gorbagana is now among the first to receive official CTO status through @pumpdotfun's new fee-switching feature, and I think this is actually a deeper move by @pumpdotfun than it might initially appear. I will try to give my thoughts below. ...in gorbagana's case, all of these funds will go to a public-benefit corporation (to be incorporated tomorrow) that runs the first validator and related infrastructure and can research development infrastructure and apps for gorbagana. . . but this is not just about our project; it's a deeper phenomenon that gorbagana is among the first to explore within the pump/memecoin 'meta'. . . we have hit a strange point. . . the socialFi + memecoin phenomenon means that it is impossible for any creator or public figure to avoid being financialized...if you don't financialize yourself, others can now easily do it for you, even against your will. . . ...if you think about it, this is *deeply weird* and defies well-trodden conventions of intellectual property & rights of personal publicity, etc. . . we've already seen creators have deeply ambivalent reactions to this, ranging from Matt Fury to the pnut guy to the chillhouse guy to, well, even myself = ). . . but the trend is here to stay, and those who adapt to it fastest will do the best. . .if you fight it, you're defying the zeitgeist, and you will just lose. . . this trend also reflects a reality that people who are good at creating things or capturing a certain cultural moment are often not great at 'markets'. . .the unbundling of market valuation and creative functions has the potential to be predatory if we handle it the wrong way, but it can also be beautiful if we handle it the right way. . .when a creator can't see the value of what they're doing, someone else will and can profit from that bet. . . . . .this 'involuntary financialization', though, is only net socially positive if there are 'CTO' mechanisms so that once the market has given this feedback to the creator and the people who gave that feedback were rewarded for their bet, the creator himself/herself can personally benefit in some way *and* also keep contributing to the phenomena in a positive feedback loop. . .otherwise, we are stuck with 'slop tokenization' ( . . . ...but historically, the mechanisms for creators to step back into their 'involuntarily financialized' creations have been lacking. . . I think perhaps the only project to really come close to nailing it within the broader socialFi meta is @fantasy_top_ because they recognize creators as 'first-class' citizens alongside traders, and give them a cut of trading fees and give them some cards, without requiring the creator to put up risk capital of their own. . . . in contrast, until now, 'CTO' (community takeover) of a pure memecoin has been really hard. . .to get to a similar place of token ownership for the creators/ongoing team as venture-backed projects have had is close to impossible. . . . . . .trenchers have the idea that creators should buy into the token even at high valuations for the privilege of giving themselves an incentive to keep working, but this is not how human psychology or economics work. . . labor typically contributes 'sweat capital' to earn rewards; asking them to also buy up tokens at a high valuation to create their own incentive is never going to be sustainable--it means every creator must first and foremost be a venture capitalist...that will severely restrict the pool of creators and only attract more market/pnd types instead. . . from their recent move to enable CTO fee transitions, it's clear @pumpdotfun recognizes this as a real problem. . .their bravery in this is not to be underestimated as I'm sure lawyers and others probably cautioned them around it. . . but just this alone is probably insufficient. . . I believe 'forking' can also be a significant piece of the puzzle and gorbagana will be the trendsetter in this...likewise, forking is also intrinsic to the underlying philosophy of crypto...read Nick Land's "xenosystems" and his concepts of "Capital Escapes" and "Crypto-Capitalism" in the context of crypto and 'cybernetic control systems', for example. . . ...the real test of any of these coins/cults is 'can they have enough real underlying value (including memetic value) that they can fork tokenomics (add staking, buyback/burn, dev incentives, etc.)'?... . . .if the token just purely has value because someone put $ into a liquidity pool and the creator can't upgrade the original token contract to keep that liquidity, then the token cannot be successfully forked/upgraded and frankly it cannot even be considered a 'memecoin,' because it's not the meme giving it value, only pure $ and an AMM mechanism. . . . . . .pretty much all tokens have to prove themselves like this ...@yearnfi is a great example of successful dev incentive inflation (from a fair-launched coin. . . ETH is a great example of an early contentious fork (ETC/ETH) and tweaking tokenomics over time through non-contentious forks in light of lessons learned. . .(keep in mind, *most* forks are just 'upgrades', i.e., non-contentious). . .Bitcoin's test has come many times, through contentious forks (the Bitcoin Cash and blocksize wars) and will likely hit again because of quantum cryptography issues or the potential for a crisis sparked by mining being unprofitable once the supply cap is hit. . . gorbagana started as a conversation between @aeyakovenko and me over intellectual property rights and forking ( . . . these are deep philosophical issues, and with gorbagana we're able to explore them through low-stakes THROWAWAY trashy experiments where we embrace the motto 'in a world of trash, gorbage is the only authenticity'. . ..this is the beauty of it and why I'm working hard on it...it's a mix of seemingly ridiculous stuff that actually explores cutting-edge issues in governance, intellectual property, memetics, and culture. . .I personally think that *can* be really valuable long-term which is why I've personally bought a fair amount of GOR and put in a lot of work to set this up to be a long-term thing (more details on that imminent). . . pump's move helps a lot with this, as do other things we'll be doing. . . in a world of trash, garbage is the only authenticity. gorbagio.