Samoyedcoin
 | |
| ticker | SAMO |
|---|---|
| blockchain | Solana |
| launched | April 2021 |
| peak market cap | about 600 million dollars (November 2021) |
Samoyedcoin is widely recognized as the first meme coin on Solana, a Samoyed dog token launched in April 2021 that peaked near 600 million dollars during the 2021 bull market and later rebranded itself as a community onboarding project.
Samoyedcoin is a dog themed meme coin on Solana, launched in April 2021 and widely recognized as the first meme coin native to the chain. Where the Ethereum dog coins of the era copied the Shiba Inu, Samoyedcoin adopted the Samoyed, and the project presented itself as a tribute to Solana co founder Anatoly Yakovenko and to Sam Bankman Fried, whose exchange FTX was then the chain's most powerful backer.
Origin
SAMO appeared in April 2021, during Solana's first summer of DeFi speculation and more than a year and a half before bonk. The choice of breed was itself a joke about lineage: the Samoyed is among the oldest dog breeds, and SAMO claimed the same ancestral position among Solana tokens. The team was pseudonymous and the token had no stated utility at launch. Over time the project reframed itself as "Solana's Ambassador," an experimental community coin focused on onboarding and educating new Solana users rather than on the meme alone.
Market history
SAMO rode Solana's parabolic autumn of 2021. CoinGecko records the all time high at about 0.237 dollars on October 28, 2021, and project histories cite a peak market capitalization of roughly 600 million dollars in late November 2021, up from launch prices near half a cent. The collapse was equally steep: by the end of December 2021 the price had fallen to about 0.036 dollars, and the 2022 bear market, including the failure of FTX, removed most of what remained. Unlike many of its 2021 peers the coin never fully died; it retained an active community through the bear market and was frequently cited in 2023 and 2024 retrospectives as the progenitor of the Solana meme economy. By August 2026 SAMO traded near all time lows around 0.00024 dollars, a market capitalization of about 1.4 million dollars.
Cultural impact
Samoyedcoin's importance is genealogical. It proved a meme coin could exist and briefly prosper on Solana, establishing the chain mascot template that Silly Dragon, MYRO and eventually bonk would inherit. When BONK's December 2022 airdrop revived the chain, SAMO lost its position as Solana's default dog but kept its title as the original. In the trenches SAMO functions as an ancestor figure, invoked in "history of Solana memes" threads as proof that the ecosystem's meme culture predates the 2023 revival, and as a caution that being first guarantees nothing about staying on top.