Source: BONK

Key Points

· Bonk was launched in late 2022, during a downturn for Solana following the FTX collapse. The project distributed 50% of its 100 trillion token supply, making it one of the largest airdrops on Solana (with around 50 trillion BONK distributed to approximately 297,000 wallets).

· Originally started as a Meme token, Bonk quickly gained traction within the Solana ecosystem and is now integrated into 400+ applications spanning DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and payments. Close to 1 million wallet addresses hold BONK, demonstrating strong community adoption.

· The difference between BONK and traditional short-lived Meme coins lies in its fee-driven burning mechanism and DAO-led burn events. Applications like BonkBot and Bonk.fun contributed to a significant portion of the burn, while further reducing circulating supply through mechanisms like Bonk Rewards staking and large-scale events like BURNmas. As a result, BONK's total supply has decreased from 100 trillion to around 88 trillion.

· BONK has transitioned from a grassroots Meme coin to a financialized asset. Initiatives such as the Osprey Bonk Trust, the upcoming Bonk ETF, and the transformation of Safety Shot into the Bonk Treasury Corporation highlight the increasing pathways for traditional investors to gain exposure. While these tools have reduced circulating supply, they have also introduced new risks related to liquidity, regulatory scrutiny, and market perception.

Origin and Distribution of BONK

The concept of Bonk was born in late 2022 when the Solana ecosystem was reeling from the FTX collapse. Solana's price plummeted from around $36 before the crisis to under $10, with its DeFi activity and TVL (Total Value Locked) experiencing a sharp decline. The broader crypto market was in a deep bear market, with Bitcoin and Ethereum hitting multi-year lows. Meanwhile, Meme coins like DOGE and SHIB, which had seen massive gains in 2021, were losing momentum by the end of 2022, casting doubt on the long-term value of most altcoins and especially Meme coins.

In this context, the concept of Bonk emerged, aiming to be a community-driven Solana Meme coin, rallying the community to boost Solana's morale.

Bonk officially launched on December 25, 2022, and positioned itself as the 「Dogecoin for the masses on Solana.」 There was no private sale or VC funding during the issuance process; instead, 50% of the 1 quadrillion token supply was airdropped to active Solana ecosystem users, covering nearly 300,000 wallet addresses. This airdrop was one of the largest in Solana's history, targeting the core community to maximize grassroots user participation.

The explicit goal of this airdrop was to reward the then-active Solana community across various ecosystem groups. It is noteworthy that core Solana developers also received a small BONK airdrop as a token of appreciation. The broad distribution quickly made BONK one of the most widely held tokens on Solana.

Most of the token supply entered circulation immediately after issuance, with only 21% allocated to early contributors subject to a linear unlock schedule starting from the end of December 2022, and the remaining locked portion will gradually unlock over the coming months until January 2026. Another significant portion, 16%, was allocated to BonkDAO.

BonkDAO was initially governed by a committee of 11 community members and core contributors, controlling a multi-signature account for the DAO treasury. The DAO is committed to gradually achieving decentralization and will open up for community voting in July 2024 to propose burning BONK collected by BonkBot and eventually integrate with the Solana governance platform Realms for community governance votes. Many of BonkDAO's proposals revolve around marketing incentives and various token burns (such as Burnmas, BonkBot Burn, November Burn).

The launch of Bonk saw a surge in speculative interest, with the token immediately tradable on the Solana DEX. Several centralized exchanges also quickly listed BONK, including Coinbase, Binance, OKX, Huobi, MEXC, Bybit, Gate.io, all completing their listings in the first week of January 2023. This exchange support helped BONK achieve a multi-billion dollar market cap within weeks.

However, the initial airdrop and listing frenzy gradually subsided throughout the year, until late 2023 when Solana witnessed a broader Meme coin craze, with new tokens like WIF gaining attention. But BONK maintained its status as the flagship Meme coin on Solana and experienced a significant rebound during this period. By the end of 2023, BONK had firmly established its core position in the Solana ecosystem, with price movements often mirroring SOL but with higher volatility.

