DeGodsthe most precious NFT project on Solanahas a habit of announcing unexpected twists, from upgrading its illustrations to buy majority control of a BIG3 basketball teamand even recently put some of his previously burned NFTs on Bitcoin.
But the creators of the project have delivered one hell of a Christmas surprise: DeGods will leave Solana.
On December 25, DeLabs founder Rohun “Frank” Vora revealed his latest “social experiment”, announcing that DeGods’ NFTs would be “linked” to Ethereum—the largest and most valuable NFT marketplace, with projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club And CryptoPunks.
Meanwhile, y00ts will be moved to Polygonan Ethereum scaling network that is recently gained traction with brands like Starbucks, Meta and Nike. The DUST ecosystem token tied to both projects will also be tied to Ethereum and Polygon.
Few concrete details about the migration have been announced since then, but for the first time, Frank and Dust Labs CEO Kevin Henrikson exclusively discussed the motivations behind the move with Decrypt and explained the process ahead.
Not “if”, but “when”
When DeGods launched in late 2021, Solana was close to its record price and NFT scene was spreading rapidly. By the time it became Solana’s most valuable large-scale NFT project last summer, SOL had lost considerable value and the the broader NFT market was in freefall.
At the end of December, shortly after the announcement of the move, SOL had dropped about 97% of its peak price. Frank had previously tweeted about a potential migration amid Solana’s year-end struggles and faced considerable backlash from the community. Even so, the rumors persisted as DeLabs continued to flesh out its actual plans.
Henrikson Customs Decrypt that Solana was “a great place” to start life, given the network’s tooling and the fact that its NFT community was not as established as Ethereum’s. But he said DeLabs had larger-scale ambitions that the team knew would likely lead to 10,000 NFTs one day. profile picture (PFP) project to the Ethereum ecosystem.
“It wasn’t about ‘if’, it was just about ‘when’ — and that was even in the early days of DeGods,” he said. “If we want to be the biggest and most popular NFT collection in the world, you have to be on Ethereum.”
DeGods, who generated nearly $150 million of trading volume on Solana, will soon enter the largest market for high-value NFT collections. Frank reaffirmed his goal of making DeGods the “world’s number one luxury NFT”.
Currently, a DeGods NFT on Solana starts at around $11,500 SOL on the magic eden market, but Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club PFPs on Ethereum are starting to 10 times this amount. It will be a new challenge trying to outperform ETH heavyweights, but that’s a big part of the appeal for DeLabs.
Why Polygon?
At the beginning of the follow-up project y00ts made waves last summerDeLabs has received information from various blockchain networks about launching the NFT collection elsewhere.
It was eventually rolled out to Solana, but DeLabs looked for a possible destination that could help this collection reach a wider audience and collaborate with major brands. Henrikson quoted last year litany of brand ads around Polygon, including NFT initiatives from Reddit, Meta, Starbucks, DraftKings, Disney and beyond, and described it as an opportunity.
He said Decrypt that switching to Polygon is “the fastest way to connect to these companies because they will be on the same channel”. Frank added that in addition to offerings from mainstream brands, Polygon offers access to a growing list of metaverse gaming platforms. Many y00ts visual traits have even been left blank “so brands can print their logos on them,” Frank said.
The project’s artwork was also designed to be broadly appealing — or “clean enough that I could sell pacifiers and diapers,” Henrikson explained of potential partnerships or licensing deals, but also “men’s cologne and more degeneracy-centric things”.
Ultimately, DeLabs accepted a non-equity grant of $3 million from Polygon Labs as part of the y00ts transfer agreement to the network. Frank said Polygon was “far from the biggest bidder in this regard” and that DeLabs chose the network for other reasons, but admitted “it was stupid not to accept” the grant when so many networks were offering funds.
DeLabs will use the funds to help grow its team and take some of the audience focus off Frank, he said. Additionally, DeLabs and Dust Labs will develop a Polygon NFT launchpad and help incubate new projects, as Polygon Labs President Ryan Wyatt discussed recently on Decryptthe gm podcast. It’s about expanding the network’s NFT scene beyond branded apps.
“The most powerful thing in crypto is incentive alignment,” Frank said. “I personally want to see y00ts succeed, but part of being successful with y00ts is seeing the rest of the ecosystem succeed.”
How it works
DeLabs has set a March 15 launch target for the DeGods and y00ts bridges, but Henrikson said Decrypt that the end of March is more realistic. So far, it’s unclear exactly how the team expects users to move NFTs between channels, especially whether NFTs can be moved between supported channels.
The bridging process by wormhole will be an optional “one-way migration” from Solana to the new channel in both cases, Henrikson said, via a “burn and mint” process. Essentially, the Solana version of the PFP will be destroyed and an identical version will be minted on the new chain and sent to the holder’s designated wallet. There is no option to undo the migration.
Holders can choose to keep their existing Solana NFT from either collection, but they will lose access to ongoing incentives and future benefits around the projects. For example, the stake rewards offered to both – the DUST token for DeGods and the points for y00ts holders – will only continue to accrue for NFTs that have been linked to Ethereum and Polygon.
“You want to do the burn-and-mint,” Frank said, “and you want to have some kind of incentive for people to go there the first week, to make it feel like a real party.”
Henrikson said the Phantom wallet, which supports Solana and has added Ethereum and Polygon in beta, is ideal for this type of transition because everything can take place in a single interface. But the Wormhole process can work with other wallets, starting with any other Solana wallet and ending with the new NFT in the popular Ethereum wallet. MetamaskFor example.
And after?
Frank said DeLabs was deliberately silent on future plans before the switch, but the migration will herald the start of its next phase for both projects. “DeGods season starts when we get to ETH, and y00ts season starts when we get to Polygon,” he claimed.
Moving Solana’s projects to their respective new networks will also serve as a showcase for Dust Labs’ software and technology, Henrikson said, adding that the company was founded with the ambition to be “all-chain or multi-channel.”
Dust Labs, which raised $7 million last year, will offer its software on multiple channels for other brands and companies to use. He said the doors to potential new opportunities are opening at a “much faster” pace than ever before, thanks in part to support from Polygon Labs and interest from brands who want to help grow the NFT space on this platform. network.
While the announcement rattled many die-hard Solana fans, Frank pointed out that the migration wasn’t meant to be a firm farewell to the original home of DeGods and y00ts. All untraded y00t t00bs NFTs – which holders burn to spawn a y00ts PFP – will continue to live solely on Solana, and Frank said DeLabs will consider building future projects on the chain.
“We have so much love for Solana,” Frank said. “Sometimes it can look very busy on the internet, but to us, that has nothing to do with it. We’re honestly thrilled to see the quoted mantle ‘passed’ from us to another group of builders on Solana.
But DeLabs and Dust Labs see their future spanning multiple chains and believe the best place to grow DeGods and y00ts is elsewhere. Frank said he never joined the “Yuga [Labs] playbook » that many other NFT projects have attempted to copy, and that its plan is to branch out in search of new conquests and a potentially wider audience.
“Let’s not be complacent here. Let’s keep pushing the boundaries and trying new things,” he said. “We’re trying to take big swings, and we’re trying to do it in a way that’s going to make it exciting for people to participate.”