The Meme Coin Silly Dragon (SILLY), which has risen by thousands of times, has now become the recognized spiritual totem of the Solana community. This article will review the journey of this meme dragon’s popularity.
Introduction:
The Silly Dragon meme coin, Silly, can be used to swipe credit cards! It supports Zebec prepaid cards and is compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Background:
Silly has been praised by the founder of Solana! With a market value of nearly 100 million pounds in four days, can it become the new king of meme coins?
Table of Contents:
1. The Origin of the Meme Dragon
2. Hidden Easter Eggs at the Solana Annual Summit
3. Who is Spreading the Silly Dragon?
4. Becoming Solana’s Official Meme: What Did SILLY Do Right?
5. The Birth of a Powerful Meme Coin
6. Catching up with Solana’s Meme Season
Recently, the Solana-based meme token SILLY has surged above $0.15, setting a new all-time high. Currently, the top ten addresses holding SILLY (excluding CEX addresses) account for 18.5% of the total supply. Among these addresses, the highest floating profit is 27,000 times, while the lowest is 0.7 times. The average floating profit is 30 times, and most of them were bought in the early stages and held until now.
What was the “origin” of the meme dragon in the early stages? Who spread the Silly Dragon meme? What did the Silly Dragon do right to become Solana’s official meme? BlockBeats will discuss these in the following sections.
The Silly Dragon can be traced back to September 6th. On that day, Anatoly, co-founder of Solana, released a mysterious message on social media, consisting of three dragon emojis and the words “Silly dragons.” Thus, “Silly dragons” quietly emerged in the Solana community, becoming their self-mockery and symbol.
However, despite its fun nature, the Silly Dragon did not immediately spark a wave of enthusiasm. It was like the ancient saying “a hidden dragon” and was almost forgotten.
It was not until the Solana Breakpoint conference, Solana’s annual event, that this story gained new life. The founder of Solana transformed into the legendary Silly Dragon, injecting new vitality and meaning into this character, making it a highly influential meme and revitalizing the entire community.
Solana Breakpoint is Solana’s annual community conference organized by the Solana Foundation. It is a grand celebration of Solana’s achievements and an exploration of inspiration for future industry development. From October 30th to November 3rd, the third Solana Breakpoint was held in Amsterdam, bringing together 3,000 Solana developers, validators, founders, core engineers, ecosystem teams, etc., to discuss the latest developments and future roadmaps. The conference focused on substantive technological advancements and defining the flexible topics of the next-generation blockchain network.
Projects mentioned during the conference, such as SIMD (Solana Improvement Draft), Helium, and Helius, all had remarkable performances. Especially Helium, with the help of DePIN narrative, its token MOBILE achieved a 110% increase in a single day on December 14th, leading the DePIN track-related tokens. In addition to sharing and introducing various projects, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, caused a stir with his appearance at the conference.
On the opening day of the conference, which happened to be Halloween, Anatoly appeared in a green dinosaur costume, becoming the most unique and eye-catching presence at the conference. Anatoly introduced himself to the audience, saying, “I’m Anatoly, and I’m a silly dragon.” After saying this, Anatoly smiled sheepishly, amusing the entire audience.
The motto of the Solana community is “Do the hard things first,” and Anatoly’s costume and speech were not only self-mockery but also a philosophy. He explained, “I stand here dressed as a dragon, and it’s important for us to discuss what we’re building and why we’re building it. We need to know what our goals are and what we want to achieve.”
After the conference, the Silly Dragon image appeared in the Solana community. On November 8th, Anatoly posted on social media, “year of the silly dragon,” injecting fresh and playful energy into Solana’s narrative. With the approaching year 2024, this phrase also coincides with the upcoming Year of the Dragon, making this narrative more popular in the Chinese community, as people are eagerly anticipating the narratives and innovations around this silly dragon.
Anatoly then paid attention to the official Silly Dragon Twitter account and loudly called for a “Silly Dragon Meme.” This action not only increased the value of the SILLY coin but also became a memorable story. Looking back now, Anatoly’s appearance in the dragon costume at the conference was not only a humorous self-expression but also a cleverly arranged Easter egg.
On November 9th, Solana builder Matty Taylor followed in Anatoly’s footsteps and made a thought-provoking statement on social media, “Don’t take yourself too seriously, we all have a silly dragon inside us.” This researcher, who wrote a thesis on Bitcoin economics during his undergraduate studies and is deeply fascinated by cryptocurrencies, is now focused on Solana’s growth and expansion. His words resonated with the community.
