The Solana meme coin creator who suffered third-degree burns across a large portion of his body this week took to Twitter to confirm that he’s alive—and looking to return to the project in a week.
Mikol, as he’s called, got the burns while performing livestreamed stunts to try and pump the price of his token.
“We are alive, we have not given up on you,” the dev said from his ICU bed, visibly burnt after being pelted with fireworks. “I’ll probably be here for another three days, but right after that, you’re going to see me right back in Miami. You’re going to see me right back and better—more motivated and more hungry than ever.”
Mikol confirmed in a voice note sent to Decrypt that he suffered second and third-degree burns across a large portion of his body, with his left hand and shoulders being the worst affected.
Since being in the hospital, Mikol said that he has been pumped with oxycodone, morphine, codeine, and fentanyl to help deal with the pain. He must constantly stretch to prevent his skin from healing too tightly, and is beginning physical therapy soon. He told Decrypt that this is the least he’s been in pain since the incident.
DARE dev (@lonemikol) releases a video to his community from an ICU in Miami.
Amazing to see he’s okay 🙏 https://t.co/WKyj4g5Cjl pic.twitter.com/3zKQvmh6TS
— Ryan S. Gladwin (@Ryan_S_Gladwin) May 23, 2024
“This hospital bill is gonna rack the fuck up,” he said in a voice note. “They’re trying to keep me here for a week and a half.”
In the early hours of Wednesday, Mikol doused himself in isopropyl alcohol and livestreamed fireworks being shot at him in an attempt to pump his TruthOrDare (DARE) token. This resulted in the meme coin creator being rushed to hospital with third-degree burns, after going up in flames without proper fire safety precautions.
Mikol’s fiery stunt is the latest in a series of meme coin creators who are turning to livestreamed antics to draw in potential investors. Part “Jackass” shenanigans and part performance art, such streams have seen users perform sexually suggestive acts with a family member, for example, or pretend to have no hands before “rugging” the community by selling tokens.
Some Telegram users speculated that the dev had died, but those close to him soon confirmed that he was in a stable condition recovering in a Miami trauma center. In the day that followed, there was mostly silence coming from his camp. Now two days later, Mikol has released a video to his community, and is communicating with his Telegram moderators.
“This is what I’ve always wanted to do. You see me doing it passionately everyday,” Mikol said, his voice hoarse. “I can’t let my community down, my family down.”
TruthOrDare had been running for six days prior to the incident. Mikol had been performing dares that his community put to him, including things like drinking bong water or setting his pants on fire.
The token had been declining from a high reached a few days prior, so he planned to do something crazy to pump the price—and evidently, things went too far. From that previous high, the coin is now up 55%, but at the cost of a rising hospital bill.
“I’ve been told you guys [the DARE community] have been putting in effortless work,” Mikol said. “I couldn’t be more happy with the people I’m doing this with.”
Since this incident, core community members have banded together to support the DARE dev. People who have made profits or simply feel bad have donated money to Mikol’s wallet; at the time of writing, 12 SOL (about $2,000) has been transferred since the incident. On top of this, a passionate DARE investor known as DLuxx said he visited Mikol at the hospital to physically give him cash and send his best wishes.
“I went last night to the hospital to bring him some cash, ‘cause Solana doesn’t help when you are in the hospital.” DLuxx told Decrypt, “It was late to visit and there was a lot of family there dealing with the situation, so we respected their privacy. Mikol asked me to come back, and my plan is to visit him later this afternoon.”
Now, the community is attempting to push the TruthOrDare vision forward by streaming themselves. DLuxx was the first to livestream. During the Telegram livestream, he met a homeless man named Dillon, who did some skateboard tricks while DLuxx begged him to not hurt himself. Now the community claims they are working to send Dillon money and find him a place to stay.
In a message forwarded to Decrypt, Mikol said he plans to live stream a series of dares in New York once he has recovered.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
