4chan Chronicle/The Fourth Shutdown

The massive popularity of 4chan quickly becomes taxing, as many errors in 4chan's poorly translated web engine appears, and moot barely knew what half of it meant. Their first host dropping them would be due to a bug that made users load thumbnails as if they were full sized images, effectively increasing bandwidth to enormous levels. Many ADTRW and world2ch members offer a helping hand, fixing code or explaining concepts. Shii, [NPH], hova and thatdog helped tweaking the source code a little, and thatdog eventually releases Futallaby, which would become 4chan's first source code. Due to the enormous bandwidth costs, moot just barely manages to keep the site alive, through ads or donations. The controversial content becomes a major point of contention, forcing 4chan out of hosting at least 3 times. The majority of the anime boards take shape during this time, and the first tenets of 4chan culture are created under influence by ADTRW, FYAD, world2ch and 2chan. During a particularly hard time thanks to the owner of HentaiKey convincing PayPal to close moot's account, effectively suspending him of donation money, he decided he had enough of 4chan and shuts it down, killing it for a fourth time.

The Beginnings of the Chanverse

4chan was not the first imageboard: that title belongs to world2ch. And neither of them would be alone for long.

The creation of 4chan, which imported 2chan's source code, Futaba, led to the creation of various derivative imageboard engines.

• Futallaby - Created by thatdog
• Shiichan - Shii's attempt at 2ch's BBS
• Kareha and Wakaba, created by WAHa.06x36 (Dag Ågren)

All these source codes allowed for the creation of a myriad smaller chans. The first alternative imageboard was probably 1chan, founded by thatdog while he tested futallaby with moot, housing only one unique board, trains, which still lives to this day.

The most important sites would be

• iichan (Idlechan), a site created when 4chan died on June 2004.
  • WAKAChan - iichan eventually died and became WAKAchan, an interesting concept where users would host boards on their own servers and link each other under the same banner.
• 5chan - Created by BarnacleED, it was home to the kind of Otakus ADTRW hated. He closed it when moot personally visited their IRC.
• Zadabab's 5chanThe domain was later taken by another user, Zadabab, associated with TheRowan, owner of HentaiKey. It required registration, was barely populated and had a wide range of pornographic boards. TheRowan used dirty tactics for the day, such as selling mailing lists. When he saw that 5chan was unpopulated, he decided to try and convince PayPal of dropping moot's account. He succeeded, effectively cutting moot off donation money and forcing him to take the site down.
• The first 7chan, a very short-lived site that lasted a few days.
• The first 8chan, founded by WTSnacks.

While 5chan died shortly after, WAKAchan and iichan gave birth a whole net of imageboards extending into the modern Russian chanverse, some of which still live to this day.