Shark Cat
 | |
| ticker | SC |
|---|---|
| blockchain | Solana |
| launched | March 2024 |
| peak market cap | about 390 million dollars (late March 2024) |
Shark Cat (SC) is a Solana meme coin depicting the celebrity cat Nala in a shark costume, which peaked near 390 million dollars and settled a licensing dispute with the cat's owner.
Shark Cat (SC) is a cat themed meme coin on Solana built around an image of a cat wearing a shark costume. The cat in question is Nala, one of the most followed cats on the internet and a Guinness World Record holder for Instagram popularity, which made Shark Cat an early test of what happens when a meme coin borrows a real, actively managed animal brand without asking.
Origin
The token launched in March 2024 during the cat rotation of the great Solana meme run, alongside cat in a dogs world and ahead of popcat's biggest phase. Its branding leaned on the widely shared photograph of Nala in a shark hood, an image with years of meme circulation behind it. The coin was community created with no involvement from Nala's owners, and it rose fast enough on pure cat momentum to rank among the largest new coins of that month.
Market history
Decrypt reported Shark Cat reaching a peak market capitalization of about 390 million dollars in late March 2024, and CoinGecko records the all time high price of about 0.35 dollars on March 31, 2024, implying roughly 350 million dollars against the near one billion circulating supply. The rise brought legal attention: the company behind Nala Cat, whose founders manage the cat's commercial licensing, objected to the unauthorized use of her likeness. In April 2024 Decrypt reported the dispute ended without a lawsuit when the Shark Cat team acquired an official license to use the Nala Cat intellectual property, an unusual formal peace treaty between a meme coin and its meme. The token nonetheless followed the standard decay of its cohort, and by the mid 2020s traded with a market capitalization under 1 million dollars, more than 99 percent below the peak.
Cultural impact
Shark Cat matters to trench history mostly for the licensing episode. It was among the first meme coins to convert an infringement claim into an official partnership, establishing a template later followed by coins that licensed or bought their underlying memes outright, including TROLL's acquisition of the Trollface copyright and the sanctioned merchandise deals of animal coins like moo deng. In the trenches the coin is also remembered as a pure expression of the March 2024 cat meta, a nine figure valuation assembled in days from a costume photo, and as an early demonstration that the owners of famous internet animals were watching the trenches and expected to be paid.