DeGods and Y00ts, two of the top Solana non-fungible token (NFT) projects, were rumored to be departing the SOL ecosystem for months until the project team on Sunday announced the migration on Twitter.
According to the team, Y00ts and DeGods will switch to Polygon and Ethereum, respectively, in the first quarter.
According to Rohun Vora, aka Frank, the project’s leader, “There’s an argument to be made that [DeGods] has topped out on Solana.” “It’s challenging to acknowledge, but achieving the growth rate we desire has been challenging. If Ethereum is where we need to go to continue expanding, then that’s what we must do.
The two collections are among the most talked-about in the Solana NFT market, with DeGods commanding the highest floor price (515 SOL, or approximately $5,750) at the time of writing. The floor price for Y00ts, DeGod’s sibling PFP line, which debuted this fall, is 148 SOL, or around $1,660.
Sales of DeGods increased as a result of the news, with the floor price of the collection rising by 12% as of Monday. Sales of Y00ts have remained generally steady, with the floor only rising by 5 SOL (about $55). Data from Magic Eden shows that in the week before the announcement, sales of DeGods and Y00ts constituted over 70% of the total amount of Solana NFT sales.
Months of conflict on NFT Twitter preceded the transfer, with some developers in the Solana NFT community decrying the exit while the collection’s owners mostly applauded the action.
On Twitter, there were speculations that the DeGods crew had approached the Solana Foundation for $5 million to stay on SOL at the Miami Art Basel fair in early December. The amount was verified to CoinDesk by a Solana Foundation employee, but the DeGods team declined to comment on the request’s legitimacy.
Moving to Polygon cost money, which was another victory for Polygon Y00ts. According to a DeGods spokesman, Polygon paid for the relocation using a grant from its cooperation fund, and the specifics of the agreement will eventually be made public.
According to Vora, the funding was not paid in full and will last “one year, possibly two.” What will transpire after the grant expires is unknown.
We need to accomplish a number of milestones, added Vora. Furthermore, the grant isn’t as large as people believe.
The move is the most recent in Polygon’s string of successful partnerships; in the past year, the layer 2 blockchain has drawn partners as significant as Starbucks, Nike, Reddit, Instagram, and DraftKings.
The transition of DeGod to Ethereum and Polygon may prove challenging on the backend. High-profile NFT bridges of this kind are unusual; most projects that go multi-chain choose a model similar to Doodles, which is considering releasing Doodles 2 on a layer 2 blockchain while preserving its original collection on Ethereum.
The team has stated that Y00tpoints, a token awarded to Y00ts holders who stake their NFTs, will migrate chains as well. The technical details of the migration have not yet been disclosed.