A Solana meme coin tied to a 64-year-old marmot study has outraised its own OnlyFans campaign in just days.

Researchers launched the OnlyFans page this spring after a major grant renewal fell through. A Pump.fun token followed soon after, and it now brings in more money for the project.

Where the Money Problem Started

The Marmot Adaptive Dynamics (M.A.D.) Lab at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) tracks yellow-bellied marmots near Crested Butte, Colorado. It has continued since 1962, making it one of the longest wildlife studies in the world.

Daniel Blumstein, an ecology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), runs the project. He told NPR that a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant denial had reduced their teaching assistants.

Julien Martin, a University of Ottawa professor who co-runs the study, later joined the fundraising push.

“We’ve made about $4,000 on OnlyFans, and people are looking at the content and enjoying it… Turns out, it’s even bigger than this.”
Daniel Blumstein, NPR

That figure has since grown. The lab’s Marmot Project Instagram account put OnlyFans donations at more than $6,000, after OnlyFans took its 20% cut. The Daily Bruin reported the update this week.

The account has been live since June. Signing up required convincing OnlyFans that a human, not a marmot, controlled it.

The lab has tried other fundraising ideas too. A Crested Butte brewery released a Marmot Tears IPA in July. The team is also planning a Fat Marmot Week event in August.

The Token Pulled Ahead

However, one of the more successful endeavors is a community-launched token called OnlyMarms on Pump.fun, a platform that lets anyone create a Solana-based token in minutes. Martin signed up on Pump.fun himself to claim the token’s creator fees for the lab.

The M.A.D. Lab‘s own project page puts total crypto donations at more than $14,000 so far. That is more than double what OnlyFans has generated for the same cause.

OnlyMarms itself is trading near $0.0005, up more than 70% in 24 hours. It peaked above $0.002 in late July, according to CoinGecko data.

That kind of swing mirrors other viral animal tokens. A raccoon token’s viral rally and the broader animal meme coin trend both produced billion-dollar market caps in 2024.

Whether the Fees Keep Flowing

The size of that gap still raises an open question. Researchers cannot yet say whether Pump.fun fees are a repeatable funding source or a one-time spike. Meme coin volume usually fades once attention moves on.

Analysts have also flagged meme coin profit structures as a concern. Profits often favor infrastructure and early holders over the causes tokens claim to support.

That adds uncertainty to how much of OnlyMarms’ volume reaches the lab long term. Blumstein said the lab is also continuing to pursue traditional grant funding.

For now, the marmot study relies on both channels. OnlyFans built the early audience, and the token turned that attention into faster funding.

Source: BeInCrypto