A Solana memecoin called Anonymous Cat, or ZCAT, has distributed roughly 2,320 ZEC to its holders, a payout worth about $2.8 million at current prices. The token charges a 3% tax on every transfer and converts most of that revenue into Zcash rewards, an unusual structure that only pays because ZEC itself has been one of the strongest assets in crypto this year.
According to CoinDesk, the distributions have happened more than 470,000 times since the token launched on StonkFun, a Solana launchpad that lets new tokens pair against assets other than SOL or stablecoins. ZCAT paired directly with ZEC, which is how the reward loop got built in the first place.
How the payout works
The mechanics are simple. Every buy, sell and transfer of ZCAT gets hit with a 3% tax. Most of the collected fees are converted into Zcash and sent to wallets holding at least $20 worth of ZCAT. There is no business revenue behind the rewards, no staking yield and no treasury. The entire payout stream comes from other traders transaction fees.
ZEC traded above $1,200 at one point this week, and the token has gained more than 2,300% over the past 12 months as interest in privacy coins picked up. That rally is what turned a modest fee pool into a $2.8 million distribution. Tron Weekly noted that rewards flow only while trading stays active, and that the mechanism depends on volume rather than any underlying cash flow.
ZCAT own price tells a mixed story
ZCAT itself traded around $0.13 on Monday with a market cap near $124 million and daily volume of about $22 million. It briefly touched $0.19 over the weekend before dropping back in early Monday trading. So the token has real liquidity, but the price action over just a few days shows how quickly sentiment moves on a memecoin with no fundamentals behind it.
The structure resembles the reflective tokenomics made famous by SafeMoon in 2021, where early holders were effectively paid by later entrants. The difference here is the payout asset. Instead of receiving more of the same token, ZCAT holders receive ZEC, which has an established market, a thirteen-year history and a spot ETF listed by Grayscale on NYSE Arca. That gives the rewards a price anchor the SafeMoon model never had, though it also couples the payout to a coin that can move 10% in a day.
Part of a bigger cat trend
ZCAT is also riding a broader wave of cat-themed tokens. Cash Cat, launched around the Robinhood Chain debut in July, turned a reported $800 position into more than $1 million within a week for one trader. Memecoin apps now make up most of the activity on Robinhood Chain, a network originally built around tokenized stocks, and the issuance platform Pons minted over 22,000 new tokens in a single day, generating millions of dollars in fees for the platform along the way.
That context matters because ZCAT did not grow in a vacuum. Interest in cat tokens has been largely detached from fundamentals, and the reward mechanism gives holders a reason to stay beyond pure speculation. Whether that reason survives a ZEC drawdown is the real test.
Where the model breaks
The risks are straightforward. If ZEC falls back below $1,000, the value of each distribution shrinks. If ZCAT trading volume dries up, the tax revenue dries up with it, and payouts can drop toward zero within days because there is no reserve funding them. Holders are running two bets at once, one on a memecoin and one on a privacy coin, and both legs of that trade are volatile. Skeptics see a closed loop that rewards the earliest wallets at the expense of new buyers, the same critique that followed SafeMoon, and the project anonymous developer gives the story little accountability if things go wrong.
Regulatory attention is another open question. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has pursued reflective token models before, and a payout marketed as a dividend can invite scrutiny that a plain memecoin might avoid. Nothing has been filed against ZCAT, and the token operates on a decentralized network, but the structural resemblance to a security offering is hard to ignore.
For now the numbers hold up. About 2,320 ZEC moved to holders, mostly through small distributions across 470,000 payouts, and the fee engine keeps running as long as people keep trading the cat. The moment they stop, the dividends stop with them.
discussion