Solana memecoin Slerfsol recovers after $10M token burn fiasco

The memecoin has surpassed a market cap of $500 million despite an embarrassing launch.

Thanks to community support, Solana memecoin Slerfsol (SLERF) has seen a fairly successful launch after its creator mistakenly burned over $10 million worth of Solana (SOL) from investors during the March 18 presale.

At the time of publication, SLERF is worth $0.79 with a total market cap of $505 million and listing on multiple exchanges. The day prior, its namesake creator had asked for donations after a blunder that saw 535,000 of investors’ SOL sent to a burn address during the minting of SLERF. The creator has publicly asked for donations to make users whole, with the coin’s wallet address receiving 3,000 SOL. 

The same day, cryptocurrency exchange BingX reached out to Slerf on X with an offer to donate all trading fees from buying and selling SLERF on its platform to the project itself. BingX also said it would “airdrop future BingX World Debut tokens to addresses that participated in the Slerf private sale but didn’t receive $SLERF tokens.” In response, Slerf wrote: “Thank you so much [BingX]. I’m shaking. This is so crazy. You guys are amazing.”

Following suit, Gracy Chen, managing director of Bitget, said that the exchange “will donate all SLERF trading fees on Bitget to the SLERF community, helping those participating in the presale,” adding: “And the donation details will be unveiled every week. WAGMI.” Meanwhile, Chinese blockchain personality Justin Sun added that the HTX exchange, formerly Huobi Global, would too donate all trading revenue from SLERF to the protocol:

“HTX has decided to donate all Slerf trading revenue on @HTX_Global and allocate it to everyone who participated in private sales on HTX, as well as donate some HTX for Slerf’s trading fee mining on HTX! User first”

The ongoing memecoin frenzy has led to comparisons with the Ethereum initial coin offering (ICO) era of 2017, when several crypto projects raised millions of dollars, but many failed to deliver. On March 18, the nonfungible token collection Milady’s novel Solana memecoin attracted 91,486 SOL ($18.7 million) within just two hours of its presale announcement.

Related: Slerf’s memecoin launch: ‘Mindless’ screw-up or marketing stunt?