DeGods’ Kevin III Talks Bitcoin Branch, y00ts Future

Over the past year, DeGods has defied expectations to become the ultimate NFT comeback story. Born at Solana, the large-scale PFP trial and its counterpart, y00tshave continued to drive conversation around the compatibility of generative avatars across chains, while simultaneously planning to branch to Ethereum and Polygon, respectively.

Now DeGods has decided to take it multi-chain endeavours a significant step forward by bridging a select set of NFTs from the original Solana collection to Bitcoin as Ordinals Inscriptions. Dubbed “DeGods on Bitcoin,” this latest venture will introduce a first-of-its-kind minting experience on Bitcoin and is said by Dust Labs CEO Kevin Henrikson (AKA Kevin III) to serve as an intentional extension of the DeGods project’s vision.

“Our goal is to be the number one NFT community in every chain,” Henrikson said in an interview with nft now. “First Solana, now Bitcoin, and soon Polygon and Ethereum as we migrate and grow on these chains. We’re not just trying to go to each chain, but are thoughtful and determined about how it can expand our vision.”

DeGods on Bitcoin

In recent months, it has become increasingly common for established projects and IP to capitalize on the Ordinals hype by bridging to Bitcoin. With names like CryptoPunks, Yuga Labs and OnChainMonkey leading the pack for the ETH brigade, original BTC endeavors such as Taproot Wizards have also begun to flourish. Now, DeGods has added its name to the growing list of Bitcoin-centric NFT players, in partnership with Luxor Mining to bring his latest venture to life.

With a provisional mint scheduled for the afternoon of March 17, DeGods on Bitcoin will feature a total of 535 NFTs, each of which was previously burned from the blockchain as part of “Paper hands bitch treasure” experiment. Although a new price has not yet been set, which per notice from the official DeGods Twitter account, potential participants will want to have at least 0.444 BTC in a self-service wallet ready to use.

But there’s more than meets the eye to this small-batch BTC collection. Because while 500 will be available to users on a first-come, first-served basis, the remaining 35 will be auctioned off in $DUST (the community utility token), with proceeds from the DUST-auctioned DeGods going to DustDAO, a DAO for governance of DUST tokens to be built after DeGods and y00ts merge.

For starters, Rohun Vora (better known as Frank III) auctioned off DeGods #2428 on March 16 – which served as his original Twitter profile picture at the launch of DeGods – for a whopping 44,256 DUST (almost $80,000).

Why Expand to Bitcoin?

While this latest DeGods expansion has certainly come about due to the recent emergence and subsequent hype of Bitcoin Ordinals, it is apparently one that has a deeper meaning to its forebears. Speaking about how he and Vora landed on branching out into Ordinals, Henrikson said their already long-standing affinity with BTC fueled the move.

“The first crypto project Frank and I learned about was Bitcoin. We like to say that Bitcoin is the best brand in crypto. It just is. So the potential for digital collectibles on Bitcoin is magical,” Henrikson said.

“When Ordinals came out, we followed it closely and followed it. We wanted to do something, but it had to be special. Having the previously burned DeGods come back as DeadGods in this way was perfect. To do it as art in a block is just special and unique.”

Of course, with two collection mergers looming, there’s certainly a lot to look forward to for the DeGods community. And for Henrikson, this latest move to Bitcoin is not meant to overshadow the potential of y00ts, but to elevate the entire ecosystem of DeGod and y00ts, both of which still have a lot on the horizon.

“Y00ts will be moving to Polygon in the coming weeks. We are very excited about the brands we have spoken to and are starting to work with both y00ts and Dust Labs, our software company. Polygon has been a force signing the biggest brands coming into Web3, and it’s a perfect match for the diverse and passionate community we’ve built so far with y00ts,” said Henrikson.

“We will also be launching an incubator and accelerator to help grow the Polygon ecosystem and bring more creators and brands into Web3.”