Crypto Traders and an OnlyFans Account Rescue Colorado’s 64-Year Marmot Study from Funding Collapse

Every summer in Gothic, Colorado, a yellow-bellied marmot steps into a wire trap baited with oats and peanut butter. A scientist weighs it, collects samples, checks its ear tags, paints a temporary identification mark on its back, and releases it back into the mountain meadow.

The scientific significance of this routine emerges over time, with thousands of encounters repeated for more than six decades creating the second-longest study of individually identified wild mammals in the world. The record tracks family lines, health, behavior, reproduction, and survival across generations, allowing biologists to detect patterns that unfold over far longer periods than a typical three-year research grant.

That record came dangerously close to acquiring a permanent gap this year when the National Science Foundation declined the team’s latest request for continued support. The scientists then began searching for funding in places Kenneth Armitage, the biologist who started the project in 1962, could hardly have imagined.

UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein proposed a G-rated OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms, and an independent group of crypto traders later created a Solana meme coin whose creator fees have generated more than $150,000 for the research project.

All of this sounds tailor-made for the internet, complete with comically rotund rodents, an adult content platform, and a memecoin.

However, the problem it addressed is far less lighthearted because researchers can never return to 2026 and reconstruct which marmot emerged from hibernation, produced offspring, joined a new colony, or disappeared.

The value of never missing a summer

Armitage began tracking the Gothic marmot population in 1962 and directed the work until 2001, when Blumstein took over. Blumstein now co-runs the project with University of Ottawa professor Julien Martin, preserving the basic routine that gives the record its power: researchers repeatedly observe identifiable animals in the same valleys using compatible methods.

This repetition has produced an exceptionally detailed genealogy, and a 2025 study used a pedigree spanning 11 generations and 2,196 animals to examine whether warning behavior can be inherited. Other work from the project has linked early hardship with longevity, mapped the relationship between social behavior and survival, and examined how an alpine mammal responds to warmer temperatures and erratic snowfall.

A single season provides researchers with a population count, while six decades allow them to identify what altered its size and which animals fared best.

Winter contributes a smaller portion of the record because marmots spend most of the year underground, living on fat accumulated during summer. Their heart rate, breathing, metabolism, and body temperature drop sharply during hibernation, making snow cover above the burrow a critical layer of insulation.

Blumstein reported that the team monitored more than 160 animals before the last hibernation period and found approximately 60 when fieldwork resumed. He attributed most of the loss to inadequate snow cover, an assessment that the longer record can place alongside body condition, kinship, temperature, and conditions from earlier winters. The value lies in having every season available for comparison, including the difficult ones.

Federal support arrived through a series of separate grants over six decades. UCLA’s account of the funding loss states that the NSF declined the latest continuation request in late May as American universities were absorbing broader research cuts. That rejected renewal placed an uninterrupted record at risk.

Marmot’s Got Money Troubles

Blumstein borrowed the OnlyFans concept from the Apple TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles and adapted its premise to marmots facing their own financial difficulties. Graduate student Emily Renkey created OnlyMarms, populating it with nearly daily field videos and explanations, and navigating a verification process designed for human creators.

The account is free, with visitors able to leave tips for photographs and videos of marmot life. It attracted thousands of visitors and raised roughly $6,000 in its first months, according to UCLA, before OnlyFans took its 20% share. That covered some supplies and staff time while leaving the team far short of any dependable funding for recurring fieldwork.

The stranger source of funding emerged when a group outside the project launched $OnlyMarms through Pump.fun, a platform that facilitates the creation and trading of tokens on Solana, then directed the token’s creator royalties to the marmot researchers. Launched independently, the coin later received Martin’s support, and he accepted the fees and added its contract address to the project’s fundraising page.

The OnlyMarms token operates on a royalty system in which trading activity generates fees that accrue to a wallet controlled by the lab, allowing the team to claim them as donations. Martin’s project page now reports more than $150,000 raised for marmot research, while the community’s token page states that every creator royalty goes to the project.

Token issuance, team allocation, trading, and buyers’ return expectations remain entirely separate from the lab, leaving the researchers free to receive creator royalties as donations. The arrangement resembles Vitalik Buterin’s proposal for philanthropic meme coins, with speculative activity directing money toward a public purpose.

Token-generated donations already exceed the OnlyFans account’s gross tips by more than 25 times, though future income depends on traders continuing to engage once the hype fades. A longitudinal project requires funding on a fixed schedule, with trained field staff returning every summer regardless of whether marmots are trending on Pump.fun.

The internet picks a species

Marmots are ideally suited for the attention economy that drives both culture and markets. With names like Jamba Juice and Egg, these oversized squirrels gain significant weight before winter.

The team capitalized on that advantage with the inaugural Fat Marmot Week, a public tournament that ran from August 24 through 28 before a winner was crowned on August 29. Visitors voted for the marmot that best embodied healthy preparation for hibernation.

That campaign succeeded because it effectively recruited future donors while exposing the inherent lottery within viral patronage.

Because its payoff may take years, research has always demanded persuasion, and social platforms compress that process into a contest for attention that asks scientists to cultivate an audience alongside their animals and data.

OnlyMarms demonstrates what a small crypto community can accomplish when the target is concrete, and the payments are direct. Trading provided one field team with more time during a lapse in formal support, though the duration of that reprieve remains tied to the internet’s appetite.

The marmot researchers have kept the science in view while embracing the absurdity surrounding their new patrons. That money purchases the one resource this project can never recover: another uninterrupted field season.

Gothic’s marmots will soon seal their burrows and slow their bodies through the winter while the researchers await spring. Thousands of strangers discovered the animals online, appreciated the absurdity, and then helped preserve a 64-year scientific record whose true value lies in never having to start over.

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