How a 60-Year Marmot Study Survived Federal Funding Cuts Through OnlyFans and a Meme Coin
A 60-year study of marmots across the western United States has raised more than $100,000 through an OnlyFans account and a meme coin, after the Trump administration's cuts to federal science funding pushed the project to the edge of shutdown.
The OnlyMarms OnlyFans account, created in June by the study's co-leads — UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein and University of Ottawa researcher Julien Martin — brought in roughly $6,000. The much larger sum came from a meme coin called $OnlyMarms, launched on the Solana blockchain by an unidentified online community. That coin raised more than $88,000 in two weeks by donating all transaction fees to the study. Together, the two efforts gave the research program enough to continue for another year. Blumstein has said the project needs between $75,000 and $100,000 annually to operate (Yahoo News).
The funding crisis traces back to the Trump administration's broader push to shrink federal science funding. The administration froze more than $700 million in grants through the National Science Foundation (NSF), the government agency that has historically been a primary funder of basic biological field research in the United States. In April, the administration also fired the entire 22-person board that provides independent oversight of the agency. Michael Kratsios, a Silicon Valley investor serving as Trump's science advisor, has said U.S. research priorities will shift toward artificial intelligence and robotics rather than life sciences (The Guardian).
Blumstein said the idea to use OnlyFans came after he watched the television show Margo's Got Money Troubles. The OnlyMarms account is subject to a standard 20% platform fee, meaning OnlyFans collects one-fifth of all donations before the remainder reaches the researchers (Daily Bruin).
The meme coin component arrived unexpectedly. An unknown community on the Solana blockchain created $OnlyMarms and pledged all transaction fees to the marmot study. Martin initially suspected a scam before concluding that the arrangement could genuinely raise funds for the research. The coin generated more than $88,000 in two weeks, far exceeding the OnlyFans account's direct earnings and pushing the combined total past $100,000 (The Guardian).
The story drew national attention in early August. The Daily Bruin, UCLA's student newspaper, reported on 1 August that the marmot lab had turned to OnlyFans after a federal funding denial (Daily Bruin). BBC News covered the fundraising effort on 5 August (BBC News). Reuters also produced a video report on the initiative (Reuters).
The broader context here is a research funding landscape being reshaped by executive action, with life sciences bearing a disproportionate share of the squeeze. Long-running studies like this one depend on continuous annual data collection to maintain their scientific value. A single gap year in a six-decade study can permanently compromise its usefulness for tracking population trends, behavioral shifts, or climate-driven changes in seasonal timing — the kind of data that takes decades to build and cannot be reconstructed once lost.
There is also an unmistakable irony in the meme coin route. The Trump administration's redirection of federal science funding away from life sciences toward AI and robotics coincides with the president's own involvement in meme coin markets. According to the BBC, Donald Trump has personally netted roughly $635 million through his own meme coin (The Guardian). That a Solana-based meme coin, the same broad asset class that has enriched the president, became a lifeline for a field biology project defunded by his administration is a convergence worth noting, even if its practical significance remains limited to a single research program.
Structural questions about sustainability remain. OnlyFans imposes a 20% levy on all funds raised. Meme coins are inherently volatile, and the $OnlyMarms fundraising depended on the goodwill of an anonymous online community whose continued engagement cannot be assumed. The combined $100,000 will sustain the marmot study for one year. Beyond that, the researchers face the same funding environment that forced them into these unconventional channels in the first place.
The episode also reveals how platform economics intersect with scientific crowdfunding in ways that conventional grant cycles do not account for. A researcher watching a television drama about a character who starts an OnlyFans account, then translating that premise into a funding mechanism for a six-decade ecological dataset, is not a model that scales or replicates reliably across the hundreds of NSF-dependent projects now facing similar shortfalls. The marmot study's survival, for now, is a story of ingenuity under duress. It is not a substitute for the federal infrastructure that sustained it for 60 years.
