Sphere Wif Hat? Solana Meme Coin Community Raises $690K to Send Dogwifhat to Las Vegas

Solana’s meme coin of the moment, Dogwifhat, has raised almost $700,000 to get its furry, beanie-topped namesake plastered on the largest screen in the world.

On Saturday, the campaign “Sphere Wif Hat” debuted online, intent on raising enough funds to plaster an image of Dogwifhat onto the face of Sphere, the massive LED-screen covered entertainment arena in Las Vegas. Today, the initiative reached its fundraising goal of $650,000—an amount organizers claim will buy a week’s worth of Sphere adspace.

The “Sphere Wif Hat” campaign accumulated such momentum this week that it continued to receive donations well after reaching its stated goal. At writing, the wallet associated with the fundraiser has received over $690,000 worth of donations in USDC stablecoin.

The campaign was boosted in part by promotion from prominent stakeholders in the Solana ecosystem. On Wednesday, as “Sphere Wif Hat” approached its $650,000 fundraising goal, Solana wallet Phantom promoted the fundraiser on its homepage. Within minutes, more than $100,000 flooded into the initiative’s wallet.

A large portion of the donations made to “Sphere Wif Hat” were in small denominations of USDC, worth between $1 and $10.

On news of the campaign’s success, Dogwifhat (WIF) surged 18% within minutes. The token is up over 36% in the last 24 hours, to $2.66 at writing, and set a new all-time high price of $2.68 just recently.

That bump pushed WIF safely beyond the market capitalizations not just of Solana dog coin rival BONK, but also the Ethereum-based dog coin of the moment, FLOKI. As it stands, Dogwifhat, with a market cap of some $2.56 billion, is currently the fourth-largest meme coin in the world, behind only Pepecoin, Shiba Inu, and $24 billion juggernaut Dogecoin.

So, perhaps a fitting moment to blast Dogwifhat’s visage from a 580,000 square foot screen visible from the stratosphere. But when will the ad actually come together?

At writing, the fundraiser’s five organizers have not offered any proof that they have been in touch with Sphere’s marketing team, or put any money down for the ad buy. One member of the group told Decrypt that they have been in contact with Sphere, and that any extra funds will be "kept in the marketing budget until we know what to do with it."

Decrypt also reached out to Sphere regarding whether the organization has yet had any contact with the “Sphere Wif Hat” initiative, but did not receive a response.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to include comment from the Dogwifhat team.