depicted as its hydroxyfuran tautomer. An asymmetric protonation event was envisaged to set the key butenolide stereocenter present in 1. Disconnecting 6 into roughly equal halves leads to building blocks 7 and 8. In the forward direction, a chemoselective conjugate addition of 7 onto 8 would be required. The trisubstituted furan fragment 7 might arise through a unique sequence of tandem halogen dance/Zwiefel olefination eventually leading back to inexpensive bromofurfural. Finally, a strategy using succinate as a linchpin ethylene source to link two alkenyl halides was imagined using recently developed Ni-electrocatalytic decarboxylative cross-coupling (DCC) to access fragment 8.