Degen Chain, currently a layer 3 blockchain built on Base, is in a spat with infrastructure tooling firm Conduit, which the Solana community is taking advantage of.
DEGEN is a memecoin inspired by the crypto parlance used to describe those who take outsized risks and even make irrational decisions.
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Posted November 7, 2024 at 6:22 pm EST.
On Thursday, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz encouraged Degen Chain users, who have suffered a litany of difficulties as a layer 3 blockchain built on Coinbase’s incubated Base, to move to Solana.
One Degen community member who goes by @ConejoCapital on X already deployed a DEGEN token on Solana through memecoin incubator Pump.Fun. The cryptocurrency has already “graduated” from Pump.Fun, meaning the token hit a certain market cap, and is now trading on decentralized exchange Raydium at a market cap of $1 million as of presstime, data from Dex Tools shows.
Degen Chain has been plagued with a number of issues stemming from a “bad upgrade” pushed by infrastructure tooling firm Conduit, who currently holds keys to the rollup according to the Degen team. “@ConduitXYZ pushed a bad upgrade without notifying us – this caused 54 hours of downtime [in May] and led to $160k in lost user funds – then bridge volume dropped by 75% over the next month,” the team wrote early Thursday.
In the aftermath, @conduitxyz:
– refused to take ownership for damages to our community
– refused our requests to upgrade the chain
– withheld our sequencer fees
– demanded a new contract absolving them of responsibility
– negotiated said contract in bad faith over 3 months— Degen 🎩 (@degentokenbase) November 7, 2024
As a result, the Degen Chain team concluded Conduit was not acting in good faith, adding that the infrastructure tooling firm “is likely to maliciously comply with the proposed contract to delay migration [to another chain] further. We have an exciting upgrade [to be deployed] that requires only a single signed transaction from their team.”
Read More: $44 Million Memecoin PNUT From Pump.Fun Emerges From Euthanized Viral Squirrel
In response, Conduit founder Andrew Huang said on X that he was surprised to see these accusations, “given that we haven’t had any communications from them since we sent the contract out.” Huang says a signed contract was sent to Degen’s inbox which was verbally agreed to on Oct. 30.
The DEGEN community is important to us, which is why we’ve been providing DEGEN service for free since May, without a formal relationship (which in this case means no customer contract signed). This is unusual in business, but at Conduit we are flexible and want to support the… https://t.co/s10WF91KLl
— Conduit (@conduitxyz) November 7, 2024
Moreover, Conduit has not received an address to transfer ownership of the rollup, Huang claims. The Degen team pushed back arguing that both parties have been chatting about migration plans since Aug. 15.
“We repeatedly tried asking for access to the rollup keys but @ConduitXYZ didn’t hand them over. On October 24th (far more than 30 days after our original contract ended), [Conduit] said they would share details and next steps in a doc which we never received,” the Degen team said.
Solana community members are using the drama between the Degen Chain community and Conduit as an opportunity to attract Degen users into the Solana ecosystem. “You don’t need a new chain just come to Solana and I will paint your servers purple by hand,” commented Helius’ Mumtaz six hours ago on Degen’s thread on X. In the same thread, Solana’s Gokal asked the Degen team, “Have you heard the good news about Solana.” Read More: Bitcoin Just Gained $100 Billion in Market Cap Overnight. Is it Time to Take Profits?
After initially starting as a memecoin native to Base that is used as tips on social network Farcaster, DEGEN changed and rolled out a layer 3 network. In light of the difficulties, some Degen community members expressed regret in making an entire blockchain, such as X user @4484 who said, “Degen should just go back to being a memecoin.”
