UCLA marmot research team turns to OnlyFans for fundraising; related Solana meme coin has emerged.

A research team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently launched an OnlyFans account named "OnlyMarms" to raise funds for its long-running wildlife study, unexpectedly drawing attention from the crypto community and leading to the emergence of multiple related Solana meme coins. The project, which has tracked yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado since 1962, is one of the longest-running wildlife studies globally. Facing declining traditional research funding, the team created the OnlyMarms account, using humorous angles like "uncensored marmot content" to attract subscribers to support the research. To date, OnlyMarms has raised around $4,000, but the project still requires $75,000 to $100,000 annually to fund graduate student support and fieldwork. Meanwhile, multiple OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins have popped up in the Solana ecosystem. However, these tokens were all created spontaneously by the community, their issuers are unidentified, and they have no official connection to the UCLA research team. The lead researcher confirmed the team did not create any related tokens. The incident is regarded as an example of the intersection of internet culture, science communication, and the crypto community. Earlier, Solana has seen meme coins driven by internet-famous animals, such as the token based on viral baby hippo Moo Deng, which once reached a market cap of around $680 million in 2024.