The ELONGATE Chronicle: A Journey of Evolution and Resilience
In the ever-evolving landscape of the crypto world, ELONGATE stands out as a testament to resilience, community commitment, and the enduring spirit of crypto enthusiasts. Founded in March 2021 by an anonymous developer known as Adam, ELONGATE began its journey as a meme token inspired by Elon Musk’s tweet, “If there is ever a scandal about me, call it Elongate.”
A Meme Token with Social Impact:
ELONGATE quickly transcended its meme status, rallying a community of like-minded individuals who shared a vision of unlocking social impact through innovative incentives and virality. Initially, the smart contract embodied a blend of RFI/BEE tokenomics, coupled with an auto-liquidity generating protocol. ELONGATE, along with counterparts like Safemoon and SafeMars, gained rapid popularity, exceeding $1 million in market cap within 24 hours and reaching $600 million in just five weeks. With a 10% tax on all buys, sells, and transfers, the team had the means to make sizable donations, kickstarting a journey dedicated to leveraging virality and current trends for positive social impact.
The Rise and Challenges of Tokenomics:
During the bull market, ELONGATE made substantial donations (totalling $3.7 million) and formed partnerships with major charities. However, as the crypto market dynamics shifted, the tokenomics that once defined success fell out of favour. Many leading exchanges refrained from supporting such tokenomics (so you had to list on them with 0 fees), creating challenges for projects like ELONGATE that had similar tokenomics. When you have thousands of users and millions in daily volumes, getting noticed or building partnerships is not difficult. The real test comes when volume is low, activity is low and you try to make things happen. The bear market brought a decline in community engagement, and despite the team’s efforts, the project faced the perception of being a meme token lacking utility.
The Name Dilemma:
The name “ELONGATE” started posing challenges in establishing partnerships and integrations, hindering the project’s growth potential. The team’s participation in Crypto Expo Dubai, where we won the Best Social Impact Project 2021 award, highlighted both the admiration for our mission and the reservations about the name. Thousands of people heard about us for the first time but it also became clear that although they felt what we were doing was amazing, but they were not fond of the name. We stuck with it but later in 2022 we launched our SalesForce exchange and integrated with ChainLink for our Burn.Party dApp, and again felt the same that had it been a different name, we could have gotten more out of the partnerships. It became evident that a rebrand was necessary to unlock further potential and broader acceptance.
Navigating the Bear Market:
By the end of 2022, Bitcoin had experienced a significant price drop (From 64K to 16K), and the bear market had firmly set in. Most of the core team members of ELONGATE had left, and there was little community and social activity. A few dedicated team and community members remained who still believed in our mission. Then there were also revelations that Adam had kept a lot of the token supply to himself which were distributed to multiple wallets. Most of these wallets then dumped these tokens onto the market for profit. With millions in daily volume, it was hard to spot at the time but looking back and investigating it later, it was obvious to see what had happened. Fingers started getting pointed at the current team and community who were left behind for wrongdoings. Although it became ugly with all the accusations, it was easy to clear our name as blockchain data does not lie. The team now left behind was not in charge of the smart contract at the time, and neither did they have any control over token distribution so these accusations were quickly put to bed.
With all that going on and token as good as dead, the handful of team and community members had a critical decision to make: whether to walk away like many others or redefine ELONGATE’s future. Also, remember that most of our competitor “Moon” coins with similar tokenomics had either been rugpulled or abandoned by now. So blaming the ELONGATE founders, the bear market and the toxicity at the time was the easy way out.
The Decision to Continue:
Call us crazy, but we opted for resilience over surrender and decided not to walk away. All the good work we had done, the $3.7 million of donations and all that we achieved together as a community, was too good to be just thrown away. We did not want this to be our legacy.
A gift from Adam:
Adam, before disappearing, did one good thing. Which was to leave us with some funds which we added to liquidity and used to stay afloat. This is worth mentioning as he did not have to do that. I guess this was his way of saying “Thanks and goodbye”. Without this, we wouldn’t have managed to still be operating.
This also tells you, that even Adam knew, handing such funds over to us would be safe, and we wouldn’t run away with it. Of course, we could have and nobody would have known, apart from Adam.
Using these funds, we could also have launched anonymous projects with a different name/branding and given the amazing utilities, it was an easy way to pump and dump such tokens.
But we put these funds to good use and decided to rebrand and migrate to a new smart contract. The once-popular burn/reflection/moon token features gave way to a more flexible ecosystem. Nobody was using these tokenomics anymore. This migration was not just a technical necessity; it symbolized a commitment to preserving the legacy built over the years.
From ELONGATE to EG:
The following are some of the things we did in 2023. The focus was on showcasing our achievements so far and building for the future on the pillars of decentralisation and transparency.
- We created an amazing new smart contract which got rid of all the bad features of the earlier token and gave us a solid foundation to build for the future- https://egtoken.io/token
- We got the EG Token smart contract audited by Vidma and Peckshield. Both passed with top ratings.
- We rebranded to EG and our future tools & utilities were to be called the EG Ecosystem.
- We designed & launched a new website – https://egtoken.io
- We moved all our hosting, API & architecture to be on cloud software (AWS, Azure etc) so it was no longer running on someone’s server in a garage!
- We built a dedicated section on our website to showcase all our amazing donations of $3.7 million. Doing more of this is one of the main reasons which kept us going – https://egtoken.io/social-impact-portal
- We meticulously updated all our social accounts and portals like Coinmarketcap with the new smart contract.
- Our liquidity was locked for 4 years so we created an innovative migration tool to migrate all of our holders to the new smart contract in a decentralised way. This also allowed us to move a part of the locked liquidity (By selling the tokens which we received from the community) which is a unique feature of EGMigrate.
- We kept the unlocked liquidity healthy and did not stop anyone from selling. So those looking for an exit were able to do so.
- EGMigrate passed an audit by Vidma with very high marks.
- We created a detailed migration guide – https://news.egtoken.io/1596
- We had an amazing launch of the EG Token without any issues, unannounced sells or liquidity dumps – https://news.egtoken.io/1693
- We created community councils to empower the community to steer decision-making for the future of the project – https://news.egtoken.io/1627
- We made all the project/team wallets and smart contract addresses public so the community could monitor all token movements. Any team tokens were locked or vested for at least a year. You can read all about this in our detailed article here and see all wallet addresses on this page – https://egtoken.io/token
- We announce EGSwap, our biggest and most innovative project to date – https://news.egtoken.io/1656
- We continue to make regular updates on all our socials and on our news website https://news.egtoken.io to keep you up to date with the latest developments.
The Future of EG:
As EG embarks on this new chapter, the vision is clear: to move beyond the limitations of the past, embrace change, and build a crypto project that goes beyond meme status. The commitment to social impact remains unwavering, with a renewed focus on community unity and continued positive contributions to the crypto space.
EG’s journey reflects the highs and lows inherent in the crypto world. As the project undergoes transformation, it invites the community to join in shaping the future. EG’s commitment to making a positive difference and its resilience in the face of challenges signal a promising chapter ahead.
Stay tuned for more exciting developments as EG redefines its narrative and continues to make waves in the crypto landscape.
Alex G
admin