Integration and Applications

Throughout, Bonk's strategy has been to deeply embed itself in the Solana ecosystem, with dual purposes:

1. Acquire and maintain community attention

2. Build diverse application scenarios to reduce BONK circulation through fees or burning mechanisms

Below are key integrations and applications of BONK:

Decentralized Exchanges and Liquidity Pools (January 2023): DEXs on Solana quickly embraced Bonk, with Orca and Raydium being the first to launch BONK liquidity pools, offering yield incentives. Additionally, a Bonk-branded DEX—BonkSwap—also emerged early in 2023.

Trading Bot - BonkBot (Mid 2023): One of the most influential applications in the Bonk ecosystem is BonkBot, a Telegram trading bot that we mentioned in our previous trading bot industry report. BonkBot allows users to trade any Solana token through a chat interface, charging a 1% transaction fee and using 10% of it for BONK buyback and burn. During the 2024 early Solana Meme coin craze, BonkBot led as the top trading bot for several months. Despite subsequent stagnation in the trading bot space, its core users continue to provide steady fee income, supporting BONK burning.

Token Issuance Platform – Bonk.fun (Q2 2025): Following Raydium's launch of the modular issuance platform LaunchLab, Graphite Protocol partnered with BONK to introduce Bonk.fun, a Bonk-themed issuance platform built on the LaunchLab product. Similar to Pump.fun, Bonk.fun allows anyone to issue new SPL tokens permissionlessly and is highly geared towards meme coin activities.

Bonk.fun quickly sparked a frenzy upon its launch, with a daily trading volume surpassing $4 billion within weeks. The hype subsided over the following months until early July when Bonk.fun suddenly surpassed Pump.fun, capturing over 60% of the Solana issuance platform's trading volume at its peak.

Similar to BonkBot, Bonk.fun will use a portion of the platform-generated fees for buybacks and burning of BONK. We will delve deeper into the impact of these major burn-driven factors in subsequent chapters.

Game – Bonk Arena (June 2025): Bonk entered the GameFi space through Bonk Arena, a "kill-to-earn" arcade shooter game developed by Bravo Ready. Bonk Arena went live in June 2025 as a web/browser game where players have to pay 10,000 BONK (approximately $0.15 at launch) to enter the deathmatch, win against opponents, and claim their staked BONK. 50% of the BONK used in the game is allocated for token burning, BONK staking rewards, and charitable donations. Bonk Arena is directly accessible through the Phantom wallet and is set to land on Solana's Saga mobile and PSG1 gaming console.

Fitness App – Moonwalk (2024–2025): Moonwalk is one of the initial "real-world incentive (RWA-Fitness)" apps in the BONK ecosystem, gamifying fitness behavior to allow users to earn on-chain rewards through activities like walking, running, and daily exercise. Moonwalk's long-term goal is to expand the user base for Web3 fitness and translate the average user's daily movement into on-chain behavioral data, providing more authentic user engagement and healthy growth indicators for the entire BONK ecosystem. Through Moonwalk, Bonk ventures beyond social or transactional apps into the realm of "real-world use cases," further broadening BONK's appeal beyond Web3.

Digital Art – Exchange Art: Exchange Art is one of the largest digital art and NFT trading platforms on Solana. In 2025, BONK partnered with Solana to launch the real-world Crycol Gallery in New York and bring all gallery artworks to Exchange Art, achieving an "online + offline" art exhibition closed-loop. Exchange Art supports artists accepting BONK as a purchasing currency and integrates BONK-related art themes in some events, making BONK part of the Solana NFT culture.

Philanthropy – Buddies for PAWS: Buddies for PAWS is BONK's global animal welfare program, supporting multiple animal protection organizations through a combination of "community donations + BONK official 1:1 matching." This program reinforces BONK's narrative of "from the community, for the community," expands BONK's international influence, and communicates positive brand values to the traditional world. Although donations do not directly lead to burning, the elevation of BONK culture and media dissemination indirectly enhances BONK's social acceptance and long-term value stickiness.

