Dog coins are back: BONK leads Dogecoin, Floki and Shiba with 1400% rally Solana’s heart still beats with the sound of BONK, the network’s very own dog coin [David Canellis](/author/david-canellis)/ funstarts33/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks Humanity has for centuries put dogs on their money — ancient Romans frequently did it and so did the Greeks.Now, thousands of years later, dog-themed cryptocurrencies (or dog coins) are so popular that they’re outperforming practically the entire market.Dogecoin ( [DOGE](https://blockworks.co/price/doge)) — the largest dog coin worth $12 billion — has popped 43% over the past month to nearly eclipse cardano’s ( [ADA](https://blockworks.co/price/ada)) market cap.Floki ( [FLOKI](https://blockworks.co/price/floki)) has almost doubled while shiba inu (SHIB) has gained more than a quarter — outstripping ether, XRP, tron ( [TRX](https://blockworks.co/price/trx)) and binance coin (BNB) since this time in October.Solana-native dog coin Bonk ( [BONK](https://blockworks.co/price/bonk)) has them all with a very hairy 1,400% rally.That’s far ahead of the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market cap, which on average have gained 40%, with top-two bitcoin ( [BTC](https://blockworks.co/price/btc)) and ether ( [ETH](https://blockworks.co/price/eth)) each eking out about 25%.
Solana ( [SOL](https://blockworks.co/price/sol)) is in second place with 142% gains, with BONK perhaps benefitting from renewed interest in the layer-1 blockchain.
Avalanche ( [AVAX](https://blockworks.co/price/avax)) follows with 130% as hype swirls around its part in [tokenization trials by JPMorgan](https://blockworks.co/news/jpmorgan-tokenized-blockchain-portfolio-avalanche) for Project Guardian.BONK is now close to retesting its price record set days after its January debut, after which it had tanked more than 95%.BONK funding rates have spiked on Solana perpetual futures DEX platform Drift with speculators paying upwards of 1.4% per day for the privilege of being long.Liquidity providers on decentralized exchange Orca’s BONK/SOL pair have been netting more than 1% per day to keep spot trading flowing.BONK’s outperforming price can mostly be explained by its tiny market value — under $8 million before its recent pump to around $125 million.Its average daily volume has also been very low — under $3 million for most of the year — so any sudden upticks in trading activity would’ve easily moved the needle.There’s not much to BONK.
As is the case with most memecoins, it’s really more of a tokenized idea.BONK presents itself as the fun-loving heart of the Solana community — billed as “the first Solana dog coin for the people.” Its creators first airdropped half of the supply to certain Solana users last Christmas — a pick-me-up after the whole Sam Bankman-Fried fraud thing, which put a real dampener on being a Solana investor on account of his outsized influence throughout the network’s ecosystem.Since then, its showrunners (along with a dedicated DAO) have opted to find growth in securing the most “integrations” possible across DeFi, gambling apps and wallets — now at 131, according to its website.Each integration is intended to serve a slightly different use-case, such as “ [BonkOrBust](https://bonkorbust.com/),” which allows BONK bets on which color the next one-minute candle will be, something similar to one-minute futures.Blue-chips like Bitcoin and Ethereum boost the legitimacy of the digital asset space, to the point that world-leading [asset managers like BlackRock](https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-ishares-bitcoin-etf) want a [piece of the pie](https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-registers-ethereum-etf).But the dog coins — which in many ways better reflect crypto’s true chaotic nature — clearly aren’t going anywhere.Macauley Peterson contributed reporting Don’t miss the next big story – join our [free daily newsletter](https://blockworks.co/newsletter?source=end)..
