Crypto Just Saved a 60-Year Science Project Trump Cuts Nearly Killed
Strangers on the internet minted a token about fat mountain rodents. It has since raised more than $120,000 and rescued a 64-year science project that federal grants abandoned.
The token is OnlyMarms (ONLYMARMS). It trades on Solana, and its fees flow to a field lab in Colorado. The scientists did not create it. They just claimed the money.
Why a 64-Year Study Ran Out of Money
Kenneth Armitage started counting yellow-bellied marmots in 1962 and ran the project until 2001. UCLA has kept it alive since.
The lab needs $75,000 to $100,000 a year. That pays graduate students and a five-month field season near Crested Butte. Almost none of it is skimmed, because UCLA takes only 6% overhead on gifts.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded decades of that work. Then the renewals stopped coming.
The squeeze is national, not personal. NSF had issued 5,684 new grants by Aug. 19, Nature reported this week. That is 46% below its 2021 to 2024 average, and the lowest count in over 40 years.
Under the Trump administration, roughly $1 billion of the NSF's $8.8 billion budget sits unspent in a holding account.
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