BONSAI Memecoin Aims to Becomes De Facto Currency On Lens After $1M Angel Round

MadFi, the team behind the Bonsai token –which MadFi says is Lens Protocol’s first memecoin – raised $1 million in an angel round.

Led by Palm Tree Crew (PTC) Crypto, the round included Avara Ventures, Social Graph Ventures, Friends With Benefits, and Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal, among others.

“Believing that tokens can align platforms, creators and users, MadFi aims to build capabilities to support the creator economy,” read a press release shared with The Defiant.

Bonsai–which launched on March 4–pumped ahead of Friday’s announcement, clocking a 32% increase Thursday. The token is down 25% in the past 24 hours.

BONSAI has been on a rocket ship this last month, trading for $0.08, with a 700% price increase in the past 14 days. The token's fully diluted valuation sits at $80 million, according to Coingecko.

Bonsai is capitalizing on the memecoin mania that has been permeating the crypto industry. While Solana and Base are notorious for their memecoins, the MadFi team hopes Bonsai’s success could spell a similar story for the Lens ecosystem.

Organic Growth

According to the team, BONSAI has been growing organically, with creators earning over $240,000 in tokens, overtaking wMATIC as the currency of choice for monetizable content. In March, Bonsai’s market share of monetized publications on Lens surpassed 75%, peaking at 90% last week.

“We are excited to see BONSAI become the default currency on Lens,” said Carlos Beltran, Co-founder and CEO, MadFi. “BONSAI demonstrates the power of onchain networks coupled with great content,” he added.

Interestingly, BONSAI is technically a “DN404”, which means it’s a “Divisible NFT” –for every 100,000 tokens a wallet accrues, the holder will receive 1 Bonsai NFT, said Beltran. “It’s a new experiment and has yet to become an official ERC (i.e.,going through a full EIP),” he added.

Lens Protocol underwent a massive transformation after two years in beta, announcing on Feb. 27 it was going permissionless. Anyone can now mint a Lens profile to access the protocol, and developers can create new use cases by tapping into the network’s already budding community.

UPDATED @ 11:35 am ET to add funding round was for $1M after team sent corrected PR.