that caught fire late last year and captured the imagination of a Solana community deep in a post-FTX funk. Out of the blue, the token landed in wallets across the Solana ecosystem, generating thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of wealth literally overnight for people who did nothing but own certain NFTs that were eligible for the airdrop.

Bonk at one point touched 0.00005 and change. Since then, the Doge of SOL has cooled markedly, down more than 90%. It’s at about this point that history’s other flamed-out meme tokens would have ingloriously faded away, the heat of their moment now cooled. Token traders would have moved on to the latest fad.

Alas, that’s not Bonk’s trajectory.

The project continues to build, aiming to turn the meme coin that revived Solana into a meme coin that crosses multiple blockchains and becomes a utility token for a range of services.

I caught up with Nom, one of Bonk’s contributors, during the recent Solana Hacker House in Tel Aviv, and connected with him again over Zoom a week or so later to discuss what is effectively Bonk 2.0. I am a Bonk holder and I’ve ridden the price up and down, and I was curious what Bonk’s future looks like. Might Bonk be a good, longer-term hold at these levels based on upcoming plans?

Now, before I jump into that answer, I will say that Bonk isn’t without its detractors. Some will call Bonk a Ponzi scheme — but, then again, much of the world calls all of crypto a Ponzi.

Personally, I don’t get Ponzi vibes when talking to Nom about Bonk.

I get “builder” vibes — tinged with a bit of resignation that there are those who shit on Bonk even as the project’s contributors try to make Bonk bigger than just the Solana network. If you’ve been reading my Medium page or Ministry of Alpha for more than a minute, you know I am a fan of builders and I am more than willing to give…