$CIRCLEBUY → BIGGER · SELL → SMALLER

The oldest TokenWorks project, brought to life on Ethereum

Update: Full story behind Circle, explained by Adam

Adam @Rhynotic

We've updated the TokenWorks archive to have read-only frontends of some of our older projects

5:15 PM · Oct 14, 2026Open on X

Brought back by its holders

Circle was the first thing TokenWorks ever made. It launched on Shape, a chain that has since gone dark. Now it's alive again on Ethereum.

In October 2024, Circle put a token's market cap on screen as a single black circle. Buy and it grew. Sell and it shrank. For a few weeks it was the thing everyone on Shape was looking at, and the screenshots travelled far beyond it.

Then Shape emptied out. The circle stayed where it was, on a chain nobody visits anymore. This is a community fork: the same idea, carried over by people who held it, to the network where it should have lived from the start. No team, no roadmap, just the circle.

Then · Oct 2024

On Shape

Chain: Shape, a creator L2, days old
Exchange: A custom Uniswap v2 fork
Launch: Full supply against 1 ETH, about $5k
Made by: TokenWorks
Status: Stranded on a dead chain

Now

On Ethereum

Chain: Ethereum mainnet
Exchange: Where the liquidity already is
Tools: Every chart and wallet sees it day one
Run by: The community
Status: Growing

01 / Story

A memecoin shaped like the chain it launched on.

Shape went live on September 30, 2024. New chains arrive bare: no Dexscreener, no Uniswap, no charts, and Shape's crowd was there for NFTs. Nothing fungible had caught on.

TokenWorks treated the empty chain as the opening. They deployed their own exchange, launched a token, and in place of a chart showed one black circle whose size was the market cap. On a chain called Shape, the first memecoin was a shape. Thousands bridged in, and Beeple made an everyday about it.

Sept 30, 2024Shape goes live.

Early OctCircle launches with no snipers in sight.

Weeks afterBlack circle screenshots spread across X.

LaterShape goes quiet. The circle is stranded.

NowThe community brings it to Ethereum.

02 / Lessons

What the first circle taught us.

Kept

The circle is the product

Black disc, white text, nothing else in the frame. That's why the screenshots spread.

●

Kept

The site is the meeting place

With no charts on Shape, people came back to the page to check on the circle, and posted it every time.

●

Kept

Less friction, more life

A one-step bridge-and-buy gave the original a second wind. Ethereum removes the bridge entirely.

●

Fixed

Selling was hidden

The original only showed a buy button, and "how do I sell this?" became a meme. Here, both directions are in plain sight.

○

Fixed

Money left on the table

Unclaimed gas rebates and fees that never left the pool. Nothing that could have kept the project going ever reached it.

○

Fixed

A bet on one young chain

The token was fine. The chain wasn't. Ethereum isn't going anywhere.

○

03 / On Ethereum

Same circle. Better place to live.

This fork isn't made by or connected to TokenWorks. It's run by the people who held the first circle and didn't want it to end on an empty chain.

Same rule

The circle is the market cap and nothing else.

Visible from day one

Every chart, wallet and explorer on Ethereum can see it.

Both directions

Buy and sell side by side. If it shrinks, it's because people chose to sell.

No team

Holders run the site, the posts and the decisions, in the open.