Bro I’ve been staring at this Fogo thing for like an hour and I can’t tell if I’m early or just tired.
High-performance L1 using SVM. That’s the pitch. And yeah, that part actually makes sense. If you’re gonna build something fast, you might as well use the Solana VM because at least it’s been punched in the face a few times and survived. It’s not theory. It’s been through real chaos. Memecoin storms. NFT insanity. All that.
But also… Solana already exists. That’s the part that keeps looping in my head.
Like if you already have a fast car why build another one with the same engine? Are we racing or just collecting engines now?
Don’t get me wrong, I kind of like that they’re not doing the 400th EVM clone. I’m so tired of “cheaper gas, same everything else.” At least SVM signals they care about speed and parallel execution and all that performance stuff that actually makes apps feel usable instead of clunky. You can feel latency. Users can feel it even if they don’t know why. That matters.
Still… fast alone isn’t special anymore. It used to be. Now it’s expected.
I keep thinking maybe the real play isn’t beating Solana but existing alongside it. Like how there’s more than one gaming console even though they all play games. Same category, different vibe. Maybe that’s the angle. Or maybe I’m just trying to justify another L1 in a market that honestly doesn’t need twenty more.
And liquidity is sticky. It doesn’t just move because something benchmarks better. Crypto’s like a crowded bar — people go where other people already are. You can open a cooler, nicer bar next door but if it’s empty no one wants to be first inside. That’s the part nobody puts in the whitepaper.
The decentralization tradeoff bugs me too. High performance usually means heavier hardware. That’s just reality. You can’t pretend you’re running this stuff on a potato. And we’ve already had those debates with Solana. So if Fogo inherits that, are we just replaying the same argument with a different logo?
But then again maybe users don’t actually care as much as crypto Twitter does. If it works, it works. People just want things to not break.
I do respect that they didn’t try to invent some exotic new VM just to look innovative. Reusing something proven feels… mature? Or lazy. I can’t decide. It’s either smart engineering or strategic shortcutting. Probably both.
And I keep circling back to this question: what happens there that can’t happen somewhere else? If the answer isn’t obvious, that’s a problem. Tech alone won’t save it. I’ve seen too many “technically superior” chains turn into ghost towns after incentives dry up.
Token incentives will pump it at first, sure. They always do. But mercenary capital leaves faster than it arrived. I’ve been that mercenary capital before. No shame.
I don’t hate it though. That’s the annoying part. I’m skeptical but not dismissive. It feels like part of a bigger shift where execution environments are becoming shared infrastructure instead of religious wars. Maybe that’s healthy. Maybe we’re growing up a little.
Or maybe we’re just recycling narratives with better branding.
It’s late and I might be overthinking it… but Fogo sits in that weird zone where I’m not excited, not bored, just watching. Like when you see a new restaurant open and you don’t rush in day one, but you keep checking if it’s still there three months later.
If it survives that long, then I’ll care more. Right now it’s just… interesting. And in this market, interesting is already more than most projects manage.
