Top Solana NFT Projects Are Jumping Ship to Ethereum, Polygon

As the Solana ecosystem works to distance itself from Sam Bankman-Fried, two of the network’s top NFT projects are migrating to rival blockchains.

DeGods will allow holders to bridge their NFTs over to Ethereum sometime next quarter while y00ts will do the same on Polygon, the teams tweeted Sunday.

With about $18 million in volume over the past 30 days, the projects are by far the most traded NFT collections in the Solana ecosystem, per data from marketplace OpenSea. DeGods carried a floor price of 695 SOL ($7,824), while y00ts’ stood at 215 SOL ($2,400) as of Tuesday. 

Both projects are the creations of tech startup Dust Labs, which raised $7 million from investors including Solana Ventures in September. The firm’s utility token DUST, which denominates NFT staking yields and other perks, will also be ported to Ethereum and Polygon alongside related rewards points.

Rohun Vora, the creator tied to both NFT projects, tweeted a narrated video which said: “Dear Solana community, thank you. The support from this community has mean the world to us. Thank you for putting us on the map. We could not have done any of this without you.”

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“We’ve come to the realization that in order to grow, we need to explore new opportunities. We believe that now is the time to take a calculated risk to embark on a new journey. After all, the biggest risk is not taking one.”

As yet, the migration isn’t mandatory and it’s unclear how NFT markets will react to NFT collections spread across both blockchains. Dust wrote in a separate tweet that “the future is multi-chain.” 

“The details of the bridge will be released when it’s ready & tested. This has never been done before at this scale,” the teams tweeted. “We want to make sure that it’s airtight.” DeGods’ daily volume rose almost 190% after the news was announced, according to blockchain data platform Nansen.

In a Twitter Spaces, Vora said DeGods isn’t growing at the intended rate on Solana, and “if Ethereum is where we have to go to keep growing, it’s what we have to do.”

The DeGods project tweeted in Oct. 2021 that “Solana is just straight up better than Ethereum,” claiming it was a more decentralized blockchain.

Solana NFT departure compounds market losses

The move comes as somewhat of a blow to Solana, which has suffered throughout the Bankman-Fried scandal. While the disgraced crypto mogul wasn’t directly involved in its development, he was one of the network’s loudest proponents and most prolific investors. 

Solana’s total value locked has dwindled by 75% since the start of November, now at $214 million. Markets have punished Solana’s eponymous native token. SOL has sunk some 70% after wind of troubles at FTX first broke last month; bitcoin and ether have only shed around 25%. 

Polygon’s MATIC initially surged up to 50% as Bankman-Fried’s empire crumbled but has since given up those gains.

DeGods and y00ts’ blockchain switch was telegraphed earlier this month with reports that the former had asked Solana for $5 million to stay on its network, a request Vora has denied took place.

CoinDesk now reports that a DeGods spokesperson confirmed Polygon paid for y00ts to jump ship, although an amount was not disclosed. The current grant will also only last two years at most, according to Vora (via CoinDesk), and is pegged to certain undisclosed milestones.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko meanwhile shared that he felt “bittersweet” about the NFT projects going multi-chain, but acknowledged their ambitions to grow.

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