The story behind Solana’s queen of cringe (2024)

Today, enjoy the Lightspeed newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox.Subscribe to the Lightspeed newsletter.

Howdy!

We’re trying something a little different today and diving into the world of Solana-centric content creation.

I had a fun time getting the inside scoop from bangerz, whose videos I’ve cringed at from afar for some time now:

The story behind Solana’s queen of cringe

The Solana Saga was in-demand in January 2024 as speculators sought to cash in on airdropped tokens that came with the device. Bangerz, a pseudonymous X creator who works at a Solana NFT startup, decided to fake a video of herself microwaving her Saga phone.

Her black hair gel and screen protector fake was convincing enough: it drew hundreds of likes and replies and fooled some in crypto media. She then created a “Microwave” NFT collection on her platform 3.land that saw thousands of mints and some secondary trading. Bangerz followed this up with another viral video explaining the microwaved Saga was a fake.

In the months since, bangerz has continued making Solana-centric content, but rather than continuing to melt phones, she’s settled on a different growth strategy: super cringe-worthy videos. It seems to be working out so far.

“She’s a creative mastermind that understands the crypto audience perfectly,” DRiP founder and CEO Vibhu Norby told me in a text. “What’s more shareable than content so horrifically bad that you can’t look away?”

Bangerz is a creator on DRiP.

One of bangerz’ most popular videos, a “Barbie Girl” parody where she sings painfully off-key as a “crypto girl,” illustrates how cringe can be a winning social strategy. The replies under the X post are a bloodbath. “You’ve ruined my day and in ways I didn’t think possible,” one user wrote.

And yet the video garnered over 500,000 views.

“A lot of my content goes viral because it’s very divisive,” bangerz told me in an interview, adding later: “Bad content doesn’t get seen.”

Bangerz’ attention play is a response to a real problem for Solana creators. On the pump.fun memecoin launchpad, only about 1% of new tokens draw significant investment and “graduate” to the Raydium DEX within 24 hours, according to a Dune dashboard. It’s now free to launch tokens on pump.fun, meaning a huge number of memes are now competing for Solana’s limited attention. The trenches are cooked, as the young people might say.

Before bangerz was a Solana content creator, she worked in other startups, even getting a patent for one product — a cooler using an endothermic chemical reaction to store vaccines in places without electricity.

She was drawn to being an influencer though, and she grew a successful art account on Instagram. She said she became addicted to the “game” of iterating around content that was successful — in that case, art involving aliens, weed, and sex. Now having moved into Web3, she’s once again iterating around what works, which for the past couple months appears to have been musical rage bait.

“Hate is the funnel” that brings in a lot of bangerz’ followers, she told me. This isn’t always a fun strategy: some people do say “terrible things” to her, and it’s not a persona she could pull off without “thick skin.”

The “meta” of bangerz’ strategy is that once repeat viewers come to understand that her videos are akin to rage bait, they get in on a kind of collective inside joke, she told me. This “I know that you know” effect creates an audience that actively encourages the cringe.

“Unfollowed for not being cringe and actually being good,” one user sarcastically wrote under an AI-generated bangerz country song called “Degen Boo.” This all feels like a strategy that’s tailor-made for Web3, which is filled with copypasta and engagement bait and can at times feel like a large insular inside joke.

There are many ways to skin a cat, and for now, putting out nearly unwatchable videos has become bangerz’ strategy for growing 3.land.

“With a startup, distribution is everything,” bangerz said. “Building the product doesn’t matter. It’s ‘how do you get people to use it?’”

I asked bangerz if she finds it hard to watch her own videos.

“Oh, yeah. Oh yeah oh yeah,” she said, recalling scripting and filming a cosplay video where she dressed up as Pepe the frog.

“Horrible. Like I’m sick thinking about that. Hated it,” she said. “Thank God it didn’t go viral.”

— Jack Kubinec

Zero In

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko’s monthly followers gained on X tracks surprisingly well with Solana’s price.

There’s a clear cycle in crypto where higher asset prices lead to more media coverage and interest from the general public. Yakovenko’s X account grew most September 2021 and March 2024, months which coincided with SOL’s price nearing all-time highs.

Creators like bangerz can hope this process works in reverse, too: more social media followers could bring more eyeballs to a project, which could possibly lead to more investment.

— Jack Kubinec

The Pulse

ICYMI this week aboard the good ship Solana:

• Hivemapper announced it has mapped 25% of the world’s roads in under two years, making it the fastest-growing road mapping project globally.
• Circle minted $250 million USDC on Solana, highlighting the network’s continued importance in the stablecoin ecosystem.
• BONK will be the official presenting partner for Dubai-based Baseball United, the first professional baseball league in the Middle East and South Asia. This partnership marks a significant expansion of BONK’s branding and influence.
• Squads Protocol unveiled the development of the Squads Policy Network (SPN), a new component of its smart account stack on SVM. This network will offer granular transaction policies for smart accounts, enhancing security and compliance for both individual and enterprise users. It will run on Jito’s forthcoming restaking infrastructure.
• Jito hit a new milestone, securing over 12M SOL in TVL. With a 721% increase in SOL TVL over the past year, Jito is now a dominant player in Solana’s liquid staking market.
• Grass confirmed an upcoming airdrop for more than 2 million beta users as part of its efforts to decentralize AI data collection and management. The airdrop is expected to be one of the most widespread in the Solana ecosystem.
• Coinbase submitted a letter to the SEC, urging the agency to withdraw its proposed rule targeting decentralized exchanges. Coinbase criticized the proposal for its lack of critical analysis and irrational assumptions, arguing that it could harm innovation in the DEX market.

— Jeffrey Albus

One Good DM

A message from Vibhu Norby, founder and CEO of DRiP:

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.