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DYOR 🔬

Growing pains 💪

Last Christmas, the Ethereum and Polygon chains received unusual gifts. Rohun Vora (AKA Frank DeGods) announced that both the DeGods and y00ts NFT collections were leaving the Solana blockchain. DeGods was heading to Ethereum, while y00ts would move to Polygon.

The projects’ exits from Solana are now complete, and plenty of people have plenty to say about them… including us. First, no matter what you think of the projects, you’ve got to admire their respective success… and their chutzpah.

Moving chains is no mean feat, not only technically, but because you need to know your community is sufficiently invested in coming with you (a potentially costly exercise, and one which can force them into using tokens they may not have used before). It also assumes you’re going to be able to win mind-and-market share from established users on your new chain and be able to compete with their entrenched projects.

DeGods and y00ts have sailed over all of these hurdles. DeGods leaped straight into the top 10 projects on Ethereum on arrival and is now in the top five PFP projects by market cap. Its floor price opened at 12 ETH before being pulled down to 8 ETH by airdrop farmers on BLUR. That’s quite the splash.

Meanwhile, y00ts is the top dog on Polygon by market cap and is on track to be the largest by volume soon. Granted, an uncomfortably large number of Polygon’s early top projects have turned out to be outright scams or soft rugs, so it’s a low bar to clear, but it makes for a good headline nonetheless.

Frank’s framed the jump as a necessity predicated on DeGods and y00ts having outgrown Solana… but there’s more to it than that.

Coming for Yuga’s crown 👑

The DeGods community is enviably enthusiastic (although, admittedly, sometimes leans a little hard into the swilling-beer-from-sneakers bro culture). Plus, its leadership team has both long-term vision and the ability to ignore the proverbial haters and get on with trying to execute it.

It’s hard not to think DeGods is gunning for Bored Ape Yacht Club’s parent company Yuga Labs’ spot atop Mount Ethereum. Because DeGods sees itself as a better version of Yuga — a purer incarnation of what Yuga aspired to be, and what it hoped to make core to its DNA, but according to some critics lost when the cash, suits, and celebrity holders poured in.

DeGods believes it’s got the power to unseat Yuga, and that it wasn’t going to be able to do that from the confines of the Solana ecosystem.

Of course, like all narratives, this one is imperfect. DeGods didn’t simply stroll away from Solana; it was unceremoniously bid farewell. Before it announced the move, there was already plenty of discontent and animosity.

Polygon and Solana were already at each others’ throats, and Solana loyalists weren’t amused when claims surfaced that DeGods had asked the Solana Foundation for $5 million to stay on the chain, a claim Frank denies, but which CoinDesk claims to have corroborated.

When Polygon offered a $3 million grant of to bring y00ts to its chain, and Frank accepted, many in the Solana community felt betrayed. Frank’s ambitions may indeed have outgrown Solana, but that wasn’t the sole reason for the transition.

Now that it’s complete, though, the question on everyone’s lips is, “What’s next?”

Team underdog 🐶

While navigating the complexities of chain migrations, the DeGods team also found time to get involved with — and swiftly dominate — the burgeoning Ordinals movement on Bitcoin. The team inscribed 535 burned DeGods to a single Bitcoin Block and proceeded to do more volume than all Ordinals combined in a mere two days.

In the process, DeGods has riled up early Ordinals communities like Tap Root Wizards, allowing it to add Bitcoin to the list of blockchain’s where it’s made enemies and outraged people.

Nonetheless, the DeGods-and-y00ts ecosystem now exists across three chains and has proven that leaving Solana wouldn’t be the death of it. By many measures, it’s also an outcast on three chains… which means more pressure to prove doubters wrong. Could that be in the form of a new collection? Or perhaps additional functionality for holders?

Alternatively, could its quest to become The Next Big Thing in Web3 see it go the gaming route like Yuga has? Or will it instead double down on its culture of upstream-swimming outsiders, outcasts, and rebels?

It’s too early to say. But you can bet there’s a plan, and that it will challenge the incumbents and their assumptions about what makes a Web3 project succeed… because that’s what DeGods thrives on, and that’s how it’s gotten this far.

Thread of the week 🧵

To the moon 🌙

• Yuga Labs announced “Otherside Relics by Gucci,” a collection of 3,333 virtual pendants tied to the mysterious Otherside characters called Kodas. Dubbed the “KodaPendant” (co-dependent?), each virtual pendant will unlock virtual traits while also entitling holders to claim a physical pendant made by Gucci later this year.

• Much beloved/reviled marketplace OpenSea has rebranded its NFT aggregator Gem to “OpenSea Pro.” The service is aimed at power users looking for granular control and analytics:

• Gunzilla Games is launching a subnet on Avalanche called GUNZ, which it’ll use for its upcoming game Off the Grid to power an optional marketplace for in-game items. The company counts director Neill Blomkamp (of District 9, Chappie, and Elysium fame) among its leadership team.

• NFT music platform Gala is selling an unreleased version of David Bowie’s song “Let’s Dance” as fractionalized NFTs, with the proceeds going to charity:

• Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) tells Decrypt it’ll soon start charging users to create POAPs, which it bills at “bookmarks for your life.” Currently the service is free to all users.

• The NFT 100 list for 2023 will be revealed next week and honorees will be celebrated at a gala dinner at the Rainbow Room in the Rockefeller Center in New York on April 11.

• Artmatr will host generative art superstar Zancan on April 13 for a walkthrough of its facility in Brooklyn, New York. It’ll also show a selection of works from the artist its turned into physical works using its proprietary MATRing technology, and it’ll host a series of panel discussions featuring Web3 heavy-hitters:

• Solana introduced “state compression” which is says will bring down the cost of minting NFTs on the Solana blockchain by “2,400-24,000x.” Or, in easier-to-fathom terms, it’ll reduce the cost of minting 1 million NFTs on Solana from around $250,000 to $110.

Probably nothing 🧢

Next week is NFT.NYC, and that means activations and parties aplenty. One of the highlights of the week is going to be 9dcc and gmoney’s NYC Treasure Hunt, where the Web3 luxury band is set to release its third piece of clothing (a luxury baseball cap) and send degens dashing around Lower Manhattan landmarks to collect POAPS, enamel pins designed by Snuffy, and all sorts of other treats.

There’s more than mere bragging rights up for grabs. The winner will get the chance to mint a Chromie Squiggle, which could be worth five or even six figures depending on rarity.

We’re elated to be sponsoring one of the stops in partnership with BitGo. You’ll have to follow our Twitter to find out exactly where the action is going down… but we can tell you it’s going include the chance to win customized gear from the one-and-only Gossamer Rozen, feature Spottie WiFi on the mic and Statik Selektah on the ones and twos, offer the opportunity to confess your crypto sins in a yellow cab, and so much more.

Connect for more 🔌

You can find Metaversal on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.

Metaversal’s content director, Craig Wilson, compiled this week’s edition.

Special thanks to Metaversal Fellow Wilfred Odero for sharing his deep knowledge of the DeGods ecosystem.

Until next time, see you in the metaverse! And don’t forget to claim this week’s DeGods-inpired Badge below, designed by Patrick Lawler. You never know what sorts of divine delights it may unlock. 👀

Metaversal Badges are your gateway to a world of wonderful opportunities, one-of-a-kind experiences, and exclusive connections. The more Badges you stack… well… you’ll see.