Solana-Based Bonk Inu NFTs Surge Tenfold After Mint but Listing Attracts Criticism

Prices of Bonkz non-fungible tokens (NFT) have surged 10 times since their initial mint on Tuesday, attracting over $900,000 in trading volume after all 15,000 collectibles were sold.

Over 6,165 individual wallets hold these collectibles at writing time, data from Solana marketplace Magic Eden shows. The collectibles are based on the popular Shiba Inu-themed Solana project Bonk Inu, which did not directly take part in Bonkz’s creation.

The NFTs, which are digital tokens that represent ownership of a physical or virtual asset, may help further BONK’s usage on Solana's network. BONK has attracted massive transaction volume and hype in the past week.

The Bonkz collectibles are purely art-based and with no imminent plans for utility, its creators told CoinDesk yesterday. Pricing for the mint – a term that refers to the initial issuance of any NFT – was $25 worth of BONK, and secondary trading will be transacted with solana (SOL) tokens.

Each NFT sells for over $280 worth of solana at writing time. All BONK used to purchase these NFTs were burnt – a term referring to when tokens are permanently taken out of supply – meaning over $250,000 worth of bonk’s token supply was removed from circulation on Tuesday.

As such, a certain feature of the NFT attracted criticism among community members.

Magic Eden said it had utilized its Open Creator Protocol (OCP) for the mint, which enforces royalties on all collections that adopt the protocol and allows creators to ban marketplaces that have not enforced royalties on their collection.

“We utilized OCP for this mint, so any transfers between wallets should be done on Magic Eden in "My Items" versus directly in wallet,” a note on Bonkz listing on Magic Eden said. This effectively means Bonkz will not be listed on marketplaces that don’t kick back royalties to the creators.

That move attracted brickbats from the Bonk Inu community, including its developers. “BONK is meant to be open source for everyone to build upon. We are disappointed to see an exchange limit trading using OCP,” developers said in a Wednesday tweet, adding they working out a solution to tackle the apparent centralized approach.

Bonkz’s creators also acknowledged the seeming lapse, stating they were “actively working with all parties.”

Meanwhile, the price of the BONK token remained unchanged over the past 24 hours and is down nearly 70% from its peak.