Solana dog coin Billy (BILLY) was abandoned by its dev shortly after being born. But onlookers believed he was too cute to spend the rest of his days in the pound and helped lift him to a $200 million market cap.

Billy was born on Pump.fun in early June. According to SolScan, the dev sold all of their tokens within 20 minutes of launch. They sold the large majority of their tokens in one transaction for $1,116. That same amount of BILLY would be worth $8.65 million at today’s price. The wallet the dev used for the transaction still doesn’t hold any BILLY, according to onchain data.

Despite this, as Billy started to garner success, the dev was using the fact that he created Billy to push their other newly made tokens. The Billy community didn’t like that and butted heads with the dev on Twitter. This resulted in the dev threatening to delete all socials related to the project.

“It went from fear and panic to this is an opportunity. This is exciting. This is a bonding moment,” Billy community takeover (CTO) member, Minh Dynasty, told Decrypt on the ‘What’s the Meta?’ podcast. “There were like 300 people on Telegram all trying to give their input.”

Listen to the latest episode of ‘What’s the Meta?’ for the full Billy story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1LNhEveBEU

In a matter of hours, the project had a new Telegram group, Twitter account, and website. While all this was going on, a core community takeover team updated DEX Screener to include the new links.

Community takeovers (CTOs) are everywhere in the world of meme coins and Pump.fun. Often, a meme coin is launched so devs can make a quick buck by selling their tokens early on. But when investors left holding the bag believe the project still has potential, they take matters into their own hands. 

“It's like a school project, right?” Minh Dynasty said on ‘What’s the Meta?’ smiling, “The teacher isn't like ‘you are the leader. You are responsible solely for the success of your presentation.’ It's four people. And somehow they have to find ways to work together to finally present something at the end of the class.”

The CTO team had to get organized, which meant leaders naturally emerged and people found ways to collaborate. In the month since the community takeover, a tight knit group dedicated to the future of BILLY has formed.

Now, the community takeover consists of up to 100 people with different areas of expertise. Some are in charge of marketing, others social media, with countless roles in between. 

Billy’s Twitter account now has 11,000 followers and posters have started popping up across New York.

As a result, the dog’s popularity has skyrocketed. It has become the largest meme coin launched on Pump.fun and peaked at a $215 million market cap—all thanks to a community that didn’t want to see the meme coin fade into obscurity.

“Billy represents crypto. The optimal crypto experience,” Minh Dynasty said on the podcast. “You work on something with other humans, you have fun doing it. Everybody's able to decentralize, build it by bringing together their talents, and then hopefully everybody can make some money along the way.”