At least $37 million worth of y00ts NFTs migrate to Polygon from Solana in one day

Solana profile picture (PFP) collection y00ts is the most prominent NFT project to date to migrate from one chain to another – and early data suggests that the community of holders supports the move, with almost 77% of NFTs already migrated to Polygon since the late Monday launch.

DeLabs, the Web3 startup behind both y00ts and the even more valuable DeGods project on Solana, announced in December that both collections would undergo the process of bridging to a new blockchain in the coming months – millennia to Polygon and DeGods to Ethereum. Both moves were finally set for March.

Late Monday night, DeLabs and associated tech startup Dust Labs launched the migration for y00ts, which is effectively a “burn and coin” process that sees holders burn (or destroy) the original Solana version of the NFT and receive a newly minted Polygon- version at the other end of Wormhole-based bridge.

IN just over 24 hours, 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 was launched, the number stands at 11,506 migrated NFTs – or nearly 77% of the total collection.

Based on the current floor price of 1.79 ETH ($3,230) to Open sea marketplace – or the price of the cheapest listed NFT in the project – representing 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 number is potentially much higher.

DeLabs has encouraged holders to make the move quickly. Anyone who migrated to Polygon within the first 24 hours will have their network gas fees refunded by the marketplace Magical Edenplus they will receive $5 in USDC stablecoin to list the polygon based NFT on the same marketplace. Furthermore, they will have fee-free y00ts trading for 30 days.

On top of that, DeLabs said it would drop a free random one Bitcoin-based DeGod’s NFT (or Ordinal) to one of the y00ts holders who migrated in the first 24 hours. On the flip side, NFT holders who don’t migrate to Polygon by April 3rd will be hit with a 33.3% “Paper Hands Bridge Tax” fee for creators of secondary sales – 10 times the standard rate set by DeLabs.

Leaving Solana

DeLabs and Dust Labs plan to execute the second half of the plan this week, as DeGods will begin the migration from Solana to the Ethereum blockchain on March 31st.

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 did not originate from 3 million dollar grant paid by Polygon Labs, but rather list of corporate giants build on the network – including Reddit, Disney, Nike and Starbucks, among others.

Envisioning easier accessibility to partnering with polygon-native brands, Frank revealed that the visual design of the y00ts avatars was created with the ability for brands to “imprint their logos” on them.

In the case of DeGods, Henrikson said “it wasn’t a matter of if, it was just a matter of when” the collection would move to Ethereum. “If we’re going to be the biggest, most popular NFT collection in the world, you have to be on Ethereum,” he said.

“We’re trying to take big swings, and we’re trying to do it in a way that’s going to make it exciting for people to participate,” Frank said in February, teasing the kinds of incentives that ultimately accompanied y00t’s migration.

Teasing the DeGods, go ahead, Frank tweeted today: “Friday becomes iconic.”