In the current dull market, active grassroots have never been absent; what may be lacking is just the spark to ignite their enthusiasm.
Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow
The current crypto market is gradually falling into fatigue.
Bitcoin and Ethereum prices are struggling amidst fluctuations, while the spotlight is dominated by crypto stocks and stablecoins. The once vibrant community spirit of the crypto industry—filled with geeks and grassroots, playing memes, experimenting, and collective revelry—seems to have been flattened by market conditions and scams.
However, in the past two days, that long-lost community creativity has returned, accompanied by a faint sense of a crypto renaissance.
On June 19, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko (Toly) casually discussed on social media, giving birth to a meme coin called Gorbagana;
Interestingly, just 48 hours later, the L1 chain named after the coin, Gorbagana Chain, launched its testnet, technically forking from Solana.
As of now, Gorbagana is running stably and has processed nearly 14 million transactions; the token $GOR market cap has reached 30 million USD within 4 days (peaking at 60 million USD).
A meme itself is certainly not surprising, but the interesting and ironic part is that it took only 2 days from a community meme to creating a chain; whereas the so-called top-tier L1 projects often take 1-2 years from announcement to launching a testnet.
Without a roadmap, whitepaper, or marketing, this is not the typical, meticulously planned ICO, but rather an impromptu act driven by degens and developers in a Telegram group.
If you are not familiar with this event, we have summarized the Gorbagana incident as follows.
48 Hours: From a Joke Meme to a Serious L1
Like some classic memes from the past, the birth of Gorbagana also started with a joke.
On the 19th, while chatting with other users on X about Solana's brand recognition, user @lex_node casually invented a concept to refute Toly's view that "brand names aren't that important":
If one chain is called Solana, another forked chain could be called Gorbagana, with similar technology, but clearly Solana would be more valuable.
Toly took the bait and replied, stating, "If a chain called gorbagana doesn't appear within 48 hours, I would be quite disappointed."
Clearly, this gorbagana was just a name that sounds like Solana but is longer and more absurd, yet the community began to take action:
Six hours after the discussion thread, @lex_node launched a token named $GOR and informed everyone that it was just a pure meme, advising not to invest heavily.
Indeed, posting a related meme is not a new thing, and at this point, the situation was not particularly exciting.
However, this statement in his post was thought-provoking:
"You will never get rich by trading memes like this because wealth must come from people truly creating something and uniting around it."
After this statement, the developers in the community began to take it seriously.
Back in 2022, there was an old joke about Solana called SQL Chain, which was a community mockery of Solana being referred to as the "SQL database chain" due to its high performance, and there had always been thoughts of forking Solana to create a "garbage version" SQL Chain.
Riding on this Gorbagana joke, the action to fork Solana truly began.
User @Sarv_shaktiman, who had some development experience, saw Toly's discussion thread and the GOR token, bought a small amount, and gathered the developer team from the Milady project, deciding to turn this old joke into reality.
However, the speed from joke to reality was astonishingly fast:
Six hours after the post, the token GOR was launched;
Eighteen hours after the post, these developers had already started reverse engineering Solana's code architecture, attempting to fork a new L1;
Twenty-four hours after the post, the testnet for Gorbagana Chain was launched, equipped with custom RPC functionality and support for the Backpack wallet.
Forty-eight hours later, Gorbagana Chain's transaction volume surpassed 10 million; although it was a testnet, it proved the technical capabilities of the community developers. The market cap of $GOR also peaked at 60 million USD.
The entire process exuded a long-lost crypto entertainment vibe—community builders, from buying memes to studying blockchain architecture, to running a forked chain of Solana, acted decisively and in unity.
In addition to forking the entire Solana codebase to create a new L1, this chain also adopted the meme coin $GOR as its native token, supporting gas fee consumption and transfers.
No venture capital, no marketing, just the collective improvisation and collaboration of community members, turning a meme into a native token of an L1 within 48 hours.
This may not be a big deal, but it is certainly interesting.
It evokes the kind of excitement from years ago when various community projects were emerging on-chain.
Community Collaboration vs. Institutional Incubation
Is it really that simple to copy a chain?
Forking Solana sounds easy, but there are many headaches involved, such as wallet compatibility.
Mainstream Solana wallets like Phantom and Solflare cannot support Gorbagana's custom chain functionality due to "hard coding" (pre-set programs only recognize Solana's mainnet and testnet), effectively isolating the new chain from Solana's ecosystem.
In other words, while forking a Solana is possible, wallets may not necessarily support it.
The community developers faced not just simple copying but breaking through these technical barriers within 48 hours.
Among them, a user named @armaniferrante utilized the custom functionality of the Backpack wallet's "remote procedure call" (RPC, a protocol that allows wallets to communicate with chains) to connect Gorbagana to the Solana ecosystem within 24 hours, enabling the use of custom RPC functionality on the new chain.
Looking back, you could view this event as a "degen" version of a hackathon. There was no organization or planning for the event; it relied entirely on the real-time brainstorming of the developers in the group to provide discussions and solutions.
Although the leading developer may have been compelled to expand the project's influence due to purchasing GOR tokens, the entire approach was filled with that long-lost energy of technical geeks:
Filling technical gaps with passion, addressing issues through collaboration, and ultimately completing a significant project.
Although Gorbagana's activity only launched a testnet, 48 hours is still remarkably fast. Considering that some institutional-backed, high-profile projects with luxurious teams and ample funding can take years to launch, Gorbagana's community collaboration stands out as particularly commendable.
At the same time, we can't help but ask, if moving at full speed, does it really take that long to launch a complete L1 testnet?
Grassroots have their own flexibility; community collaboration is merely for an entertaining project, without KPIs, marketing, or TGE rhythm considerations, making it inherently more pure;
On the other hand, the emergence of institutional-level L1s involves the interests of different rounds of investors. Decisions on when to launch, when to announce the testnet, expectations for airdrops, and interaction models are no longer as simple as just getting the technology right.
Not to mention, sometimes whether a top-tier project's token undergoes TGE depends on market conditions and sentiment. These infrastructure projects resemble a large ship, laden with countless interests, making it difficult to make swift decisions and turn around in turbulent waters.
Long ago, the interesting aspect of crypto was precisely due to grassroots creativity rather than capital accumulation.
Gorbagana may not maintain its popularity for long, but it at least proves one thing:
In this dull market, active grassroots have never been absent; what may be lacking is just the spark to ignite their enthusiasm.
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