Harambe on Solana

Harambe on Solana

Image: token logo via CoinGecko / DexScreener listings
ticker	HARAMBE
blockchain	Solana
launched	January 2024
peak market cap	about 88 million dollars (November 2024)

Harambe on Solana is a memorial meme coin for the gorilla shot at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016, abandoned by its deployer within hours of its January 2024 launch, revived by a community takeover and carried to an 88 million dollar peak in November 2024.

Harambe on Solana is a meme coin commemorating Harambe, the western lowland gorilla shot at the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016 after a child entered his enclosure. Harambe's death produced one of the defining memes of the 2010s internet, including a Justice for Harambe petition that gathered over 338,000 signatures in 48 hours, and the token imported that eight year old grief meme into the January 2024 Solana wave.

Origin

The token launched in mid January 2024, with CoinPaprika recording first trading on January 17 and the SPL token's creation on January 24. The original deployer abandoned the project within hours of launch, a routine death sentence for new coins, but the meme's durability attracted holders anyway. The project survived as a leaderless community coin for months, and on September 24, 2024, the community formally claimed ownership of the token, a documented community takeover that gave HARAMBE new social channels and stewardship. The project describes itself as anonymous and community driven, and is unrelated to Harambe AI, a separately marketed presale token that advertised during the same period.

Market history

HARAMBE traded modestly through the spring 2024 meta before its second life arrived with the post takeover, post election melt up. CoinGecko records the all time high at about 0.0885 dollars on November 14, 2024, with CoinPaprika logging 0.0826 dollars a day earlier, an implied market value near 88 million dollars against the roughly one billion supply, timed with the November 2024 peak that also carried Peanut the Squirrel, itself a coin about a killed animal. The token then declined with the broader meme complex; a 1,000 dollar position from first trading day was worth about 26 dollars by 2026, and the market capitalization settled in the low millions with most volume on Raydium and mid tier exchanges.

Cultural impact

Harambe on Solana is a textbook entry in two trench genres. As a memorial coin it demonstrated that pre crypto memes with deep cultural sediment could be revived as tokens years later, an approach later industrialized on pump.fun. As a takeover story it became one of the cleaner examples cited when traders argue that abandoned coins with real memes can outlive their deployers: the September 2024 takeover preceding the November peak is the sequence the trenches point to when making the case for buying dead coins with living memes.

Traders have carried HARAMBE as a corrections proof "OG" holding since well before its own November 2024 peak. An August 30, 2024 post argued for staying in a "good coin that will bounce up heavy with the market correction," naming "Giga, Lockin, Harambe, Inu, Michi, etc" in the same breath as GIGA and LOCKIN. That holder identity has persisted nearly two years on: the account 0xEnj0yr described itself as "Harambe Advocate" in its bio as far back as April 2025 and was still replying under that identity in May 2026, and another account's July 2026 bio read simply "$HARAMBE MAXI." The meme's pre crypto cultural weight is still invoked directly in 2026, as in one July 25 post: "Harambe, YouTube Drama, Night of Nights, 2016 Election, Vaporwave.... Man those were the dankest of days."

References

• CoinPaprika: https://coinpaprika.com/coin/harambe-harambe-on-solana/
• CoinGecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/harambe-on-solana
• Messari: https://messari.io/project/harambe-on-solana
• Medium: https://medium.com/@guerillalabsusa/harambe-on-solana-whitepaper-5d3fbb25bba1
• CryptoPotato: https://cryptopotato.com/solana-mememania-begins-adds-fuel-to-harambe-ai-token-presale/
• X post by @RealL1zard: https://x.com/RealL1zard/status/1829361917212663902
• X post by @0xEnj0yr: https://x.com/0xEnj0yr/status/2057888315274056016
• X post by @CTFatigue: https://x.com/CTFatigue/status/2082254722413817954
• X post by @story16327: https://x.com/story16327/status/2081107266065826065