Solana’s struggles continue. The FTX fallout, which included heaps of speculation around the degree of Alameda Research exposure – which is believed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars – has seemingly bled into the blockchain’s NFT scene, too.
Now, two of the leading projects in the Solana ecosystem have announced their departures to new chains – expected to be effective early next year.
For Solana, When It Rains, It Pours
Solana has been arguably the top token of speculation surrounding FTX fallout. The token is creeping it’s way out of the top 25 in top token market caps, which would’ve been a shocking revelation just a year ago – as SOL has long been a top 10 token.
Token price aside, Solana’s sentiment in the NFT community has been waning; for many months, DeGods and y00ts creator Frank has long teased moving to new chains. Just last month, NFT marketplace Magic Eden – which started on Solana solely – announced integration with Polygon.
While Solana’s momentum has waned in recent months, it’s still been the largely considered ‘#2 player’ behind Ethereum in the NFT space. However, according a new announcement on Christmas Day, two of the chain’s biggest NFT projects, DeGods and y00ts, are headed to new blockchains.
New Year, New Look Blockchains
In the midst of the madness, Polygon secures yet another NFT win here. The chain will be approaching y00ts with open arms, adding the community-first NFT collection to an ever-growing list of more ‘corporate’ partners and hosts, including Reddit, Starbucks, and yes – even Donald Trumps recent NFT collection. After a series of institutional wins, Polygon now secures a more community-focused NFT collection win – and a substantial one at that.
Meanwhile, DeGods will be moving up to Ethereum, looking to compete with ‘big dog’ blue chips that command the most volume in the NFT space. Frank, creator of DeGods and subsequent y00ts, released quite a few tweets on the matter, but none the more optimistic than this one:
Nike, Adidas, Starbucks, Disney, Shopify, NFL, TicketMaster, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Prada, Dolce & Gabana, FlipKart, Coca-Cola, Adobe, Bentley, Stripe, Draft Kings, 100 Thieves, and that's just a few.
I think that the @y00tsNFT brand just got stronger.
But let's see
— Frank III (@frankdegods) December 26, 2022
Regardless for how it shakes out for Frank’s respective projects in their new ventures, there’s no doubt that this is a loss for the Solana NFT community. According to NFT collection data from CryptoSlam, both DeGods and y00ts have been in top 20 volumes over each time metric, not including all-time (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days). They are the only Solana-based projects to do so.
Both DeGods and y00ts are expected to make their respective migrations to new chains in the first quarter of 2023.