Cross-Chain Bridge: As Bonk has grown, it has expanded to other chains. Cross-chain bridges like Wormhole allow BONK to circulate on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Base, and other chains. By 2025, BONK has been available on 13 blockchains through cross-chain bridges or wrapped tokens, significantly improving accessibility. However, Solana remains the core chain for BONK operations.

Multi-Chain Deployment: Bonk is also exploring the launch of DeFi products on different blockchain platforms. Recent plans include launching BONAD on Monad, a meme coin issuance platform similar to Bonk.fun. In the future, redeploying or expanding Bonk products to more blockchain ecosystems may further drive buyback and burn pressure on BONK.

This broad integration demonstrates that Bonk is not just positioned as a meme coin. By embedding the token in various use cases, Bonk aims to create organic demand beyond pure retail speculation.

Supply-Side Evidence: "Deflationary Dog Coin"

Almost all Meme coins tend to fade away after the initial hype, but the Bonk community has chosen to pivot towards building a sustainable ecosystem. By 2024, a new narrative has started to take shape: “BONK is more than just a Meme coin,” with its core focus on fee revenue and token burn mechanism.

Fee Generation and Distribution

As mentioned earlier, BonkBot and Bonk.fun are the most impactful applications driving the use of transaction fees for BONK buyback and burn.

BonkBot charges a fixed 1% fee per transaction:

· Out of which 10% is used for market buyback of BONK and burn

· Another 10% is transferred to the BonkDAO multisig wallet

Therefore, 20% of all BonkBot fees directly benefit BONK holders—half through permanent burn and half through DAO accumulation (so far, these funds have also been eventually used for burn through governance proposals).

So far, BonkBot has accumulated over $87M in transaction fees, with approximately $8.7M used for BONK burn and another $8.7M accumulated in the DAO. While 2024 was the highlight year for BonkBot, recent transaction volumes and fees have significantly dropped. The fees for the past 30 days are around $667k, meaning an annualized BONK burn of about $810k (if the 10% of DAO allocation is also used for burn, the total amount could reach $1.6M).

Aside from BonkBot, Bonk.fun has become a significant driver of BONK burn by mid-2025. The platform charges a 1% fee on Bonding Curve-based transaction volume. As of August 11th, Bonk.fun uses 50% of the transaction fees for market buyback and burn of BONK, with the ratio later adjusted to 35%, but Safety Shot commits to reinvest 90% of its 10% revenue share in purchasing BONK, leading to an actual buyback and burn ratio of 44%.

As shown in the graph, Bonk.fun saw a significant surge in trading volume in July, surpassing Pump.fun in market share and generating over $37M in revenue in just July, with 50% of it used for BONK burning. However, since July, Bonk.fun's activity and revenue have decreased by over 90%. The revenue for the past 30 days is around $812k, meaning that at a 35% burn rate, the annualized BONK burn is approximately $3.5M (considering possible additional burn pressure from Safety Shot reinvestment).

Other applications in the Bonk ecosystem are relatively niche but usually follow a similar pattern: using a portion of fees for buyback and BONK burning. These applications include BonkSwap, Bonk Arena, Bonk Validator, and other Bonk-related apps or integrations.

The key takeaways are:

· The burn pressure on Bonk is almost entirely from the success of BonkBot and Bonk.fun

· Various small applications have minimal impact on the overall burn rate

Nevertheless, the Bonk core team and community continue to launch new Bonk-related apps, games, and integrations, providing the potential for future new sources of BONK supply reduction.

Autonomous Burning and Locking Mechanism

Aside from the main Bonk-related applications, another significant source of burn comes from DAO voting, events, and community/cultural decisions.

· Bonk DAO Burn: The DAO periodically proposes burning tokens accumulated in the treasury through revenue sharing. For example, around 2.78 trillion BONK were burned in April 2024 through committee voting, while about 840 billion BONK were burned in July 2024 through community voting (any holder can temporarily stake BONK to participate in voting).

· Burn Event (e.g., BURNmas): BURNmas is an incentivized marketing event where the DAO commits to burning varying amounts of BONK based on tweets and other social interactions. From November 15 to December 24, 2024, the DAO and community burned tokens daily, with a target of 1 trillion BONK, ultimately burning 1.69 trillion BONK.

