Since its inception at the end of last month, the new meme coin generator LetsBonk has seen more than 85,700 token launches, with cumulative fees so far exceeding 32,194 solana tokens worth about $5.8 million.
Unlike competitor Pump.fun, LetsBonk uses fees generated to buy and burn bonk. “We take the weekly fees from the platform and buy $BONK with the fees in the open market and burn them,” according to a core contributor of the meme coin, who goes by the X username @iamkadense.
Similar to a traditional finance firm that buys its own stock to reduce the number of outstanding shares, token buybacks and burns are deflationary tactics that occur when a crypto project purchases its tokens and permanently removes them from circulation.
Of the total fees, 35%, or roughly 11,300 solana tokens representing $2 million as of Thursday afternoon, has been allocated to buy and burn the bonk meme coin.
LetsBonk is the newest step for bonk, which started in part as a morale-boosting token airdrop for users during the depths of solana’s post-FTX crash.
On-chain data from blockchain explorer Solscan shows 925,234 addresses are currently holding bonk, a higher figure than the $TRUMP meme coin, which has 638,328 holders. Parker White, CIO and COO of DeFi Dev Corp, told Sherwood News, “Bonk is more than just a meme coin.”
Why LetsBonk started
A few factors contributed to LetsBonk’s debut in April, @iamkadense explained. First, the US Securities and Exchange Commission provided new regulatory clarity around meme coins.
In February, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance said meme coin transactions do not involve the offer and sale of securities. As such, users typically don’t need to register their meme coin transactions with the SEC, in the view of the division.
The second reason for LetsBonk stems from soured sentiment surrounding Pump.fun, the leading solana meme coin launchpad responsible for fartcoin, pnut, Moo Deng, and goatseus maximus.
@iamkadense pointed at Pump.fun’s fees and what it does with solana tokens as an issue. The platform has accumulated about $646 million in fees since it started last year, data from blockchain analytics platform DefiLlama shows, but the address that collects fees for Pump.fun often sends fees, denominated in solana tokens, to centralized exchange Kraken.
On-chain data from SolScan shows Pump.fun’s fee account has sent more than 1.6 million solana tokens worth over $290 million to Kraken this year alone. The platform’s pseudonymous founder, who goes by the X username @a1lon9, previously said on the social network, “You can send assets to an exchange without intending to sell those assets.”
Though a profitable crypto business doesn’t have an obligation to bring value back to its native blockchain ecosystem, Ryot, the pseudonymous founder of solana-based DeFi project Xitadel, argued that Pump.fun’s deposits to Kraken are not ideal. “It kind of sucks that our ecosystem is being extracted so badly,” Ryot told Sherwood.
LetsBonk’s @iamkadense said, “We have a longstanding reputation for goodwill and community on solana and saw an opportunity to have the benefits of the launchpad stay in the ecosystem.”
Bonk’s new corporate partner
Meanwhile, DeFi Dev Corp announced last week a joint venture with the bonk community that entails operating a validator to secure the solana network. The fees earned from the validator operations will be divided between DeFi Dev Corp and bonk, DeFi Dev Corp’s White said.
White told Sherwood, “The bonk team intends to use these proceeds to purchase $BONK, while the DeFi Dev Corp team will use them to add to our balance sheet and increase $SOL per share.”
Even though the market cap of bonk has decreased about 23% in the year to roughly $1.7 billion, the meme coin has increased 61% in the last 30 days.
In the stock market, DeFi Dev Corp has seen a sharper rise. The solana-focused company has seen its stock increase over 6,000% since early April, when former Kraken execs got a majority stake in the company formerly known as Janover and relaunched it as Defi Dev to focus on becoming the Strategy of solana.
