The current cryptocurrency market is gradually falling into fatigue.

Bitcoin and Ethereum prices are struggling with fluctuations, while the spotlight is dominated by crypto stocks and stablecoins. The previous spirit of the crypto industry, a blend of geeks and grassroots communities—playing with memes, experimenting, and collective revelry—seems to have been flattened by the market and scams.

In the past two days, that long-lost community engagement has returned, accompanied by a subtle flavor of crypto renaissance.

On June 19th, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko (Toly) had a casual discussion on social media, which led to the creation of a meme coin called Gorbagana;

The interesting thing is that just 48 hours later, the L1 chain named after the coin, Gorbagana Chain, launched its testnet and technically forked from Solana.

As of now, Gorbagana is running stably and has processed nearly 14 million transactions; tokens$GOR market capIn 4 days, it has reached 30 million USD (peak 60 million USD).

A Meme itself is certainly not surprising, but the interesting and ironic part is that it only takes 2 days to go from posting a Meme in the community to creating a chain; whereas the so-called top-tier L1 projects used to take possibly 1-2 years from promotion to the launch of the testnet.

There is no roadmap, whitepaper, or marketing; this is not the typical, well-planned ICO, but rather an impromptu act driven by Degen and developers in the Telegram group.

If you are not familiar with this event, we have also organized the details of the Gorbagana event as follows.

48 hours, from a joke Meme to a serious L1

Similar to some classic Memes from the past, the birth of Gorbagana also started with a joke.

On the 19th, Toly was chatting with other users on X about issues such as the brand recognition of Solana, when a netizen…@lex_node To refute Toly’s point of view that “the brand name is actually not that important,” a concept was casually made up:

If one chain is called Solana, and another fork chain is called Gorbagana, the technology is similar, but obviously, Solana is more valuable.

Then Toly played along and replied, “If there isn’t a chain called gorbagana appearing within 48 hours, I would be quite disappointed.”

Clearly, this gorbagana is just a name that sounds like Solana but is longer and more nonsensical; however, the community has started to get creative with it:

This discussion thread will be 6 hours later,@lex_nodeJust released a token called $GOR with the same name as gorbagana and told everyone this is just a pure meme, so don’t bet heavily.

Indeed, sending a related meme is not a new thing, and the situation here is not particularly exciting.

However, hepostThis sentence is thought-provoking:

“You will never actually get rich by trading Meme like this, because wealth must come from people trulycreateUnite around something.

After this sentence, the developers in the community started to take it seriously.

Solana had an old joke back in 2022 called SQL Chain, which was actually a community joke referring to Solana being humorously dubbed the “SQL Database Chain” due to its high performance, and there has always been the idea of a “garbage version” SQL Chain forked from Solana.

With this joke from Gorbagana, the fork of Solana has really begun.

Netizen@Sarv_shaktimanI have also done some development work, and after seeing Toly’s discussion thread and the GOR token, I bought a small amount of coins and gathered the developer team of the Milady project, deciding to turn this old joke into reality.

It’s just that the speed of this turning from a joke into reality is too fast:

The post was made 6 hours ago, and the token GOR is online.

Eighteen hours after the post was published, these developers have already begun reverse engineering the code architecture of Solana, attempting to fork a new L1.

24 hours after the post was published, the testnet of Gorbagana Chain went live, equipped with custom RPC functionality and support for the Backpack wallet.

48 hours later, the Gorbagana chain’s trading volume exceeded 10 million transactions. Although it is a testnet, it also proves the technical strength of the community developers. The market cap of $GOR also reached a peak of 60 million USD.

Throughout the process, there is a long-lost atmosphere of crypto entertainment — the community’s Builders, from purchasing Memes, to studying blockchain architecture, and then running a fork chain of Solana, buying and doing, integrating knowledge with action.

In addition to forking the entire Solana codebase to create a new L1, this chain also uses the Meme coin $GOR as its native token, supporting gas fee consumption and transfer usage.

Without venture capital, without marketing, only the collective improvisation and collaboration of community members, a meme transformed into a native token of L1 within 48 hours.

This isn’t a big deal, but it’s interesting enough.

It’s interesting in the way that it was a few years ago when there was vibrant on-chain activity and various community projects emerging one after another.

Community Collaboration VS Institutional Incubation

Is it really that simple to copy a chain?

Forking Solana sounds simple, but there are many headaches involved, such as wallet compatibility.

Mainstream Solana wallets such as Phantom and Solflare cannot support the custom chain functionality of Gorbagana due to “hardcoding” (pre-set programs only recognize the Solana mainnet and testnet), effectively isolating the new chain from the Solana ecosystem.

In other words, forking a Solana is possible, but wallets may not necessarily support it.

Community developers, what we face is not just copying homework, but breaking through these technical barriers within 48 hours.

Among them, a person named @armaniferranteUsers have integrated Gorbagana into the Solana ecosystem within 24 hours by utilizing the custom feature of the Backpack wallet’s “Remote Procedure Call” (RPC, a protocol that allows wallets to communicate with the chain), which also enables the use of custom RPC features on the new chain.

Looking back, you can see this as a “degen” version of a hackathon. There was no organization or planning for the event, and it all relied on the brothers in the group brainstorming in real-time to provide discussions and solutions.

Although the leading developer may have had to expand the project’s influence because he bought GOR coin, this whole set of practices is full of that long-lost energy of tech geeks:

Fill the technical gaps with enthusiasm, use collaboration to address the issues, and ultimately complete a major project.

Although Gorbagana has only launched a testnet, 48 hours is still remarkably fast in comparison. Considering that some top-tier infrastructure projects, backed by certain institutions, with luxurious teams and ample funding, can take several years to land, Gorbagana’s community collaboration seems even more commendable.

At the same time, we can’t help but ask, if we move forward at full speed, does it really take that long to launch a complete L1 testnet?

Grassroots have their own flexibility, community collaboration is just for an entertaining project, without KPIs, and there is no consideration for marketing and TGE rhythm, which is certainly purer in comparison;

The advent of institutional-level L1 itself involves the interests of different rounds of investors. When to launch, when to announce the testnet, expectations for airdrops, and the management of interaction modes are no longer as simple as just getting the technology right.

Not to mention, whether the tokens of top-tier projects have a TGE sometimes depends on the market conditions and sentiment. These infrastructure projects are more like a large ship, carrying countless interests, making it difficult to make quick decisions and turn around in the face of wind and waves.

A long time ago, the interesting aspect of cryptocurrency relied on grassroots creativity rather than capital accumulation.

Gorbagana may not stay popular for long, but it at least proves one thing:

In the current dull market, the active grassroots have never been absent; what may be lacking is just the spark to ignite their enthusiasm.

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