Polygon reportedly gave DeGods NFT project $3 million to migrate from Solana
Polygon allegedly gave $3 million to the DeLabs team to facilitate a move away from Solana, where they had previously released the y00ts and DeGods NFT collections.
The team was contacted with greater offers but chose to work with Polygon
Rohun Vora, nicknamed Frank III, the founder of DeGods & y00ts NFT, first revealed the agreement on the collection’s official Discord channel before sharing the news on his Twitter account.
Among the top projects created on the Solana blockchain are Y00ts, a generative art project of 15,000 NFTs, and DeGods, a collection of 10,000 digital art pieces. The collection’s team revealed last week that they were quitting the Solana network, with DeGods transferring to the Ethereum blockchain and Y00ts migrating to Polygon.
In a statement, Frank III claimed that despite receiving proposals for sums much higher than Polygon, the team decided to partner with Polygon because it would be the best venue for the NFT collections. Frank III further commented on the situation:
“We didn’t merely approve this agreement for financial gain. Although that’s a great bonus, we’ll use it well. Because it is y00ts’ most intriguing direction, they took this step. If you are highly outraged, I kindly urge that you channel that ire into genuine inquiries rather than automatically assuming the worst.”
The layer 2 chain provided a non-equity donation to DeLabs
DeLabs received the non-equity grant from Polygon to launch and grow the incubator they are creating, which will let users use y00tpoints and DePoints to mint the incubator’s NFT collections.
According to Frank III, they will use the money to increase the size of the DeLabs team and hire additional personnel for company growth, graphic design, content creation, and event organizing. With more outstanding capital, he said, DeLabs could start more high-caliber initiatives and offer fascinating partnerships, deals, discounts, and benefits with actual companies.
The y00t and DeGod migration are part of the aftermath of the FTX collapse, which significantly impacted Solana. The Solana ecosystem is yet to recover after dropping nearly 98% to $210 million from a peak of $10.17 billion in November 2021.
When announcing the migration on Twitter Spaces last week, Vora stated, “There’s an argument to be made that [DeGods] has topped out on Solana.” According to information from NFT marketplace Magic Eden, sales of DeGods and Y00ts made up nearly 70% of the total Solana NFT selling volume in the days before the announcement.
The news was good news for Polygon as well, which has recently been successful in bringing on board some well-known companies and projects. Reddit, Instagram, DraftKings, Starbucks (SBUX), Nike (NKE), and Nike all launched projects on Polygon last year.
Earlier rumors pointed to the migration
DeGods and Y00ts, two of the major non-fungible token (NFT) projects on the Solana network, were rumored to be departing the Solana network for months before the team behind the projects announced the migration.
In the announcement, the team stated that DeGods would migrate to the Ethereum blockchain and Y00ts would migrate to Polygon early this year. Rumors arose last December at the Art Basel festival in Miami that the DeGods team had asked the Solana Foundation for $5 million to remain on the Solana platform. The claim was, however, denied by the DeGods team.
