$37M of y00ts NFTs Jumped Chain to Polygon

Solana collection y00ts is one of the most popular NFT projects to date, and its recent jump from Solana to Polygon has sent ripples through the crypto world. Early data suggests that the community of holders is for the move, with almost 77% of the NFTs having already been migrated to Polygon since the launch.

DeLabs, the Web3 startup behind both y00ts and the popular DeGods project on Solana, announced in December that both collections would undergo the process of “bridging” to a new blockchain in the coming months. Y00ts would be bridged to Polygon, while DeGods would be bridged to Ethereum. Both moves were set for March, and it seems like the migration of y00ts to Polygon has been off to a good start and leads the way for DeGods.

On Monday night, DeLabs and associated tech startup Dust Labs launched the migration process for y00ts, which is a “burn and mint” process. It involves holders burning (or destroying) the Solana version of the NFT and receiving a newly-minted Polygon version on the other end of the Wormhole-based bridge.

Within just over 24 hours of the launch, more than 75% of the total supply of y00ts NFTs (11,362 out of 15,000) had reportedly already been migrated to Polygon. As of this writing, less than two days after the migration tool launched, the tally stands at 11,506 migrated NFTs or nearly 77% of the total collection.

Based on the current 1.79 ETH ($3,230) floor price at the OpenSea marketplace, or the price of the cheapest listed NFT in the project, this represents nearly $37 million worth of NFTs that had moved chains in just over a day. And since some of the NFTs are valued higher than the floor, the actual tally is potentially much higher.

DeLabs has incentivized holders to make the move swiftly by offering them several benefits. Anyone who migrated to Polygon within the first 24 hours had network gas fees reimbursed by the marketplace known as Magic Eden. They also received $5 in USDC stablecoin for listing the Polygon-based NFT on the same marketplace. Furthermore, they'd have fee-free y00ts trading for 30 days.

On top of that, DeLabs said it would randomly airdrop a free Bitcoin-based DeGods NFT (or Ordinal) to one of the y00ts holders who migrated within the first 24 hours. On the flip side, NFT holders who don't migrate to Polygon by April 3 will be hit by a 33.3% “Paper Hands Bridge Tax” creator royalty fee on secondary sales—ten times the standard rate set by DeLabs.

DeLabs and Dust Labs plan to carry through with the other half of the plan this week. DeGods will commence migration from Solana to the Ethereum blockchain on March 31. In an exclusive conversation with Decrypt in February, DeLabs founder Rohun "Frank" Vora and Dust Labs CEO Kevin Henrikson spoke at length about the team's intentions to migrate both y00ts and DeGods away from the Solana blockchain, in favor of Polygon and Ethereum, respectively.

Frank revealed that the lure of y00ts to Polygon didn't originate from the $3 million grant paid by Polygon Labs, but rather the roster of corporate giants building on the network, including Reddit, Disney, Nike, and Starbucks, among others. Envisioning easier accessibility to forge partnerships with Polygon-native brands, Frank revealed that the visual design of the y00ts avatars was created with the possibility for brands to imprint their logos.