After Vitalik Buterin published the open-source novel Snowmoon, traders quickly spun up a cluster of on-chain tokens based on elements from the text. According to GMGN data, $ZC, described as a token linked to the novel’s in-story currency Zipcoin, briefly reached a market capitalization of $20.89 million before pulling back to about $14.34 million. Its intraday gain at one point exceeded 41x. Separate on-chain observers said the token’s market cap moved past $15 million on Sept. 29. The speculative wave did not stop with ZC. Traders also created tokens such as $SNOWMOON and $EMERALD, using the book title, currency references, and AI assistant elements from the story. ZC was launched on STOCKER, and that activity also pushed $STOCKER up by about 10x at one point, with one market observation placing ZC at roughly $15 million in market cap and STOCKER at about $7 million. Some market participants then took the narrative a step further, speculating that Buterin had "disguised" a privacy-coin white paper inside the novel.

According to market data from GMGN, ZC (zipcoin), a meme coin on the Ethereum ecosystem, briefly pushed its market capitalization above $14 million after rising more than 21x within the day. The token was later quoted at $10.07 million in market cap. The narrative around ZC comes from Snowmoon, a 32-chapter novel recently completed by Vitalik. In the book, the fictional country of Veridia uses zipcoin as its currency. The setting also includes several built-in mechanisms tied to the token, including anonymous payments, publishing high-value information by burning tokens, high-cost signaling through a mechanism called Doorstep Burn, and automated taxation. Odaily said meme coins can see sharp price swings and are easily influenced by market sentiment and event-driven hype, adding a reminder for readers to pay attention to trading risks. The outlet also pointed readers to the full version of Vitalik’s open-source sci-fi novel Snowmoon.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s first original science-fiction novel, Snowmoon, has been released in full, according to Odaily. The outlet said Buterin wrote in May that he would stop publishing regular blog posts and instead try writing fiction focused on decentralized governance. Snowmoon was described as a 32-chapter work created with a fully hand-built plot, while AI was used only for polishing and proofreading. Odaily said the Chinese translated edition runs to more than 170,000 characters. The novel places Buterin’s long-running ideas on Ethereum, mechanism design, privacy technology and plural governance inside a narrative framework. In the story, two social systems, Veridia and the Arctic Empire, face off over digital sovereignty in a future world heavily dependent on cryptography and decentralized governance. Odaily also highlighted that the book incorporates mechanisms drawn from academic papers, is open-sourced under GPL v3, and includes an AI-use statement in the main text. The outlet added that it has attached a complete translated version of the original work to a cloud drive for readers.

Ethereum gas fees briefly climbed to 10.5 Gwei, according to data from Etherscan cited by Odaily. The move came after an earlier update involving Ethereum co-founder Vitalik, who said his first original novel, Snowmoon, had been completed. Odaily said meme coins tied to that concept then appeared on the Ethereum network, pushing gas fees higher for a short period. The report did not provide additional on-chain figures beyond the 10.5 Gwei reading, and it described the increase as temporary rather than sustained. The development links a burst of meme-coin activity on Ethereum with a near-term rise in transaction costs on the network.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on Sept. 27 that his original novel, Snowmoon, has been completed at 32 chapters and released under the GPL v3 license. The book is framed as speculative science fiction and depicts a world heavily shaped by cryptography and decentralized governance. Its plot centers on ideological conflict between societies including Veridia and the Arctic Empire, while weaving in concepts such as zero-knowledge proofs, quadratic voting, privacy technology, and content-oriented taxation mechanisms. Buterin said the work also reflects themes he has focused on for years, including mechanism design and digital sovereignty. He added that derivative adaptations, including films and animation, are allowed, but any related production pipeline must also be open-sourced, including AI prompts, scripts, and other non-general materials. Buterin also said all of the text was written by him personally, with AI used only for spelling and grammar checks, consistency verification for the setting, and webpage formatting. He appended the note: "Snowmoon was written with love."