UCLA Groundhog Research Team Turns to OnlyFans for Funding, Related Solana Meme Coin Emerges

August 4th, a research team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently raised funds for long-term wildlife research through the OnlyFans account "OnlyMarms," inadvertently attracting the attention of the cryptocurrency community, with several related Solana meme coins emerging.

The project has been tracking Colorado chipmunks since 1962 and is one of the world's longest-running wildlife studies. Due to a decrease in traditional research funding, the research team launched the OnlyMarms account, using humor such as "uncensored chipmunk content" to attract subscribers to support research.

Currently, OnlyMarms has raised approximately $4,000, but the project still needs $75,000 to $100,000 in funding annually for graduate support and field surveys.

At the same time, several meme coins inspired by OnlyMarms have emerged in the Solana ecosystem. However, these tokens were all created spontaneously by the community, and the identity of the issuers is unclear. They have also not established official contact with the UCLA research team. The research lead stated that the team has not created any related tokens.

This event is considered a case of the combination of internet culture, science communication, and the cryptocurrency community. Previously, the Solana ecosystem has seen meme coins driven by animals that went viral on the internet, such as the token based on the viral river hippo Moo Deng in 2024, which at one point reached a market value of around $680 million.