The CTO Controversy of the MEME Project Slerf and Reflections on Industry Development

Recently, a classic MEME project in the Solana ecosystem, Slerf, has attracted widespread attention. An opinion leader from the Chinese community initiated a CTO (Community Take Over) action, attempting to take over the project’s operation rights. This move doubled the price of Slerf within 5 days and sparked thoughts on the development prospects of MEME projects.

The Slerf project was initially launched in March 2024, featuring a sloth as its theme. The project promises to use 50% of the tokens for presale, while the other 50% and all proceeds from the presale will be injected into the DEX to provide liquidity. However, due to a developer's operational error, presale participants were unable to receive tokens, and the funds were locked in the liquidity pool and could not be refunded.

This unexpected event has instead brought significant attention to Slerf. As the project effectively created a MEME coin with a floor price of $0.02 and no circulation, it attracted a large influx of investors. The price of Slerf once surged from $0.02 to $1.2, a nearly 60-fold increase. At the same time, many institutions and project parties expressed their intention to help compensate pre-sale participants, further expanding the project's influence.

To address the presale issue, the Slerf team raised funds through various means for compensation. As of September 9, a total of 40,940 SOL has been repaid to 25,194 addresses, with approximately 12,437 SOL remaining to be repaid to 250 large addresses. However, as small participants gradually receive compensation, the legal risks faced by the founding team decrease, and the willingness to repay may decline. At the same time, the loss of attention has put pressure on the coin price.

Against this backdrop, community opinion leader "Scenery Brother" BillyWen initiated the CTO action. As a major holder of 5 million Slerf and an active member who has previously donated around 1 million USD, BillyWen holds significant influence within the community. He announced that he would donate another 1 million USD for the operation of the new team, a move that received support from many investors, driving the price of Slerf from 0.14 USD to a rapid increase of 0.24 USD.

The Slerf official responded to this, emphasizing the efforts made over the past period. However, the community expressed dissatisfaction with its behavior of using Slerf's influence to promote and profit from other projects, considering it a betrayal.

Regardless of the final outcome of this CTO initiative, it reflects the opportunities and challenges faced by the MEME project. From the perspective of opportunities, the MEME project has the following advantages:

1. The fair launch mechanism provides a more equal opportunity for various types of investors, with a more reasonable risk-reward ratio.

2. The cost of product development and operation is relatively low, with the ability for large-scale production.

3. The valuation model has not yet solidified, and price fluctuations are elastic, which is beneficial for active trading.

However, the MEME project also faces some challenges:

1. How to provide continuous incentives for the founding team to encourage long-term operation.

2. It is necessary to explore more effective governance models to cope with the increasingly decentralized liquidity.

3. The reasonable allocation of project ownership, including the balance between the founding team, large investors, and distributed community governance.

The development of the MEME project is still in the exploration stage, and in the future, it will need to innovate in areas such as operational models and governance mechanisms to achieve long-term sustainable development.