· DeGods Allocation Burn: The entire DeGods airdrop allocation (500 billion BONK) was burned in January 2023. As a Solana NFT project, DeGods was initially included in the BONK airdrop but was burned after announcing its migration to Ethereum, as decided by the community and Bonk team.

In addition to the burn mechanism, Bonk introduced the Bonk Rewards Staking Mechanism in mid-2024 to incentivize long-term holding. Users can choose a locking duration from 1 month to 1 year, with higher reward multipliers for longer durations. In return, staking users receive a share of the Bonk Rewards Pool, funded by the Bonk ecosystem's revenue, primarily in USDC with a small amount of BONK, distributed regularly.

Currently, around 3.5 trillion BONK is staked, representing approximately 4% of the total supply.

Demand-Side Drive: Access to Traditional Financial Products

Osprey Bonk Trust was launched by Osprey Funds in October 2024. It is a Delaware Grantor Trust designed to offer indirect exposure to BONK for U.S. accredited investors without holding the token directly. The trust is issued in a 506(c) private placement format with a minimum investment of $10,000, charges a 2.5% annual management fee, and follows a closed-end structure (no direct redemption of shares allowed).

As of November 21, 2025, the trust held approximately $20.2 million in assets, corresponding to 10.97 million shares, with each share being backed by about 209,000 BONK.

The trust currently custody about 2.3 trillion BONK, representing approximately 2.6% of the total supply, which is a significant portion that has been locked up long-term and removed from the market. Osprey has stated that once the OTCQX listing time and asset requirements are met, the trust plans to list for trading, providing a stock ticker trading method similar to Grayscale GBTC for public market investors. However, prior to formal listing, liquidity is only achieved through periodic private placements, and due to lack of redemption mechanism, the following risks exist:

1. No redemption available, shares can only be traded on the secondary market

2. Potential for premium or discount trading post-listing, a risk that has historical precedents in similar closed-end funds (such as GBTC)

In parallel with the trust, Osprey is collaborating with REX Shares to file for the Bonk ETF, which will hold BONK directly and offer daily creation/redemption in the primary market. Multiple Rex-Osprey Meme Coin ETFs, including BONK, TRUMP, DOGE, are expected to start trading after the September 12 commencement following a 75-day SEC review window.

Furthermore, Tuttle Capital is advancing a 2x Leveraged Bonk ETF and other leveraged crypto ETFs, but SEC approval remains uncertain. If approved, these ETFs will provide a compliant, exchange-traded investment channel for BONK, potentially attracting incremental capital. It is worth noting that when news of the 2x Bonk ETF emerged in July 2025, the BONK price surged by approximately 10% in a single day, indicating market anticipation of easier access channels driving up demand. Ultimately, the actual impact of these products will need to be observed post-trading launch to assess fund flows.    

In August 2025, the Florida-based health beverage company Safety Shot rebranded as the first publicly traded BONK Digital Asset Treasury Company (DATCO), with BONK as its core treasury asset. The company committed to purchase up to $115M of BONK (approximately 4-5% of total supply), with the initial $25M acquisition completed in partnership with BonkDAO, receiving a 10% revenue share from Bonk.fun. The company then rebranded as Bonk, Inc. (Nasdaq: BNKK) to strengthen its association with the BONK ecosystem.

Bonk, Inc. raised funds through convertible preferred stock and ATM offerings to purchase and hold BONK, committing to reinvest 90% of Bonk.fun revenue into BONK. While nominally still operating its beverage business to maintain listing compliance, its core strategy is to provide traditional investors with a stock exposure to BONK. This move caused significant turbulence — the stock price dropped nearly 50% on the announcement day, but it provided an open equity market investment channel for BONK until the Bonk ETF listing, driving indiscriminate buying of BONK until the $115M acquisition commitment was completed.

The demand-side story of BONK is financialization: an initial grassroots Meme coin now entering the traditional financial system through investment trusts, potential ETFs, publicly traded companies, and derivatives markets. While these products, if successful, could inject significant funds into BONK, they also bring new risks such as capital flows, premiums/discounts, regulatory approvals, making the originally purely retail-driven market more complex.