At the same time, Legend (@SolanaLegend), a Solana NFT expert and managing partner at Frictionless Capital, fell in love with Solana at first sight. Legend initially liked the Ethereum ecosystem but realized the problem with Ethereum’s high gas fees. Coincidentally, his friend’s venture capital firm participated in Solana’s seed investment, and after seeing Solana’s performance data, Legend was immediately attracted.
On November 16th, Legend released a concise tweet on social media, saying, “This is the season of the silly dragon.” In the comments, community members expressed their hopes for a “Silly dragon token” to appear.
On November 18th, LacedUp (@HODLonBRO), the ambassador of Solana wallet Solflare, also expressed his thoughts, saying, “Happy to be working for Solana.” The phrase “What a silly dragon” became a common meme phrase in the Solana community, used to praise and self-mock the developers’ dedication to building Solana.
Solana community members shared the first dragon meme, an illustration named Drako, saying, “When I was still fantasizing about the possibility of dragons, a silly dragon appeared and fascinated me. Let’s rewrite the epic of Solana Meme together.”
On December 8th, Yaoyao (@ynonestop), in charge of Solana’s growth, combined the words “silly” and “Solana” to create “Soylano” and posted, “2024 is the Year of the Dragon in China, and it will be the crypto year of the silly dragon (Soylano).”
It is worth mentioning that the narrative of dragon culture is not unique to Solana’s innovation. In fact, as early as March of this year, the Bitcoin ecosystem had introduced the LONG token representing Western dragons on a small scale, as well as the DRAG and DADA tokens representing Eastern dragons in April. The community even joked about the “clash of Eastern and Western dragons,” showing the modern interpretation of ancient legends in crypto culture.
In the Solana community, the popularity and spread of the Silly Dragon meme came at the right time. With the approaching Year of the Dragon, this image not only sparked celebrations for the dragon year but also brought unprecedented attention and liquidity to Solana. In the digital currency market, a meme with founder characteristics often triggers a frenzy and even a short-term FOMO effect.
For example, the meme coin featuring Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, and his cat Hemule, generated hype and frenzy. In the case of Silly Dragon, its popularity and the support of the Solana community have contributed to its success as a meme coin.Silly Dragon Becomes a Popular Meme in the Solana Community
Silly Dragon has emerged as a popular meme in the Solana community, following the success of other memes such as Bear, the dog of Avalanche co-founder Kevin Sekniqi, and VMUM, a meme coin named after “Vitalik’s mother” introduced by the Metis ecosystem. Even Barsik, the cat of VMUM, has become part of the meme.
The Solana community, inspired by these phenomena, cleverly combines ancient dragon culture with the modern digital world, creating a unique and captivating story. This is not only a modern interpretation of ancient legends but also an interesting exploration of how the digital world can blend with traditional culture.
The Solana community needed a meme that could represent its spirit and culture, and the birth of Silly Dragon was perfectly timed and aligned with Anatoly’s Halloween image and the “silly dragon” avatar. With the support of the Solana community and developers, everything fell into place.
Twenty days after the summit, a social media account called Drako (@DrakoSolana) came into the spotlight. Its profile picture and caption were derived from a classic silly dragon meme. Based on its establishment date and the attention it received from early tweets, @DrakoSolana performed far better than the well-known Silly Dragon.
However, one unfortunate fact is that despite Drako’s growing influence, it has not launched its own token. This left room for the emergence of $SILLY. The appearance of SILLY seemed to fill this gap and became a new choice for community members seeking a digital currency related to the silly dragon.
With the establishment of this social media account featuring a green silly dragon cartoon avatar, the first tweet “Year of the Silly Dragon” was released, and the meme coin $SILLY was born.
The green dragon image corresponds to Anatoly’s tweet in early November, and the color and image also match Anatoly’s Halloween costume. However, in the early stages, the tweets were not tagged for easy indexing, and the number of retweets and comments was very limited, not receiving widespread attention.
On December 4th, the SILLY token contract was successfully deployed, adding a new chapter to the silly dragon story. Shortly after, Silly Dragon began actively announcing its community deployment on social media, including the official website, Telegram group, vision description, and token listing on Solana Raydium and Jupiter exchanges. The vision of the silly dragon is described as a symbol of art, passion, and the power of Solana, showcasing a new narrative that goes beyond digital boundaries.
