Phenomic (2015) was one of the first static-site generators built on React. Back then the only React option was metal-react (built on Metalsmith); Gatsby existed but ran everything through webpack and was slow. Phenomic took a different, largely webpack-decoupled approach to stay fast.

It gathered a real community and 3k+ stars - a precursor to what Next.js later made the standard for static rendering. Fittingly, its repository now simply points people to Next.js.