Tokenomics: Supply-Demand Accounting

The total supply of BONK has decreased from the initial 100 trillion to around 88 trillion, primarily due to various burning mechanisms.

Within this 88 trillion, there are multiple non-circulating sources:

· Bonk Rewards Lockup

· BonkDAO Staking

· Osprey Bonk Trust and Safety Shot Staking

Together, these represent over 14% of the remaining total supply and are essentially removed from circulation.

Additionally, the original Bonk Contributors allocation still has about 20 trillion tokens awaiting unlocking, expected to fully unlock over the next few months.

We can also illustrate their impact on the supply by projecting the income running rates of BonkBot and Bonk.fun to supply reduction. Based on the previously calculated 30-day annualized income, BonkBot and Bonk.fun are expected to burn approximately 840 billion and 3700 billion BONK per year, totaling about 0.5% of the total supply.

Essentially, Bonk's narrative revolves around a restricted supply and ongoing burn. Positive catalyzing factors include:

· New lockup tools further reducing circulating supply

· Increased revenue from Bonk-related apps driving burn acceleration

Conversely, if the Bonk ETF launches and the Osprey Bonk Trust initiates a redemption mechanism, or if market share of applications like BonkBot and Bonk.fun further decline, we anticipate downward pressure on the BONK price.

Risk Factors

Operational Risk

The value of BONK is increasingly tied to the performance of applications such as BonkBot and Bonk.fun, as they directly impact the burn rate. Whether the Bonk team and community can continue to capture new narratives, launch fee-generating and burn-driving applications, and maintain relevance in the crypto market has become a key driver of success.

This pattern is highly cyclical: when the product's popularity rises, it is highly constructive, but when the hype fades, there is also a reflexive decline. We have observed this phenomenon with BonkBot and Bonk.fun—BONK surged when dominant in these applications, but experienced a downturn when market share was taken back by competitors.

Ecosystem Competition Risk

Solana's Meme coin ecosystem is not a monopoly. If a more topical Meme coin emerges (like TRUMP earlier this year), users may shift from BONK to other tokens. Similarly, Bonk's products face competition within the Solana ecosystem:

· In 2024, BonkBot was once the leader in the trading bot market but was later marginalized

· Bonk.fun briefly held a majority of the Solana Launchpad market share in July 2025, but Pump.fun quickly regained dominance

If Bonk's products continue to lose market share, the narrative of driving fees into burn will fail. Bonk must maintain cultural relevance while adapting to the increasingly competitive DeFi and trading app ecosystem on Solana.

Reputation and Ethical Risk

Bonk is inherently associated with speculative frenzy. If a major scam or exit scam occurs under the Bonk brand, it could have repercussions across the entire ecosystem. For example:

· If a malicious token issued on Bonk.fun exits scams, users may blame the platform or Bonk

· If a celebrity endorsement of BONK leads to a price collapse, the media may label it as a 'pump and dump'

The team is trying to position Bonk as community-friendly, but there have been negative instances in Meme coin history, such as celebrity tokens leading to lawsuits and Crypto Twitter's criticism of 'shitcoins.' Additionally, after Safety Shot announced the BONK treasury strategy, the stock price plummeted by almost 50%, which may indicate that the market sees this move as 'not serious.' If this narrative spreads (with media mocking the Bonk treasury as absurd), it could hinder further adoption, such as Bonk ETF products, or even trigger regulatory scrutiny of Meme coin treasuries.

Conclusion

BONK has evolved from a one-time airdrop to one of Solana's most influential native assets, showcasing community power, experimental spirit, and widespread integration. Its fee-driven burn + cultural stickiness model gives it a longer lifespan compared to most meme coins, and the adoption by traditional financial instruments marks a new chapter of legitimacy.

However, BONK's future depends on whether the community can continue to innovate, uphold its cultural moat, and maintain an effective burning mechanism amid competition and narrative shifts. If successful, BONK will become a prime example of how meme coins can transform into enduring ecosystem assets.

This article is contributed content and does not represent the views of BlockBeats.

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