Surging 400x in 24 Hours, What Concept is Gorbagana Trading?

Recently, the "Gor" token on the Solona chain saw a 400x price increase within 24 hours, with its market cap surpassing $40 million at one point. The whole event actually stemmed from MetaLeX's founder @lex_node's concerns about Solana's decentralization. This topic triggered a response from Toly, Solana's co-founder, on the social media platform X. The back-and-forth exchange between them on X gradually showcased the ideology behind the token.

Gabriel Shapiro Who Is He

Gabriel Shapiro, also known as "lex_node," before serving as the Chief Legal Advisor for Delphi Labs, initially worked as a lawyer at a Wall Street law firm's Silicon Valley office, specializing in facilitating acquisitions for tech companies like PayPal and Facebook. His entry into the world of cryptocurrency was quite serendipitous. During a Valentine's Day dinner date, he received a call from a Facebook shareholder asking him to return to the office to assist Mark Zuckerberg in completing the acquisition of WhatsApp.

Mark is said to have coincidentally encountered WhatsApp's team at a restaurant and convinced them to sell the company. The transaction was completed within 5 days. As the lawyer responsible for this acquisition, Gabriel Shapiro extensively researched WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption technology during the process, which served as a catalyst for his deeper dive into the cryptocurrency industry.

In 2015, he came across Ethereum and attended an Ethereum conference where the speaker happened to be Nick Szabo, once thought to be the "real Satoshi Nakamoto," vividly recounting The DAO. This presentation captivated him, a fellow lawyer, deeply. He believed in DAO-based economic systems that self-regulate through code and rules.

He envisioned the "New Control Theory Economy DAO" and constructed MetaLeX around this theory. Through a unique on-chain protocol and off-chain legal setup, MetaLeX combines autonomous on-chain code with off-chain legal entities to bridge DAOs with the real world, creating a flexible, efficient, legal, and DAO-accountable control-theory organization.

Ethereum Classic = Solana, Ethereum = Gorbagana?

And yesterday, Gabriel Shapiro engaged in a heated debate around "Chain Orthodoxy and Trademark Control." Gabriel Shapiro reviewed Ethereum's fork after the 2016 THE DAO incident, pointing out that back then the Ethereum Foundation relied on control of the "Ethereum" and "ETH" trademarks to successfully shape the post-hard fork new chain as the orthodox version, relegating the original chain to Ethereum Classic.

In his view, this fact illustrates that the so-called "decentralization" is actually subject to Web2-style legal power at critical moments. He further warned that the Ethereum Foundation may have lost effective control of the "ETH" trademark today, as brands like MegaETH, ETHDenver, and others have already been widely used without authorization.

He believes that "if a company holds a trademark but does not have a trusted neutral rule to decide how it is used, then the project is not truly decentralized/autonomous." In his view, this fact illustrates that the so-called "decentralization" is actually subject to Web2-style legal power at critical moments. Solona's founder Toly responded to this, saying, "It doesn't matter where you are; as long as everyone is using the same ledger, the brand name is not important."

He also proposed the idea that if someday Solana forks, one chain retains the original name Solana and the $SOL token, while the other chain names itself "Gorbagana," with a logo of oscar the grouch.png, a naming scheme that easily evokes the homophone of garbage, adding more irony to the narrative.

Toly's response to this was, "If no one creates the Gorbagana chain within 48 hours, I will be very disappointed."

Meanwhile, a meme coin named "Gor," launched via Pumpfun, drawing its inspiration from the "Sesame Street" character "Oscar the Grouch," who is a green furry creature living in a trash can, known for his love of complaining, garbage, and a generally grouchy attitude. The term "Gorbagana" itself clearly derives from an ironic variant of "Garbage."

The token's market cap quickly soared to $1.6 million, attracting Toly's attention. Toly commented on the icons of three trash cans, triggering a complete FOMO in the community. The $GOR market cap briefly exceeded $10 million in a short period of time.

Ironically, Gor-chain was indeed developed by @MidTermDev in less than 48 hours. Following Toly's response, the token's market cap hit a new all-time high surpassing $40 million.

However, @MidTermDev's account may have been subjected to a "hack" afterwards, launching a new token (which has now almost gone to zero). Currently, @MidTermDev has been banned, and the development team is under the control of the CTO, with core members including @0rdlibrary, @Sarv_shaktiman, etc.

Another Feast of a Conspiracy Group? Who Profited from $GOR

Behind this frenzy of capital, it is noteworthy that the top-ranking profit address of the "Gor" token, starting with A4DC, also earned 861 Sol in the "IBRL" token, currently ranking 4th in the profit list. "IBRL" is also a project heavily promoted by Toly. On the on-chain data tracking platform Arkm, this address has the domain name circled.sol and has financial transactions with the authenticated entity wallet coyote, which in turn points to the X account @4pfcoyot.

When the $GOR market cap fell back to the 7-8 million range, coyote bought a total of 350 Sol. Coincidentally, shortly after, Toly replied to a tweet about the Gor-chain development, causing the "Gor" market cap to surge to 40 million dollars. Taking advantage of this surge, coyote successfully exited liquidity, pocketing over 1500 Sol in profit. This ruthless move allowed coyote to secure substantial gains, bringing coyote's total earnings in $GOR to 1780 Sol, making coyote the top gainer.

On the contrary, a well-known Chinese on-chain KOL remained calm throughout the operation. Although this KOL had already bought 200 Sol at a 4 million dollar market cap, once the price rose to 7 million dollars, large amounts of chips were sold. As the story unfolded, the KOL chose to sell a significant amount of chips when the market cap reached 11 million dollars, then bought more when it hit 25 million dollars, ultimately averaging around 26 million dollars, currently only seeing a paper gain of 370 Sol.

Unlike the FOMO retail investors, some in the community hold the view that "Gor" may not be as interesting as it seems on the surface. @imperooterxbt bluntly stated that while the token is built by the same team as "GORK," there seems to be a lack of solid evidence.

While this social experiment may appear to be just another "conspiracy feast" to most in the community, the concept of the decentralized brand mentioned by Gabriel Shapiro does highlight a long-standing issue. If Ethereum can "arbitrarily" become Ethereum Classic, can garbage (Gorbagana) also replace Solana?