Grassroots Carnival 48-Hour Chain Creation: Lessons from the Gorbagana Incident

The crypto market has recently fallen into a state of fatigue, with the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum fluctuating unpredictably, while the spotlight has been taken over by crypto-related stocks and stablecoins. The once vibrant community spirit, interwoven with geeks and grassroots, seems to have been diluted by market volatility and scams. However, an interesting community event in the last two days has reignited people's enthusiasm, bringing a hint of a crypto renaissance.

This all started from a casual chat on social media by a co-founder of a well-known public blockchain on June 19. This discussion gave birth to a meme coin called Gorbagana. Surprisingly, just 48 hours later, a Layer 1 chain named Gorbagana Chain was launched on the testnet, technically forking from the original public blockchain.

As of now, Gorbagana is running stably and has processed nearly 14 million transactions. Its token $GOR reached a market capitalization of 30 million USD in just 4 days, peaking at as high as 60 million USD.

The meme itself is not particularly special, but it is interesting and ironic that it took only 2 days from the initiation of a meme by the community to the development of a new chain. In contrast, some so-called top L1 projects may take 1-2 years from promotion to the launch of a testnet.

The Gorbagana project has no roadmap, whitepaper, or marketing strategy; it is not a typical well-planned ICO, but rather an impromptu endeavor driven by enthusiastic users and developers in social groups.

The incident was triggered by a netizen who casually invented the name Gorbagana to refute a certain co-founder's viewpoint that "the brand name is not that important." The co-founder immediately stated that he would be disappointed if a chain named Gorbagana did not appear within 48 hours.

The community sprang into action. Just 6 hours later, someone released a token called $GOR and declared it was purely a meme. However, a seemingly ordinary statement inspired the developers: "You will never get rich by trading memes like this, because wealth must come from people truly creating something and rallying around it."

Inspired by this, a group of developers decided to turn this joke into reality. They quickly organized themselves and began reverse engineering the code architecture of the original public chain, attempting to fork a new L1 chain.

Amazingly, just 18 hours later, these developers started working on the fork. 24 hours later, the testnet of Gorbagana Chain went live, supporting custom RPC functionality and a certain well-known wallet. Within 48 hours, the transaction volume of the new chain exceeded 10 million, and although it was a testnet, it showcased the technical strength of the community developers.

This process showcases a long-lost spirit of crypto entertainment - community builders moving from purchasing meme coins, to studying blockchain architecture, and finally to running a forked chain, embodying the spirit of unity of knowledge and action.

It is worth noting that forking a public chain is not an easy task, especially with challenges related to wallet compatibility. Mainstream wallets only recognize the original chain's mainnet and testnet due to preset programming, making it impossible to support the custom chain functionality of Gorbagana. This means that the new chain may be isolated from the original ecosystem.

However, community developers successfully broke through these technical barriers within 48 hours. One developer enabled Gorbagana to connect to the original ecosystem within 24 hours by using the custom RPC feature of a certain wallet, allowing the use of the custom RPC functionality on the new chain.

This event can be seen as an impromptu "grassroots" hackathon. There was no formal organization or planning, entirely relying on community members to brainstorm in real-time to provide discussions and solutions. Although the leading developers may have had to expand the project's influence due to purchasing GOR coins, the entire process was filled with the passion of tech geeks: filling technical gaps with enthusiasm, solving problems through collaboration, and ultimately completing a large project.

Although Gorbagana is currently only on the testnet, the development speed in 48 hours is still astonishing. In contrast, some top infrastructure projects with strong backgrounds, luxurious teams, and ample funding often take years to land, which makes one wonder: if fully committed, does a mature L1 chain really need so long to develop a testnet?

Grassroots projects have their unique flexibility. Community collaboration is often aimed at an entertaining project, without performance pressure, and there is no need to consider the pace of marketing and token issuance, making it appear more pure. In contrast, the emergence of institutional-level L1 projects involves multiple interests. When to launch, when to announce the testnet, how to manage airdrop expectations and user interaction models, these are not merely technical issues.

Sometimes, whether the tokens of top projects are issued also needs to take into account market conditions and investor sentiment. These infrastructure projects are more like a large ship loaded with various interests, making it difficult to make quick decisions and adjust direction in the turbulent market.

Looking back at the development of the cryptocurrency industry, the most interesting innovations often come from grassroots creativity rather than capital accumulation. The popularity of the Gorbagana project may not last long, but it at least proves one point: in the current sluggish market environment, the active grassroots forces have never disappeared; they just lack an opportunity to ignite their passion.