NFT artist raises over $10 million in one day for Solana memecoin presale

A relatively unknown NFT artist has surprised the crypto community by raising over $10 million in SOL for a memecoin presale in less than a day. 

The artist, pseudonymously known as Kero, launched the presale after polling their followers on X as to whether they should launch a coin on Solana in honor of joining the network. After receiving 5,000 votes on the poll, Kero launched the presale by posting a wallet address, which rapidly accumulated funds eventually totaling nearly 55,000 SOL, or about $10.4 million at current prices. 

Kero, after admitting they didn’t have any idea what to make before launching the poll, eventually decided to name the coin SNAP in honor of their original meme character Coco, a crocodile drawn in the style of iconic meme character Pepe the Frog. Coco has featured in Kero’s NFT output so far, several collections of digital trading cards in the style of famous works of art, memes, and other elements of Internet culture. 

According to The Block’s analysis of blockchain data provided by Solscan, many of the contributions were for small amounts. The median contribution was 1 SOL, which is worth nearly double its value from just a few weeks ago amidst Solana’s recent price surge. The average contribution was around 3.5 SOL, with a few wallets aping in hundreds of SOL. 

The memecoin presale caused disbelief among other members of X’s crypto community. “Literally nobody knows him. He just out [sic] an address on a tweet,” wrote crypto trader Wizard of SoHo. 

Kero hasn’t announced a launch date for the coin, but recently noted that it won’t launch until after 21:00 UTC (5 pm Eastern Time) on Sunday. “Due to the size and fast development we want to make sure we don’t make any mistakes,” Kero wrote. 

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