According to Blockworks, BONK, a dog-themed memecoin, has seen parabolic returns this month, and its developers have released a trading bot. The BONKbot reportedly owned over 70% of the volume created by decentralized exchange (DEX) bots daily for the past week, generating around $4.8 million in fee revenue. BONKbot's fees over the past 24 hours are on par with those generated by well-known DeFi protocols Aave and Curve.
Initially launched on Christmas Day 2022, BONK was seen as a fun attempt to renew interest in the Solana ecosystem. However, BONKbot's recent performance suggests that the memecoin's developers may have bigger plans. BONK's price rose by 227% in the past month, while Solana (SOL) gained 73%. As Solana's momentum slowed, BONK followed suit, shedding a quarter of its price in the past week.
BONKbot's elevated usage is driven in part by BONKmas, a rewards promotion where users receive rewards for depositing at least one SOL token into the trading bot. The technology underlying BONK isn't revolutionary, but its growth strategy has focused on integrating with established platforms. BONKbot has an auto-buy function and partnered with Jito Labs to create maximal extractable value (MEV) protection. Developers outside of the BONK team launched BonkSwap in April as a community-centric DEX, and BonkSwap developed a one-minute futures betting game called BonkOrBust. BONK's price has increased significantly in the past two months, making it a top-100 digital asset by market capitalization.
