Researchers at UCLA have launched an OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms to support one of the world's longest-running wildlife studies, after traditional research funding became increasingly difficult to secure. The account has also attracted the attention of the cryptocurrency community, with more than 10 OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins appearing on the Solana blockchain.

The UCLA team has tracked yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado since 1962. Long-term ecological field studies like this one are relatively rare and are valued by biologists for producing multi-decade datasets that can reveal how wildlife populations respond to environmental change over time. Professor Daniel Blumstein came up with the idea as research funding dwindled, and a graduate student suggested the name "OnlyMarms." The team embraced the humor, promising subscribers "uncensored marmot content."

"Maybe this is a different audience than, you know, most of our science communication reaches," Blumstein told NPR in an interview. "That's great. Turns out, it's even bigger than this."

The OnlyFans account has generated approximately $4,000 so far. Blumstein said the project ultimately requires between $75,000 and $100,000 annually to support graduate students and fieldwork—funding that federal grants once provided. Federal science agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have faced budget pressures and proposed funding reductions in recent years, intensifying competition for grants and leaving many long-running research projects searching for alternative revenue.

The marmot project has also drawn interest from the crypto community. On Pump.fun, a Solana-based platform that allows users to create and trade meme coins with minimal technical friction, several OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins have been created, though it remains unclear who launched them or whether any are connected to the UCLA team. Blumstein told NPR that the researchers did not create the tokens themselves.

"People have independently created a meme coin and told us to grab the transaction—to register it, and then we get the transaction fees. And that is blowing up," he said. "Apparently, this is a meme coin for good that people like."

This would not be the first time an internet-famous animal inspired a cryptocurrency. In 2024, the Solana token Moo Deng, based on the viral pygmy hippo, launched on Pump.fun and briefly reached a market capitalization of approximately $680 million before securing listings on major exchanges, including Coinbase. Meme coins remain highly volatile and largely unregulated, and tokens claiming charitable ties typically have no formal mechanism ensuring proceeds reach the intended cause.

Beyond OnlyFans and crypto, the researchers have pursued other creative fundraising avenues. They partnered with a Colorado brewery on a "Marmot Tears" IPA and launched a public "Fat Marmot Week" competition.

Blumstein said the situation reflects the broader state of scientific funding in the United States, noting that raising money through platforms like OnlyFans is a stark contrast to how research projects were funded when he was in graduate school.

"No. It's appalling," he said. "What we're doing is destroying the scientific structure and the university-federal partnerships that made us great, made us rich, made us the scientific leaders of the world. It's being taken apart, and that's really sad."