After Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX collapsed in 2022, the future of Solana looked bleak. But from the fraud-fuelled ashes came a meme coin that saved the network. Bonk was created and airdropped to a ton of Solana developers as a way to bring back fun vibes to the network. In many ways, it worked.

Bonk reached a peak market cap of $4 billion in November 2024, two years after its launch. Along this journey Solana has changed a huge amount, establishing itself as one of the biggest blockchains in the world. Now, Solana is a crypto cultural hotspot and the go-to place for rising meme coins—especially with the creation of Pump.fun

In this episode, we’re joined by Nom, a core contributor for Bonk, to discuss how the FTX collapse felt, why Bonk launching was so important, and how Solana has changed over the years.