Under the narrative of SILLY, it is not just a token but also a heritage that is building a unified and artistic expression, driven by the revolutionary power of blockchain technology. Each holder, each enthusiast is an important part of this journey, contributing to the narrative that goes beyond digital boundaries. In the realm of the silly dragon, art and deep emotions merge to innovate, declaring an era when the community collectively writes history.
Since then, the account has been recognized by the community as the official Twitter account of the silly dragon project. On the same day, the official Silly Dragon account posted “Leave your wallet,” which led to a significant increase in the number of retweets and comments, officially bringing the silly dragon image into the public eye.
The silly dragon did not miss this wave of massive traffic and immediately held a silly dragon art contest, allowing users to freely create and publish their works related to the silly dragon image in the comments section. The top 5 liked and shared entries would receive 10 million SILLY tokens. The contest attracted a large number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, including bitget ambassador @Cryptozone04 and @heyjerey_, @CRYPTOKRALI3, and other KOLs.
On December 8th, the Chinese community of silly dragon was established, featuring an image of a silly dragon wearing a red Chinese costume and holding the Chinese national flag. On December 12th, the official account held the silly dragon video contest, awarding 1 million SILLY tokens to the top three TikTok video creators who best told the story of Silly Dragon (including all the latest updates).
On the same day, Anatoly paid attention to the account, but it did not yet attract widespread attention. According to data from birdeye, on that day, the SILLY price and trading volume only saw a slight increase.
On December 16th, Anatoly posted on social media, stating, “We need a silly dragon meme urgently,” which ignited the community’s enthusiasm and led to a significant increase in the SILLY price. Thus, the silly dragon became the official meme of the Solana community.
At that time, the Solana community had another significant event. The Saga Web3 phone launched by Solana came with 30 million BONK tokens as a bonus. Due to the significant increase in the value of BONK at the time, the value of the gifted BONK tokens exceeded the price of the phone itself. According to BlockBeats, Saga’s premium rate on the secondary market reached 500%, with a price of up to $3,000.
This unique marketing strategy not only increased the sales of Saga phones but also ignited the meme season in the Solana community. Tokens like ZERO, COQ, !knoB, and WIF became hot topics in the community.
Taking advantage of the Solana craze, the official Silly Dragon account hinted at an airdrop plan, further exciting the Solana community. The video in the caption featured Anatoly dressed in a silly dragon cosplay outfit, and Anatoly retweeted the tweet.
Since then, SILLY has experienced an impressive surge in market value and trading volume within two days. The trading volume on decentralized exchanges like Jupiter reached $30 million, and the market value rose from zero to nearly $10 million, experiencing a staggering 900% increase.
In addition, SILLY has actively collaborated with CEX. On December 21st, Bitget announced the listing of Silly Dragon (Silly) on its innovation zone and MemE zone, and LBank announced the first listing of SILLY U-based contracts on December 25th.
Currently, the overall trend of SILLY’s price has been on the rise since its release. Although Anatoly changing his profile picture on the 22nd caused SILLY to drop more than 45% within a day, the narrative of SILLY did not falter.
On December 27th, according to Bitget market data, SILLY surged past $0.15, reaching a new all-time high and ranking in the top three on the real-time increase list. According to data analyst Yan Jin, the highest floating profit in SILLY addresses is 27,000 times, the lowest is 0.7 times, and the average floating profit is 30 times. Most of the holders bought in extremely early and have held on until now.
In internet culture, there is nothing more central than memes since the market is essentially driven by memes that capture attention on a daily, weekly, or yearly basis. The success of the silly dragon meme relies not only on Solana’s promotion and endorsement of silly dragon culture but also on the community’s trust in Solana, which has propelled Solana to achieve its first milestone of surpassing Ethereum’s seven-day DEX trading volume.
As described by BEN SPARANG, a member of the Solana Foundation, “This is a small step for humanity, but a big step for the silly dragon.” This not only affirms Solana’s technical achievements but also symbolizes Solana’s legitimate meme culture and spiritual totem, which will play a huge role in promoting community unity.
Read more:
From Silly Dragon to COQ: A Look at the Hottest Memecoins on Major Blockchains
Silly Dragon, Minu, and More: What’s Trending in Memecoins on Various Public Chains