Since its launch last week, the Degen Chain network has attracted a fair number of speculators—and its success has drawn in a number of critics. 

Degen Chain, built using Arbitrum Orbit, was launched by infrastructure provider Syndicate on Mar. 28 as a specialized ultra-low-cost network for the Degen token ($DEGEN), which has become the de facto community token for users of the Farcaster Web3 social media service. Since Farcaster runs on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, Degen Chain is therefore a Layer 3 network, or L3. 

As Farcaster sets new user activity records and its parents company eyes a unicorn valuation, early Degen adopters have turned small stashes into fortunes: one trader who invested less than $7,000 into the token came away with over $2 million in profit.